Today is the anniversary of two noteworthy events in American history.
They are noteworthy for different reasons — and, on the surface, appear to have little, if anything, in common. But bear with me.
Now, something has happened on every day in the calendar — even if it was nothing more than people were born on that day and people died on that day. For a long time I believed that nothing of note ever happened on the day of my birth — other than the fact that a few famous people were born on that day and a few died — but I later learned that there were some historic — albeit minor — events on my birthday.
There are 365 days in a year (366 in Leap Years); in a few thousand years of recorded history it stands to reason that something, however great or small, must have happened on each at some time.
Dec. 19 is the anniversary of two significant events in American history, separated by nearly two centuries, but they both speak to the purpose of America.
The first event was on this day in 1777. Gen. George Washington and his men began to set up their winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pa.
Even if you never learned the specifics when you were in school, you almost surely learned of the Continental Army's struggle to survive that winter. They had been engaged in a battle with the British in early December, and Washington sought some place where his men could spend the winter.
There were several considerations — Washington needed a location that would support wartime objectives. Valley Forge was far from ideal, but it was easy to defend and had plenty of timber that could be used to build huts.
Everything was in short supply — food, clothing, shelter.
As for shelter ...
It was on this day 240 years ago that construction of the first hut at Valley Forge began. It was completed in three days. By February, 2,000 huts had been built.
Having shelter against the elements helped, but it did nothing for the food and clothing shortages. Contrary to popular belief, Valley Forge had comparatively little snow that winter, but the conditions were still frigid, the men were ill–clothed and underfed.
Why did they endure such hardship? Because they believed in the concept of freedom.
Consequently most Americans probably expected to see men walking on the surface of some other object in the heavens — even though Apollo 18 had been canceled more than two years earlier and no further space landings of any kind were on NASA's schedule. No such missions have been launched in 45 years, and no such missions are planned although the notion has been given plenty of lip service.
Most people probably didn't recognize it at the time, but America was in a truly transitional period. The idea of American exceptionalism had been taking a beating due to the Vietnam War and Watergate. There was a crisis in American confidence that continues to this day.
After Richard Nixon cruised to re–election as president in 1972, things began to change in American politics. In the next two decades, three incumbent presidents would be rejected at the polls by the voters (for comparison purposes, three incumbent presidents were rejected by the voters in the previous 80 years), and the only destinations for American space travelers were space stations.
If they could visit America today, the veterans of Valley Forge might wonder what has become of the country for which they sacrificed so much. What has happened to the courage that sustained them through Valley Forge and the seemingly impossible revolution against British rule? What has become of that "what's next" spirit of exploration that led Americans from the eastern shores of the continent to the western shores — and from there into space?
"With no plans for adequate, additional funding to support these ambitions," Siegel writes, "these dreams will simply evaporate, as they have so many times before."
Perhaps Siegel is right. Perhaps the objective needs to be more targeted. The scattershooting approach of returning to the moon then jumping to the next goal (Mars) and beyond may not be the way to go, as Siegel suggests.
"If we want to go to Mars, we should make that our goal and invest in it," he writes. "If we want to go to the Moon, we should make that our goal and invest in it. Pretending that one has anything to do with the other is a delusion."
Maybe so. But it also seems to me that the spirit of Valley Forge has taken a beating since the days of Apollo 17.
There's a point in "Inherit the Wind" when Spencer Tracy is addressing the jury on progress. His comments were in the context of Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution; while you may or may not agree with that particular theory, there can be little disagreement with what Tracy's character said about progress of any kind:
"Progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it."
In that context, Tracy was speaking of the things that had to be given up to make way for the new, but it isn't always things that are sacrificed. Often it is lives.
America's space program certainly has been like that — and you would be hard pressed to find a better example of an endeavor that was undertaken almost exclusively in the name of progress.
It is also beyond dispute that the space program revolutionized our lives. Think of all that was made possible by the things that the astronauts discovered.
And the space program didn't have to pay much of a price, really, until this day in 1967.
It was on this day that the crew of Apollo 1 — Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee — perished when a fire broke out during a test of their spaceship at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Americans had become spoiled with all the successes of the space program in the '60s. Sure, there had been some problems with the unmanned rockets in the program's nascent days, and that had been costly in a monetary sense, but there had been no casualties.
Americans held their breath as the astronauts did things that would make Americans shrug and sniff just a few years later, like blast off, leave the Earth's atmosphere, then return, proving it could be done, or orbiting the Earth, proving that could be done as well. Each mission was a building block to the goal President Kennedy set for the space program earlier in the decade — to send men to the moon and return them to the Earth.
They made it all look routine, just as they did a couple of decades later with the space shuttle. Just as when the Challenger blew up on almost the same day in 1986, Americans were shocked when the fire broke out and snuffed out the lives of the three astronauts.
Grissom had been one of the original Mercury astronauts with John Glenn (Grissom was the first Mercury astronaut to die; Glenn was the last only a few months ago). White was the first American to walk in space. Chaffee would have been on his first space mission.
All the astronauts were prepared to die if necessary, but I doubt they dwelled on the possibility. That's the way people in dangerous professions have to be if they are to do those jobs the way they need to be done.
On this day 50 years ago, the quest to fulfill Kennedy's pledge and the desire for progress took three lives. It wasn't a bargain, but America paid the price — and rose from the ashes, meeting Kennedy's challenge with the Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969.
"I'm coming back in ... and it's the saddest moment of my life."
Edward H. White
June 3, 1965
Fifty years ago, an American walked in space for the first time.
The man who took the first walk in space was not an American but a Russian. It was during the heated days of the U.S.–U.S.S.R. space race, and every first in the race to the moon was treated like something truly special, even if it wasn't.
Well, maybe it was special at the time, but not so much later on.
On this day in 1965, Edward White became the first American to walk in space. He wasn't one of the original "Mercury 7" astronauts. He was part of the second group chosen — along with Neil Armstrong, who would become the first man to walk on the moon, and Jim Lovell, who flew to the moon twice but never landed there.
White was the pilot of Gemini 4, the second manned space flight in NASA's Project Gemini. James McDivitt was the command pilot. White spent about 20 minutes outside the space ship, then reluctantly returned.
It was — without question — the highlight of the mission. Most people don't know that another first was planned on that mission, but it didn't work out nearly as well. McDivitt was slated to attempt a space rendezvous — an orbital maneuver that became almost routine in later missions but failed on this occasion. McDivitt made up for it a few years later as commander of Apollo 9, which was the first manned flight test of the lunar module.
(And he was Apollo spacecraft program manager from 1969 to 1972, the period in which all of NASA's missions to the moon — so far — were launched.)
The lunar module was the vehicle that carried astronauts to the surface of the moon. It was necessary for the command module to perform a space rendezvous with the lunar module before that part of the mission could commence.
So it is safe to say that McDivitt secured a better spot for himself in NASA's history later in his career than he did 50 years ago.
White, too, is remembered for something other than his space walk on Gemini 4 — something that was probably more important to the success of the program in the long run but hardly as personally triumphant. On Jan. 27, 1967, while conducting spacecraft practice, White and two other astronauts perished when a fire broke out in the pure oxygen environment of the cabin.
The astronauts' deaths revealed spacecraft flaws that NASA resolved before resuming the Apollo program, which went on to put 12 men on the moon and return them safely to earth.
"The mission was Apollo 11. It was the capstone of an extraordinary effort ... and while men could argue endlessly over whether it had been worth the cost, its success was undeniably an American triumph."
William Manchester
When this day dawned 45 years ago, many things were true that would not be true anymore when the sun went down.
July 16, 1969 was a Wednesday. I don't know if Wednesday was known colloquially as "Hump Day" then as it is today, but millions of Americans got up that morning and went to work, just as they did every weekday morning. Some commuted great distances — as some do today.
It was summer, which meant that some families were on vacation road trips to landmarks, beaches, amusement parks or baseball games.
Wanderlust is deeply embedded in the American DNA, but, no matter how far any other Americans traveled in July 1969, the concept of travel would be forever changed by three men. Travel generally implies a destination of some kind, and those three men gave that word a makeover on this day.
Those three men — Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins — were the crew of Apollo 11, NASA's fifth manned space mission of the Apollo program.
In recent years, Americans had seen many manned space missions lift off in the Mercury and Gemini programs as well as the Apollo program. They knew the risks all too well, having witnessed the fiery deaths of three astronauts during a ground test for Apollo 1 a couple of years earlier. They knew there was nothing routine about space travel.
Except the destination.
"Apollo 11, with its 36–story–high Saturn 5 rocket, was fired at Cape Kennedy's launch complex 39A at 9:32 on the morning of July 16, 1969. ... The Saturn's third stage put them into an orbit at a height of 118 miles. After a 2½–hour check of all instruments systems, they refired the third stage. This gave them a velocity ... sufficient to throw them beyond the earth's atmosphere and on their way to the moon, a quarter–million miles away."
William Manchester
The eventual destination for Apollo 11 would be — as it had been for all space missions that had gone before — a splashdown. American missions splashed down in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and Apollo 11 was scheduled to complete its mission with a splashdown in the Pacific.
But in between the liftoff 45 years ago today and the splashdown eight days later, Apollo 11 did something that no other mission had done. It stopped somewhere — the moon. Two members of the crew descended to the moon's surface and walked around. They planted a flag to show they had been there.
And they left the first of several piles of space–travel debris.
On this anniversary, I suppose it is appropriate to wonder what kind of future, if any, America's space program has.
And recently he revealed that he saw a UFO during Apollo 11's journey to the moon.
If that one–way trip to Mars materializes, the first travelers might expect to encounter a UFO as well — although Aldrin conceded that it could have been sunlight reflecting off panels from the spaceship. Since he does not know which panel, it qualifies (technically) as unidentified, and it was a flying object — just not, apparently, a flying saucer.
But Aldrin has also said that he believes there must be life somewhere else. If that is true, it seems at least possible that a spaceship from earth bound for Mars could encounter a UFO.
No one knows how long it will take a manned rocket to make the journey. So far, only unmanned probes have been sent, but it typically takes six months to a year for them to cover the 55 million–kilometer distance.
Surely they will bump into a real flying saucer during that time.
As 1968 was drawing to a close, rational people probably would have been happy to get as far away from earth as they could — if such a thing was possible.
By just about any measure that year, the planet was in turmoil as the Christmas season approached.
Three Americans — Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders — had such an opportunity. NASA was going to launch its first manned mission to orbit the moon, and those three men had been selected to make the flight. They would be gone from Dec. 21 to Dec. 27, which meant they would have to be away from their homes and families on Christmas.
But, as I say, in 1968, such an opportunity would have been welcome for most people — and, after a three–day journey, the astronauts arrived at their destination. They made 10 orbits of the moon, during which they did a Christmas Eve broadcast from space (at the time, the most–watched television program ever) and Anders took a famous photograph called "Earthrise," depicting the earth "rising" above the moon, before embarking on the voyage home.
Actually, many photos were taken of the earthrise. The first, in black and white, was taken by Borman, the mission commander. Many others followed.
It was eventually determined that the one that would serve as the representative image was taken by Anders, the lunar module commander.In many ways, the woes of 2013 don't really seem to compare to the woes of 1968.
Then, as now, there were American soldiers fighting on foreign soil, but the war in southeast Asia had been going badly since the beginning of 1968, when the Tet offensive persuaded many Americans that there was no hope of winning in Vietnam.
Americans are polarized today as they were 45 years ago, but the divisions we face in 2013 don't seem nearly as insurmountable as they did in 1968, when leaders were being shot down and protestors clashed with police in the streets of major cities.
But Apollo 8 — through its Christmas Eve broadcast and its iconic "Earthrise" photo — gave America and the world a boost when they needed it most.
Our problems may or may not be as severe as the ones of 1968, but we could use another boost like that today.
It's a shame she couldn't have lived another year because today is the 30th anniversary of her historic trip into outer space, and it would be fascinating to get her perspective on how things in general have changed for women in the last three decades.
Things have changed for both genders in terms of space travel; actually, things have changed quite a bit for the space program in general. The United States put the space shuttle in mothballs a couple of years ago. Once in awhile, there is talk of reviving the programs of traveling to the moon or just into space — or beginning work on the much more ambitious goal of traveling to Mars — but little has come of such talk.
And, in spite of some protests to the contrary, it is plausible to argue — in some quarters — that little has changed for women since that time.
I guess it depends on what one considers progress and how long one thinks it is reasonable to wait for it.
There are arguments to be made about how women are portrayed in the popular media, whether they are given more or less respect as a demographic group. And there are certainly arguments to be made about inequities in pay — although, in the economy we've had for the last 5½ years, it may be more relevant to compare unemployment and underemployment rates for the sexes.
But I wonder if it is appropriate even to discuss those things on this day. Ride's achievement was her own. It was never suggested, never even implied, that her accomplishment would change the lives of American women.
It may have opened some doors in the space program for women, but it certainly wasn't why Geraldine Ferraro or Sarah Palin were chosen to run for vice president — and Sandra Day O'Connor had been on the Supreme Court for nearly two years when Ride went into space so it makes no sense to say that Sally Ride influenced Supreme Court nominations.
It was part of the steady drip–drip–drip of history that signals an inevitability of some kind.
The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was like that. It didn't cause immediate change, but, little by little, attitudes were changed and barriers were torn down.
That is often how history works. Change rarely comes as quickly as some people want, but eventually it comes.
Sally Ride made her contribution to the evolution of women's role in our culture 30 years ago.
But she was a very private woman. Few people knew of her long–term same–sex relationship or of her eventually fatal illness until after she died.
I don't feel she was motivated by a desire to be a role model at anything other than being a good and dedicated astronaut — which she was.
Twenty–nine years ago, it seemed like the ideal name for America's first woman in space. Well, it seemed that way to me, anyway.
And I didn't even realize it had already been immortalized in a song, "Mustang Sally."
"All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride.
All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride.
All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride."
(I'll admit, it doesn't seem like much without the music.)
She joined NASA in 1978 and, in 1983, she rode on the space shuttle Challenger, becoming America's first woman in space.
She wasn't the first woman of any nationality to travel in space. That distinction belonged to Valentina Tereshkova of Russia, who flew in space 20 years before Ride.
But she was a pioneer — an American pioneer.
It would be a perfect narrative, I suppose, if it could be demonstrated that Ride's parents named her after the song. But that isn't possible. Ride was born in 1951. The song was first recorded in the mid–1960s.
Ironically, Ride's historic trip into space came almost 20 years to the day after Tereshkova's.
And Tereshkova and Ride had something else in common. As young adults, neither woman seemed destined for space travel. Tereshkova worked in a factory; Ride was an aspiring tennis player.
But Tereshkova was recruited for the Soviet Union's space program. Ride was among thousands of people who answered an advertisement seeking applicants for NASA.
So their groundbreaking stories, while similar, were not identical.
In fact, there were times back in the 1980s when I thought Ride's achievement was overshadowed by other, higher–profile advances for females — almost two years before Ride went into space, Sandra Day O'Connor became the first female Supreme Court justice. And the year after her trip into space, Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman to be on a major party's national ticket as Walter Mondale's running mate.
For one thing, it is ironic that she should die less than a year before the 30th anniversary of her first space trip. What a tragedy it is that she will not be here for that.
Ride's death came the day before the 115th anniversary of Earhart's birth. Another irony. Both women were pioneers in aviation.
It is even more ironic, I think, that Ride's death and the search for Earhart's plane should happen at a time when the national conversation has been centered on Barack Obama's remark about how entrepreneurs did not build their businesses alone.
No man is an island, the president and his supporters contend.
But, if anything, Ride and Earhart did the things they did in spite of the resistance they encountered. It was probably more pronounced in Earhart's day because few women attempted to succeed in any field that was regarded as the domain of men — but little had really changed in 50 years.
I have a vivid memory of the men in the central Arkansas community where I was working at the time dismissing Ride's accomplishment and earnestly wondering why she would want to do what men had been doing since the dawn of America's space program.
So I know that misogynistic attitudes were alive and well when Ride flew in space.
It may not fit with the president's election–year narrative, but that entrepreneurial, risk–taking spirit isn't limited to the business world.
And, while Ride got her opportunity with the help she received along the way, as we all do, her success as an astronaut was entirely her own doing.
Fifty years ago, writes John Noble Wilford in the New York Times, America "needed a hero."
I suppose the same could said of many times in America's history, but, as Wilford observes, "Americans had yet to recover from the Soviet Union's launching of the first spacecraft, Sputnik, in October 1957 — a rude jolt to our confidence as world leaders in all things technological."
In hindsight, it's probably as remarkable that the United States beat the Soviet Union to the moon as it was that Americans got there at all. In 1962, as Wilford points out, American confidence had taken a considerable bashing. When John F. Kennedy challenged America to commit to landing on the moon before the end of the 1960s, the nation really had little reason to believe it could.
But then, writes Wilford, "a Marine Corps fighter pilot from small–town America stepped forward in response to the country's need. The astronaut was John Glenn, whom the author Tom Wolfe has called 'the last true national hero America has ever had.' "
Glenn was made to order for the role of national hero — but he knew he didn't do it alone. On Saturday, he told the surviving members of Project Mercury, at an event commemorating Glenn's historic flight, that they were "the people who made it work."
That was true enough, but it was Glenn who put his life on the line.
His flight 50 years ago today lasted less than five hours, but he made history as surely as Neil Armstrong did seven years later when he walked on the moon. And he displayed a boyish wonder as he experienced things no American had ever experienced before.
He was the first American to orbit the earth, and he did so three times that day, observing at one point, after witnessing sunrise from orbit, "That sure was a short day. That was about the shortest day I've ever run into."
As the sun rose, Glenn observed what he described as "fireflies" outside the capsule. Neither he nor the people at NASA knew what he was seeing — it was later determined that they were ice crystals venting from the spacecraft — but Glenn simply could not contain his amazement.
"I am in a big mass of some very small particles," he said. "They're brilliantly lit up like they're luminescent. I never saw anything like it. They round a little: they're coming by the capsule and they look like little stars. A whole shower of them coming by. They swirl around the capsule and go in front of the window and they're all brilliantly lighted."
The scene was beautifully re–created in the 1983 film "The Right Stuff."
It was in the book "The Right Stuff" that Wolfe called Glenn the last American hero. In truth, though — and, perhaps, inevitably — what Glenn did 50 years ago today was his heroic peak. The rest of his public career had its ups and downs.
Glenn was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1974, beating the incumbent for the Democratic nomination after giving his "Gold Star Mothers" speech in response to his opponent's charge that he "never worked for a living."
"[L]ook those men with mangled bodies in the eyes and tell them they didn't hold a job," Glenn said, speaking of his comrades in the military. "You go with me to any Gold Star mother and you look her in the eye and tell her that her son did not hold a job."
Glenn might have been vice president. His name was mentioned among the leading contenders for the second spot on Jimmy Carter's ticket in 1976, but his keynote address to the Democratic convention was unimpressive, and Carter chose Walter Mondale instead.
In 1983, there was considerable talk about Glenn as a possible challenger to President Reagan, but Glenn and his staff were worried, as it turned out, about the release of the film version of Wolfe's book late that year. Wolfe had written in glowing terms about Glenn as a hero, but Glenn's staffers felt Wolfe portrayed Glenn as a zealot, and there was anxiety about how a movie that reinforced that image might be received.
As it turned out, reviewers saw the portrayal of Glenn as heroic, and Glenn tried to capitalize on the favorable publicity, but once again, he lost to Mondale — who went on to lose a 49–state landslide to Reagan.
A few years later, Glenn was one of the "Keating five," a group of senators who became ensnared in the savings and loan scandal of the late 1980s, but he was cleared by the Senate commission that investigated. Instead, he was found to be guilty of "poor judgment."
His judgment may have been questioned, but he always seemed to retain the image of hero.
I remember having a G.I. Joe, like many boys my age, and one year I received a space–age accessory on my birthday to go with it. It was a one–man space capsule for the G.I. Joe that was apparently modeled after Glenn's Friendship 7.
I don't recall any identifiable marks on the capsule, but I do remember that the capsule came with a recording, about three or four minutes long, of dialogue from Glenn's space shot — including the "Godspeed, John Glenn" wish for good luck from Mission Control as liftoff began.
I suppose the idea was for children to listen to the record while they played with the space capsule. In that way, they could simulate things they saw on television. Well, that's what I did, anyway. In the make–believe world of my bedroom, my G.I. Joe was a space traveler, and the capsule was his vehicle for trips to strange new worlds.
Space travel certainly was heroic in those days. It may seem terribly routine to folks in the 21st century, but there was nothing routine about it in 1962.
It was the dawning of the age of the Space Race in the United States.
Now 90, Glenn told Todd Halvorson of Florida Today that space travel isn't just about going places but doing things once you get there.
"[I]t's not only seeing how far we go into space, and eventually being on Mars, and maybe sometime having a base on the moon," he said. "But to me, of equal importance is to maximize the research return."
America got a lot of return on its investment on this day in 1962.
Mostly war, I suppose, and that is understandable. Today is, after all, the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor — the event that literally pushed the United States into World War II although one could argue that it had been getting more and more involved in the conflict in the months leading up to the attack.
It is an event that still resonates with people of my parents' generation. They were children when the attack occurred, and, although my mother has been gone for many years now, I remember her telling me of the peaceful Sunday afternoon that suddenly changed when the news came across the radio that Pearl Harbor had been the victim of a sneak attack.
It is hard for me to imagine anyone going through the American education system and not hearing a recording of FDR's famous speech to Congress, when he said that Dec. 7, 1941 was a "date which will live in infamy."
That date has certainly lived on in people's memories.
For me, today brings back memories of 20 years ago when I was working for a small daily newspaper, and I participated in the production of a special section commemorating the 50th anniversary of that attack. For weeks, we solicited 1940s era photos of local residents, both living and dead, who served their country — and we published articles about many of them and their experiences.
That project coincided with my graduation from graduate school. A week later, I was going to receive my master's degree. There were many things demanding my time and attention.
It was a grueling period in my journalism career, to be sure. I had no idea there were so many WWII veterans in the county where I was living — until we took on that project.
Most of them were living then. Far fewer are apt to be living today — and it does make me wonder when we will stop observing Pearl Harbor Day in the kind of semi–official way that we have in recent years. It seems we are moving in that direction with the attrition of people who still remember that day.
That happens with some of history's significant dates. So much time goes by and the people who remember the event pass away, and we are left with holidays and/or anniversaries for which we must be reminded the origin.
Take Veterans Day. It used to be called Armistice Day, which was the observation of the anniversary of the end of World War I.
Hostilities in that conflict ended in 1918, more than 90 years ago. The last time I recall anyone mentioning that event was when I studied history in high school — and my memory is that my history teacher really didn't spend much time on it.
To be sure, the outcome of World War I wasn't very popular in Germany, which paid a heavy price — and that could be said to have played a role in the eventual rise to power of the Nazis in the 1930s. Kinda depends on one's interpretations of things.
Chronologically, though, it is beyond dispute that anyone who was old enough to serve in that war would have to be around 110 years old today. There are a few of those left in the entire world, but not many. Armistice Day long ago lost its meaning as the World War I generation dwindled — so today it is known by the more generic designation of Veterans Day.
Which is not to be confused with Memorial Day. That is a completely different holiday in a completely different time of year — but it does have a similar history.
It started out as Decoration Day, a day for honoring those who died during the Civil War. I don't think there is a particular anniversary connected with it; the graves of Confederate soldiers were decorated in several Southern cities during the war and the practice simply continued after it ended.
Obviously, no one who was alive in the mid–19th century is still living — so there is no one for whom Decoration Day has any meaning. We continue to observe it, though, under the more generic name of Memorial Day.
The purpose evolved to include remembering those who fought in all wars, not just the Civil War, and in recent years it has expanded to include memories of anyone who is no longer living, even if that person didn't serve in the military.
George Carlin used to point out that sports like football that tend to emulate war are played in facilities that use such generic names as War Memorial Stadium or Soldier Field. It is part of the competitive nature of sports, I suppose, that the places where these games are played should bear names that conjure violent images — even though a sport will never be as violent as war.But not everything that happened on Dec. 7 has been violent.
Sometimes there has been peace and hope.
On this day in 1972, for example, Apollo 17, the last manned mission to the moon, was launched. As they left the earth and began making their way to the moon, the crew looked back and took a picture of the earth that is known today as the "Blue Marble."
Seen from that vantage point, the blue marble looks so peaceful, just floating along in the black velvet of space. One would never guess that so much turmoil exists on the surface of that marble, that there is savagery loose upon the land capable of causing great pain to millions without the slightest hint of remorse.
Yet the image of the blue marble sparks in many of us that wish for peace on earth and good will to men.
Not a bad thought to keep in mind during the Christmas season.
Ansari is an Iranian–American businesswoman who was the first Muslim woman in space.
I'm glad to see articles like that because they show us things that cultures have in common, and sometimes they shatter myths that serve as barriers between cultures.
Ansari recites a litany of the labels she has been given and protests the "labels we put on ourselves and let others put on us." I appreciate her resistance to labels.
I, too, try to avoid labeling people, but I can't help wondering something about a Muslim in space. Ansari doesn't address it in her column, and I would appreciate it if someone would tell me if anyone has ever talked about this.
Muslims are supposed to perform ritual prayers called salah five times each day, and they are supposed to face Mecca while doing so.
As I understand it, these prayers are mandatory, but, depending on the circumstances, there is a certain amount of wiggle room on the specifics, so what does a Muslim in space do about facing Mecca? Does he/she even bother with that part of it and just go ahead with the prayers?
Or does he/she simply face in the direction of the earth, whichever direction that may be?
I will admit that I haven't always been sure how I felt about Al Neuharth.
For the most part, I think he is a businessman, although he fancies himself a journalist. He founded USA Today, the crown jewel of the Gannett empire — and, as a one–time copy editor for the Arkansas Gazette, I have my share of issues with the way Gannett ran the Gazette in the last years of its existence — which I have always regarded as short–sighted, at best.
Neuharth wasn't with Gannett when it decided to close the Gazette, but he had been part of its culture, part of its mindset. So I am conflicted. Often, when I read what Neuharth has written, his opinions seem reasonable to me. But I never seem to know where the often–idealistic (and, admittedly, sometimes naive) journalist ends and the hard–nosed businessman takes over.
Today, I read that Neuharth says Obama "in effect pulled the plug on our space program."
John F. Kennedy "must have turned over in his grave," Neuharth wrote.
I have disagreed with Obama on many occasions. But, as far as I know, we've always spoken the same language. When we have disagreed, it was on the substance and/or the logic of the ideas, not the definition of words.
I know that words can mean different things to different people — certainly to different generations. But I think there's only one way to interpret the phrase "pull the plug" on something.
And I clearly heard Obama say, "I am 100% committed to the mission of NASA and its future." There's only one way to interpret that as well. Right?
So it appears that what we have here, as they said in "Cool Hand Luke," is a failure to communicate.
Well, not really, if you know much about Neuharth's history. Perhaps a failure to comprehend.
See, Neuharth's been a vocal critic of the war in Iraq. He has compared U.S. involvement in Iraq to its involvement in Vietnam. And it is through that lens that he tends to view and evaluate all other federal spending decisions.
In the interest of full disclosure, I, too, have been opposed to the war in Iraq since the beginning. And I think the spending level to which the government has been committed in Iraq played a role in the recession that has had this country in a stranglehold for nearly 2½ years. But it's only one of the issues that needs to be addressed.
And Obama does appear to be winding down — in a responsible way — American military involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I have seen less effort being made to create jobs, but Neuharth touches on one such NASA–related effort (in his view) in his critique.
"Unfortunately, some political and business leaders in Florida are buying the Obama plan because it may provide a few jobs for some of those thousands who will be unemployed here when the shuttle program ends," he writes. "That should not be the most important of our nation's concern."
Well, it seems to me that the phasing out of the space shuttle program has been in the works for awhile. I believe the program's retirement originally was called for by George W. Bush's 2004 Vision for Space Exploration. There has been some legislative maneuvering that may have contributed to a temporary impression that the program could be revived, but the plan to mothball the shuttle could hardly be considered an Obama initiative.
And, in this economy, anything that may provide some jobs for displaced specialists is not something to be dismissed lightly.
After doing a little light name–dropping (in this case, Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, who calls Obama's plan for NASA "devastating"), Neuharth says this: "Obama's proposal is all about money priorities and our inexcusable war costs, not about peaceful world leadership. His proposed budget for 2011 makes that clear:
Wars: $159.3 billion.
Space: $19 billion.
"That suggests Obama thinks that wars in places like Afghanistan and Iraq are nearly 10 times more important than exploring the last frontier in space."
Maybe I missed something, but I don't get that message.
I say that, not because of the Tea Party's now annual April 15 protests or the increasingly strident criticism that comes Obama's way from the Republicans, but because this month marks the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 13 space mission.
In fact, today is the anniversary of the Apollo 13 crew's return to earth, so Obama made his remarks during the 40th anniversary of that ill–fated mission.
Jeffrey Kluger, a writer for TIME magazine who co–authored "Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13" with Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, reflected in TIME recently that the mission was a miracle that was "due to the extraordinary technological and navigational improvisations the people on the ground and in the spacecraft dreamed up along the way." But he also gave considerable credit to Lovell and flight director Gene Kranz and their "surreal cool."
As well he should.
Essentially, Lovell and Kranz were products of a special mindset that has always existed at NASA. Some folks would call it a "can–do" spirit. In a memorable scene from Ron Howard's movie about the mission in 1995, Kranz (played by Ed Harris) summarized it for the ground crew during the crisis — "failure is not an option" — although it is my understanding that Kranz never said that.
Maybe that's an example of the differences in word usage from one generation to the next. In 1970, an option was something extra you had installed in your car. "Option" simply wasn't used in that "failure is not an option" context in those days. But it was used in that context when the script writers were doing their interviews in preparation for the 1995 film.
Dramatic dialogue, yes, but it also pretty efficiently describes the problem that NASA faced in April 1970.
It may be hard for many modern people, conditioned by the convenience of the internet and cell phones and global positioning systems, to imagine how challenging Apollo 13 was. The folks on the ground had to figure out how to bring the crew back to earth when an oxygen tank exploded — I guess it was more or less understood immediately that, once that tank blew up, the original mission was out of the question.
After the crew returned safely to earth 40 years ago today, it was frequently called a "successful failure" as people learned how remarkable the accomplishment had been, even though the original mission had to be scrapped.
President Nixon didn't seem to be nearly as jubilant posing with a crew that never made it to the moon as he did the year before when he was only too happy to bask in the glow that came from Apollo 11. I always thought Nixon regarded the Apollo 13 crew as losers. Well, it was an election year. Perhaps he felt he had been deprived of a victorious photo for campaign pamphlets.
I was pretty young at the time. I remember the incident and being as stunned as everyone else to discover that something actually could go wrong on these space missions, which often seemed to be routine. But I don't think I understood the issues that had to be dealt with.
And I don't think many outside NASA's ground crew and the three men in space knew how perilously close the crew came to losing their lives.
To preserve power, the crew had to power down. Back on earth, the ground crew had to design and then describe "the mailbox" that would remove carbon dioxide. It had to be built from materials that were on board the space ship — it wasn't just laying around the capsule.
Modern folks, immersed as they are in 21st–century technology, may wonder why an image wasn't transmitted to Apollo 13. But there was no e–mail in 1970. I don't know if fax machines existed, but, if they did, no one had figured out how to send a fax from earth to outer space.
In fact, the computer you use at work or at home is far more powerful than the computers NASA was using 40 years ago. In hindsight, the space program was nowhere near as advanced as most Americans believed it was — but it did represent the best that was available at the time.
It wasn't primitive, but if it sounds primitive, that is only in comparison to what we have now. But let's not lose our perspective. Modern technology was made possible to a great extent by the research that was done by America's space program in the 1960s and 1970s. Even Apollo 13 made its contributions to scientific knowledge.
So, when Obama insists that the federal government will continue to support NASA financially as it has done over the years, I hope he is telling the truth.
I hope he will always remember the United States consistently and adequately supported NASA, even at those times when its work could not be linked to any tangible benefits.
And let's all remember a couple of truisms that emerged from NASA's moon program:
First, discoveries don't follow preset timetables. They happen when they happen.
Second, when the new technologies of tomorrow emerge from the research that is being done today, let's take steps to use it to benefit our economy. Let's encourage companies to keep the jobs that will be created by new industries we can't even imagine here instead of outsourcing them to other lands.
This morning, about 20 miles from where I live, the shell of Texas Stadium was imploded.
I say "shell" because the interior stuff had been scooped out of the place months ago.
So if you looked at the structure from the outside (which I did yesterday — I happened to be in Irving and I drove past the stadium), the appearance was pretty much what it had always been.
Didn't look much different than it did a year ago, when they had been clearing out the seats and the artificial turf — and I took the picture you can see to the right.
It was the end of an era that attracted thousands of people who simply had to be there at the crack of dawn on a Sunday. Most long–term area residents seem to have even modest attachments to the almost–a–dome with that funny (and instantly recognizable) hole in the roof, and many clearly felt compelled to be there. They may not have been there about 40 years ago, when ground was first broken, but they could be there today, when it all came down.
Instead, I've been thinking about transitions, comings and goings, beginnings and endings. I hope this is coherent and meaningful. I hope I don't ramble.
It's odd. Today, I've been thinking about my mother and my grandmothers. All three died years after Texas Stadium opened in 1971. So did numerous friends — including a personal friend of mine who died of cancer nearly 20 years ago. He was maybe the most devoted Cowboy fan I have ever known.
And I've been asking myself a strange question: How would I explain to them what had happened to Texas Stadium? And then I remember. I won't have to explain it to any of them — because they won't be coming back. Those periods in my life are over.
I don't know why that thought crossed my mind, but it has done so before. September 11 comes to mind. I remember watching the news reports that night, seeing the Twin Towers collapse over and over again, and remembering times when my mother and one of her oldest friends went to New York together. They went to art museums together and saw shows together.
"How can I explain this to Mom?" I asked myself over and over again. And over and over again, I gave myself the reply: "She's been gone for more than six years."
I guess it is a logical extension of another mental phenomenon I have experienced. I guess this happens to other people, too. And it's probably nothing more than a sign that one is getting older. I was thinking about the days when I used to play touch football with the boys who lived near me. I will think to myself, I couldn't do that now. And a sense of sadness will wash over me. And then I will mentally admonish myself — how long has it been since you played touch football? It's been quite awhile, I will admit to myself. I couldn't play kickball now, either, although I played it every day when I was about 7 or 8.
That era, too, has left my life forever. And that's the natural order of things. But that doesn't keep me from wishing I could go back— at times.
An old high school classmate of mine is a physics professor now, and he has speculated, in both public lectures and private conversations, about time travel. It is, he has said, "the science of the impossible," whereas he spends his days teaching his students about the "science of the possible." It seems like a classic contradiction, doesn't it, even though he acknowledges that time travel does, in fact, exist — because we are living, we are constantly moving forward into the future. We just haven't mastered the act of going back into the past.
That's probably what makes it such fertile ground for stories. The concept, after all, formed the basis of some very successful movies starring Michael J. Fox in recent times, but you could find the same theme in books that were written in the 19th century by Mark Twain and H.G. Wells.
Time travel does make a good story. And today seems to be a particularly good time to reflect on that, and not just because Texas Stadium, which was still standing when I got up this morning in time to watch the implosion on TV, is no more.
I've always had an interest in history, and April 11 is filled with historic moments that I would like to go back in time to witness.
For example, on this day in 1865, Abraham Lincoln gave the last speech of his life. The South had surrendered a couple of days earlier, and Lincoln spoke of his vision of a postwar America. He advocated voting rights for blacks, which persuaded John Wilkes Booth to assassinate him a few days later.
I'd like to go back and observe Booth as he listened to the speech. Booth, a Confederate sympathizer, had originally planned to kidnap Lincoln and use him to bargain with the North for the release of prisoners of war, but Lincoln's speech changed his mind. When he listened to the speech, was he already furious about the South's surrender? Or did he become furious as he listened to the speech?
Certainly, Lincoln's death was a transitional moment in 19th–century America, but the speech he gave on this date put the wheels in motion. At least, that's what we've been told. But what was Booth's state of mind as he listened to Lincoln's words?
Fast forward 40 years. On this day in 1905, Albert Einstein introduced his theory of relativity. He did so in a paper titled "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," which was published about 2½ months later. And, while Einstein wrote about many ideas that had been suggested by others, he did propose a new theory of time, distance, mass and energy in his paper that continues to influence the thinking of scientists like my friend. It would be interesting to talk to him and learn the doubts he may have had. He was a man. He must have had some doubts. But his studies marked the beginning of a new era in physics.
My parents and their friends were alive on this day in 1945, but I wasn't. And I'd like to see how the Americans reacted when they liberated Buchenwald concentration camp, one of the largest and deadliest in Germany. But it was deadly mostly because the prisoners were neglected, not because they were executed (although there were those as well).
Buchenwald wasn't designed for mass executions. The soldiers wouldn't have encountered the equipment that Allied soldiers found at other camps, but there were records of prisoners who died because of the monstrous medical experiments that were conducted at Buchenwald. No doubt there were prisoners there who bore the scars of other experiments.
And medical conditions, like infections, went untreated. It could be said that most of the deaths in most of the wars that have been fought were unnecessary, but that would be especially true of most of the people who died at Buchenwald. When most of them died, it was not intentional — and that almost surely meant long and agonizing deaths. If anything good can be said about the camps where executions were carried out on a large scale, it is that the execution–oriented camps were designed to be quick and efficient. Those who perished at Buchenwald tended to do so painfully. How did the soldiers respond to what they saw there?
For that matter, I would like to observe Franklin D. Roosevelt on this day in 1945. I'd like to see how he responded to the news of the liberation of Buchenwald — and any other war–related news. FDR died the next day. That really was the end of an era.
Not all the leaders of Nazi Germany were taken into custody in the spring of 1945, and some escaped international justice altogether. But on this day in 1961, Adolf Eichmann, often said to be "the architect of the Holocaust," stood trial in Jerusalem. He was a fugitive for 15 years, then he was captured in May 1960, eventually convicted of crimes against humanity and then executed. What was his demeanor on this day 49 years ago? Did he suspect what the ultimate outcome would be?
And, knowing what I know now, I'd like to travel back to this day in 1970, when Apollo 13 began its ill–fated trip to space. It was supposed to go to the moon, but the mission changed when an oxygen tank ruptured. That happened a couple of days later. I'd like to see what the mood was like the day of the liftoff. Did most people take space travel for granted, the way they did before the space shuttle disasters of 1986 and 2003?
I admit it. I'd like to be able to travel through time. As a student of history, I'd like to witness all those things — but I wouldn't want to do anything more than observe. I heard enough about what happens if you interfere with that time–space continuum thing in the "Back to the Future" flicks.
Part of the fabric of time is woven from the eras that come and go in our lives. As we get older, we may think of eras we've been through and wish we could go back and change things we said or did. We may think of a deceased parent or grandparent and wish we could resolve something that will remain unresolved forever.
Or we may long for the days when deceased relatives and friends were alive and with us. For my part, I never envisioned a life without my mother until she was no longer with us — and, by that time, it was too late.
Well, in the long run, I guess it doesn't really matter. A couple of months ago, I wrote about the relative insignificance of earth in the infinity of space. It was 20 years after Voyager 1 sent back a picture of the "pale blue dot" that our planet is when seen from a distance of more than 3.5 billion miles.
Kind of puts things in perspective, doesn't it? It sure did for Carl Sagan, as you can see in the attached video.
And I think Sagan, who died in 1996, would agree with my friend. Time travel is possible. We're doing it right now.
The late George Carlin once pondered the many movements to "save" endangered species on this planet and observed, "We're so self–important."
To gain an appreciation for just how self–important we are, perhaps it is necessary to get some distance. Maybe that is the best way to gain some perspective and get an idea where we really fit in to the grand scheme of things.
That really isn't as difficult as it sounds. Twenty years ago, the space probe Voyager 1 did the leg work for us.
A little background here: Voyager 1 was launched in early September 1977. Originally, it was designed to visit and send back photographs of Jupiter and Saturn, but its mission was extended and it continued toward the boundaries of the solar system.
On Valentine's Day 1990, as Voyager was about to leave the solar system, NASA transmitted instructions to it to shoot photos of earth and the rest of the planets, which it did. From those photos, NASA compiled a mosaic of the planets in our solar system that has been dubbed the "Family Portrait."
The probe sent back 60 photos. In one photo, called the "Pale Blue Dot," the earth shows up as little more than a speck about halfway across a brown band.
Look at the picture attached to this post. See the speck? That's the earth, as seen from a distance of about 3.7 billion miles. In 1990, there were about 5.2 billion people on that speck. There are more than 6.7 billion now.
Yet, from the boundaries of our solar system, the planet is almost too small to be seen. And astronomers tell us that our solar system is merely a fragment, a crumb on the intergalactic table, a morsel in the vastness of space.
In our frame of reference, America is a vast land, and the earth is not such a small world after all.
But by cosmic standards, we are Lilliputians, waiting for our Gulliver to arrive.
The historic journey of Apollo 11 came to its conclusion 40 years ago today.
It's been a long time since America sent a crew into space in anything other than a space shuttle. I guess you'd have to be over a certain age to remember a time when America's returning star travelers didn't glide into an air base. But in 1969, astronauts returned to earth the way they had been doing for years — splashdown at sea.
So, in late July 1969, Apollo 11 returned to earth. The USS Hornet was on hand to welcome them back, along with President Nixon. The splashdown occurred east of Wake Island in the Pacific.
In the last week, I have written about my memories of the start of that historic mission and the night that man walked on the moon for the first time. In all honesty, I can't remember much about the splashdown.
I guess it was dramatic, but mostly because people were anxious to get the crew back on earth, successfully fulfilling President Kennedy's challenge. I remember that the astronauts were quarantined upon their return and remained that way until someone — a doctor, I presume — verified that they hadn't picked up anything in their trip to the moon and that they weren't likely to expose anyone to anything, either.
After the walk on the moon, the splashdown must have seemed pretty anticlimactic — a capsule bobbing in the waves while a helicopter lowered its basket three times to recover the astronauts.
The fact that there was a splashdown really wasn't noteworthy. We had seen so many splashdowns by that time that it was really nothing special. To me, it simply meant the trip to outer space was over. But this time, the astronauts had done more than just go into outer space.
I'm sure all three of the networks were televising it. But by the time Apollo 11 returned, space travel already seemed to be routine — so routine that, when Apollo 13 encountered difficulties that forced the crew to scrap its planned moon landing nine months later, it came as a shock to most Americans, who apparently had forgotten that three astronauts had died a little more than three years earlier in a launch pad fire on earth.
As you can see in the attached video clip, the astronauts came to the window of their quarantined quarters to talk with President Nixon.
The mission was over. The men were back on earth. There would be parades and rallies and speeches in the weeks and months and years to come.In fact, just last Sunday, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, the Apollo 11 crew members, along with former space center director Chris Kraft, were speakers at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
Lately, I have witnessed a bit of a revival of the old conspiracy theory that says Apollo 11 was faked. I never thought it was faked. Logic tells me it couldn't have been faked.
I've heard it said that 400,000 people worked on the space program in one capacity or another. My thinking is that figure would include scientists and engineers — and wouldn't necessarily include those who worked on the technical aspects of faked broadcasts, like the people who maintained the sets and the people who operated the cameras.
Including the Apollo 11 crewmen who did so, a dozen Americans walked on the moon and came back to earth to talk about it. If Apollo 11 was staged, those missions must have been staged as well. And I guess it would mean that Apollo 13's aborted mission also was faked.
How could you keep all those people quiet for 40 years? Well, some have died, but (as far as I know) no one has died of suspicious or seemingly unnatural causes.
I've heard it said it would have been impossible for a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy to succeed, even one involving as few as a dozen men. What are the odds of keeping close to half a million people quiet about a trip to the moon?
It probably would have been easier to actually land men on the moon than to handle the logistics such a conspiracy would entail.
I don't know how long my life will last, but I think I will always remember the night of July 20, 1969.
And I think anyone who is old enough to remember that day will say the same thing. My brother, for example, was 6 years old, and I'm sure he remembers it, but anyone who was younger than that might not have much recollection of it.
Anyway, I feel pretty safe in assuming that most of the people who were alive on that day remember it because that is the day that two men landed on the moon and then walked on the moon's surface. No man had ever done that before, and less than a dozen Americans have done it since.
In hindsight, though, I really wonder why we were all so concerned about whether Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would be able to descend from the lunar module to the surface of the moon. I'm not sure of the exact distance, but my guess is that it was about 15–20 feet down a ladder. What did we all think might happen? Did we think they would spontaneously explode because of the change of pressure? Did we think they would go flying off into space, never to be seen again?
There was always more reason for concern — at least I thought so — when the astronauts were landing the lunar module on the moon or taking off to rendezvous with the command module.
In fact, the landing was quite dramatic. It was unexpectedly drawn out, and the crew had less than 30 seconds of fuel to spare. Armstrong and Aldrin compensated for faulty computer readings and landed safely. After that, I figured walking on the moon was a mere formality — and a somewhat unremarkable one, at that.
Boy, was I wrong.
As I recalled in this blog last year, my family went to our pastor's home to watch the moon walk, and we all shared the big moment when Armstrong spoke his immortal words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." My memory is of our pastor's rather large living room filled with adults and children, none of whom made a sound as they watched Armstrong make his descent down that ladder.
It is a lasting memory, of course. It is a moment I will always remember, not only because of what I witnessed but because of those with whom I shared the moment.
And I also remember the actual landing on the moon, a moment that left Walter Cronkite himself at a loss for words.
That rarely happened with Cronkite, and Americans really seemed to take their cue from "Uncle Walter" at times. When Ted Koppel says, "When Walter rejoiced over man landing on the moon, America rejoiced with him," you can take that to the bank.
Those who saw him, grinning from ear to ear, as two men fulfilled what must have been a boyhood fantasy of his (and countless others) will never forget the scene. Cronkite was devoted to the neutrality of the newsman, but he could hardly be neutral on that day, even without saying much.
Today is also a sad reminder how tragic it is that Cronkite didn't live to see the 40th anniversary of this achievement. I can't help but think that he would have had some unique insights to share. He was always capable of putting every event in the perspective it deserved. And Apollo 11 deserved a lot of attention.
July 20, 1969 was truly an historic day for all Americans — but especially so for the people of Wapakoneta, Ohio. That is the town where Armstrong was born in 1930. On this occasion, Bob Greene reflects on Armstrong's "giant leap from Ohio" at CNN.com.
The summer of '69 was unique. A lot of memorable things happened that summer — the Woodstock festival, the Manson family murders, the Stonewall riots. John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded "Give Peace a Chance" during their famous bed–in. Ted Kennedy's presidential ambitions probably died at Chappaquiddick while Apollo 11 was on its way to the moon, although Kennedy did try to win his party's presidential nomination in 1980.
In fact, the whole year was filled with transitional and noteworthy moments. Richard Nixon became president in January. The man Nixon served as vice president, Dwight Eisenhower, died in March. Charles DeGaulle was replaced as president of France. Charles became the prince of Wales. Joe Namath made good on his "guarantee" that the New York Jets would win the Super Bowl and, later that year, the "Amazin' Mets" won the World Series.
But that summer will always be remembered for the landing on the moon.
Forty years ago today, man embarked on the most significant journey in his existence on this planet — Apollo 11's trip to the moon.
The world held its collective breath on July 16, 1969, as the rocket lifted off. Four days later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their first steps on the moon.
This time, Aldrin puts a little more flesh on the bones of his proposal. But he is clear that it is not an objective that can be met in a few years. It is a long–term project.
"If we avoided the pitfall of aiming solely for the moon, we could be on Mars by the 60th anniversary year of our Apollo 11 flight," he writes.
Aldrin insists that this plan "wouldn't require building new rockets from scratch, as current plans do, and it would make maximum use of the capabilities we have without breaking the bank. It is a reasonable and affordable plan — if we again think in visionary terms."
July 16 is memorable for a lot of things — visionary in nature or not.
In 1945, the atomic age began with the first detonation of a nuclear weapon in a test near Alamogordo, N.M. Less than a month later, the United States dropped two nuclear weapons on Japan, and World War II came to an end.
In 1973, four years after the launch of Apollo 11, Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of a taping system in the Nixon White House during his testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee. The tapes that were produced by that taping system ultimately led to the end of Nixon's presidency.
And, in 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn and sister–in–law Lauren died in a plane crash off Martha's Vineyard. The timing of the crash was ironic, since Kennedy's father had been the one who challenged America to go to the moon in the early 1960s.
In fact, although July marked the triumph of President Kennedy's vision, it has also been a month of tragedy for his family.
Not only did his son die in that plane crash, but also, while Apollo 11 was on its way to the moon, President Kennedy's youngest brother, Ted, drove his Oldsmobile off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, injuring himself and killing his passenger, 28–year–old Mary Jo Kopechne.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act but a habit."
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn."
Unknown
"Everything in life can teach you a lesson. You just have to be willing to observe and learn."
Howard Arnold Walter (1883-1918)
"I would be true, for there are those who trust me; I would be pure, for there are those who care; I would be strong, for there is much to suffer; I would be brave, for there is much to dare."
"In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. So it would be a crime against nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were designed in the first place: the opportunity to do good work, to enjoy friends, to fall in love, to hit a ball and to bounce a baby."
Unknown
"If you're lucky enough to get a second chance at something, don't waste it."
Harry Truman (1884-1972)
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."
George Carlin (1937-2008)
"I've got this real moron thing I do. It's called thinking. And I'm not really a good American because I like to form my own opinions. I don't just roll over when I'm told to. Sad to say, most Americans just roll over on command. Not me. I have certain rules I live by. My first rule, I don't believe anything the government tells me."
Stephen King (1947- )
"People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad."
Dr. Seuss
"Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You."
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face."
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
"Whatever it is, I'm against it."
Mel Brooks (1926- )
"If Shaw and Einstein couldn't beat death, what chance have I got? Practically none."
Edward R. Murrow (1908-65)
"The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue."
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
"Every man is my superior in that I may learn from him."
Confucius (551-479 B.C.)
"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."
Ancient proverb
"Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad."
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction."
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
"Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people."
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
"The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead."
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
