We Chose to Go to the Moon

“We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and win the others, too.”

– famous excerpt from John F. Kennedy’s speech at the Rice University football stadium, September 12, 1962, before a crowd estimated at 40,000.

Fourteen months and ten days later, Kennedy was assassinated.

And an almost incomprehensible five years and eight months after that terrible November 22, 1963, men walked on the surface of another astronomical object, the Moon, 250,000 miles away.

Ten days from now will mark the half-century anniversary of that momentous Giant Leap for Mankind.

About a decade ago I succumbed to an intense fascination with the subject and did much research – accumulating nearly 50 pages of typewritten notes. Over the next ten days I plan on posting lots of interesting, intriguing, and inspiring stuff relating to the moon landing. To this day this mighty singular accomplishment still sends shivers down my arms as well as intensely saddens my soul that we lack the courage and convictions to explore new worlds today.

End of the Day

Flash backward, a dozen years … no, fifteen years … 2004 … late spring, early summer. Hopper confronting a new house, an empty house, a house with various rooms in various states of painting …

The downstairs half-bath, next door to the deck to the backyard. I recall two six-hour days priming and re-painting that three by four foot room with one single window, while the missus lay elsewhere, pregnant and laden with the future Little One. Wearing worn out shorts, spider-man like, awkward postures to hit every angle, I painted the hell out of that damn room, multiple layerings from multiple angles. 

And in doing so, I listened to, about two or three dozen times apiece, Fables of the Reconstruction, by R.E.M., specifically, Driver 8, but more importantly, for reasons I cannot fathom, the following tune, by Beck:

I've seen the end of the day come too soon
Not a lot to say, not a lot to do
You played the game, you owe nothing to yourself
Rest a day, for tomorrow you can't tell
You can't tell

I've seen the end of the day come too late
Seen the love you had turning into hate
Had to act like I didn't even care
But I did so I got stranded standing there
Standing there

It's nothing that I haven't seen before
But it still kills me like it did before
No it's nothing that I haven't seen before
But it still kills me like it did before

I've seen the end of the day come too soon
Like the prison dogs they set out after you
You owe nothing to the past but wasted time
To serve a sentence that was only in your mind
In your mind

It's nothing that I haven't seen before
But it still kills me like it did before
No it's nothing that I haven't seen before
But it still kills me like it did before

The Malaise of Our Time

“When I recently went out to dinner with my twenty-five-year-old daughter and her friends, most of the young women kept their iPhones on the table beside their plates, like miniature oxygen tanks carried everywhere by emphysema patients. Every minute or two one of them glanced down at her device to see what new messages had arrived and to send out other messages. One of the young women showed the others a digitized photograph of her dog. Another played music on her iPod. Occasionally, a factual question would come up as they talked. Conversation stopped, while somebody went on the internet and looked up the answer. This disembodied existence is their realty.”

– from The Accidental Universe, by Alan Lightman, page 142.