Yesterday I did something I haven’t done in years; I watched a space launch. It’s been almost 9 years since America last launched people into space. It felt so good to be back. I was born in 1957, the year of Sputnik. The Space Age is my age. I watched Alan Shepard’s launch when I was three. I watched every Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo launch. The earth was back in the age of exploration. We went into space for the wrong reason, to beat the Russians, but that doesn’t mean it was wrong. We had it backwards. The space program was not about national defense, it was one of the things that made the country worth defending. It’s the most human thing there is. Humanity spread from Africa across the world. People walked to the furthest parts of Asia. We still don’t know how they did it but 50,000 years ago people crossed into Australia. When the Ice Age provided a path, people walked from Asia to Alaska, and then all the way to the southern tip of South America. People explore. There’s nothing more alluring than what’s over that next hill. Space is the biggest hill of all. That’s even how NASA speaks of it. As you heard if you watched on the NASA feed on their Facebook page, they referred to the launch as the uphill part of the mission.
I was delighted that so many of my friends were watching too, that so many of my friends were excited too. One of my friends, much younger than me, said, “I watched a space launch then went to a protest; what is this? The sixties?” There were a few negative voices on my social media feed, but the overwhelming number were thrilled.
I love that with all the intense effort they were making the people who made it happen found time for whimsy. The space capsule is called the Dragon! How cool is that. The recovery drone ship for the booster was even better, it was called, “Of Course I Still Love You.” One of the astronauts brough a zero-gravity indicator with him; It was a toy dinosaur that he let float in the cabin.
I watched it via the internet, but I cast it on the big screen hi-def TV. It was the best view of a launch I ever had. No, it was not as exciting as watching Apollo 11 take off on my old Black & White set, but it looked spectacular. We are living in the 60s, a time of civil strife, and death tolls on the nightly news, but also a time of change and innovation. In 69 I felt bad that Nixon got to be president when we landed on the moon. I feel bad now that Trump is president as we return into space. I stopped watching the launch when they handed the mic to a NASA political appointee who said how great it was to finally have a president that supports NASA. This was planned long before Trump and doesn’t change that fact that Trump is the most anti-science president we ever had. I’m sure plenty of people that work for NASA felt sick when he said that. But I’m not going to let that rain on my parade. We did a great thing and that’s just as important as the terrible things going on. Never lose sight of that. The Summer of 69 was the summer of the Moon Landing and Woodstock and the Mets. It was also the summer of the Manson killings, Altamont, and counted, not countless, deaths in Vietnam.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
I was up late talking to Katherine last night, which seems to be habit now, talk deep into the night, so I slept late and just missed the Dragon docking with the International Space Station. I turned it on to see an astronaut in the station just hanging out waiting for the air pressure and temperature in the vestibule connecting the Dragon to the ISS to stabilize. They said it takes a long time, so I stopped watching. What’s up today? Some online concerts for sure. There are always many on Sunday. Should I splurge and go to Popeye’s again or maybe get pizza? Because I had that issue with my order last time Popeye’s refunded my money, so it wasn’t even splurging. On the other hand, I’ve been cooking particularly well recently. I’m getting the spicing exactly right. Here’s a tip, when making French fries try mixing in just a little curry. You don’t want it to taste like curry; it shouldn’t be the melody, just a subtle harmony. Yesterday’s breakfast was scramble style matzoh brie with cheese curds mixed in. You should try that. The chewy curds and the crispy matzoh are delightful together. That is today’s theme, contrasts. Everyone knows the verse in the bible, “God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.” The next verse, far less quoted is “God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.” That puzzled me as a kid, and still puzzles me. Did they see light and darkness as separate substances that could be separated? Perhaps. But for my purposes now I’m seeing it as creating contrast. We need the darkness to appreciate the light. We need the contrast to give texture to matzoh brei and life.
Wise Madness 