I came of age during the JFK years. The grief is personal.

How do I tell my grown-ass children about the life and times of JFK? How I was nine when he was elected and 13 when he was assassinated? That I was the oldest son in an Irish-Catholic family in Middle America who idolized the man? That his killing tore a hole in my heart that remains. That all of the stuff that’s come out about Kennedy’s affairs and bad judgement has not dimmed my memories?

I’m a grouchy old man. I am a writer who takes a jaundiced view of most things. I was none of those things during JFK’s presidential run. My parents seemed entranced by the news reports on our black-and-white TV. So handsome, my mother said. So Catholic, my father said. I love Jackie’s hair, Grandma said. All the adults in my life were on board with Kennedy, saint and war hero.

I yearn for those days. How I want them back. As a family, we listened over and over to Vaughn Meader’s “The First Family” records on Dad’s stereo. My father made his first hi-fi as those things were called back in the day. It’s no surprise as he built crystal radio sets as a boy in his basement and served four years as a radioman with the U.S. Signals Corps during the war. He also admired JFK’s war record; Nixon’s paled in comparison. Little did we know, we hadn’t heard the last of Tricky Dick.

Kennedy was central to my coming-of-age years, 9-13. I read “Profiles in Courage.” I knew the PT-109 story by heart, the public one. Our family was on the verge of being cut adrift by the aerospace age, influenced by the Cold War and The Race to the Moon.  At 9, we lived in a new house in a Southwest Denver suburb not far from the Fort Logan Induction Center my father signed on to fight the Nazis in 1942. At 10, I attended the second half of fourth grade near a missile base in Washington State. I went to fifth grade in Moses Lake, sixth grade at College Hill Elementary in Wichita. We moved closer to Wichita’s Air Force base for the first half of St. Francis seventh grade and was there when Kennedy was shot. I was 14 when we returned to Denver and I went to the first half of seventh grade at a public junior high in Denver crowded with Boomer kids. And then we landed in Florida with a mission: send men to the moon because JFK said so. I was in Our Lady of Lourdes Grade School in Daytona Beach. I didn’t know it then, couldn’t even have guessed, that last Sunday I was back at OLL in Daytona attending mass at a spacious new church presided over by a justice warrior priest. I was a white-haired senior, disabled, pushing a walker. Still looking for answers.

And today I contemplate JFK because my daughter wants to know. She reads this blog. Read on, Annie. And keep reading.

It's official -- Happy Moon Landing Day, Wyoming

California-based filmmaker Steven Barber wants to put up a memorial to the Apollo 11 astronauts. He wants to place it in Wyoming because it's the only state in the U.S. to celebrate Moon Landing Day. State Senator Affie Ellis of Cheyenne brought this bill to the Legislature over the winter and now it's official. Nobody gets the day off and nobody is touting a Moon Landing Day Mattress Sale. But at least we remember a historic first. And in Wyoming. Barber wants to build a replica of the memorial at the Kennedy Space Center which features the three Apollo astronauts. It was created by Loveland, Colorado, artist George Lundeen. You can read more about it on Cowboy State Daily. 

Barber estimates he will need $750,000 for the monument:

“I’m going to do a replica there. Period,” he told the Daily. “This is real simple. I find a billionaire, he writes a check and I build it.”

The accountants who got us to the moon, July 1969 -- Part 4

Fate had other ideas. We couldn’t sell our house in a down market as hundreds of other Apollo pioneers were trying to do. My father reported that he hated Cincinnati. He took a job with NASA which still needed space accountants and returned to Daytona just in time for the new school year. School chums asked me to return their going-away present but my dog had chewed up the nice Frisbee they gifted me. I made the varsity in my junior year and started dating a girl who drove a Canary-yellow GTO but she liked driving my rusted little car so we switched up often.

Over the next two years, I attended my first rock concerts in Jacksonville and in December 1968, my buddy Rick and I took our military draft physicals downtown and his lifer Chief dad arranged for us to spend the night aboard his ship. In March of ‘69, our b-ball team went to the state tournament in the Jacksonville Coliseum where we lost in the semis. Thus ended my basketball career.

In July 1969, as I pondered an uncertain future, our family huddled around the TV watching Neil Armstrong on the moon. The day before, my girlfriend and I were making out on the beach in my little car. The rain came down as the news came on: “The Eagle has landed.”

Two weeks later, when the Apollo astronauts were back in the U.S., our house burned down. No casualties except... 

As the day faded into history, my mother went to work as a nurse and my father got a job crunching numbers with the State of Florida and commuted to the Jacksonville office. Dad still didn’t know how to swim but the rest of us did. We were water people, for now.

Bio: Michael Shay did some of his growing up in Florida but now lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming, with his wife and two grown children. He graduated from Daytona’s Father Lopez High School in 1969, Daytona Beach Community College in 1974 and University of Florida in 1976. He applied for reporter jobs at every newspaper in Florida but none would hire him so, like Huck Finn, he lit out for the territories. He gets to Florida as often as he can to visit family and friends. His story collection, “The Weight of a Body,” is available on Amazon. His novel, “Zeppelins over Denver,” is due out later this year.

The accountants who got us to the moon, July 1969 -- Part 1

Over 400,000 people worked on the Apollo Program. – From the end credits of Richard Linklater’s Netflix film “Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood”

My father was one of them. Unlike’s Linklater’s Houston-based father, mine worked closer to Cape Canaveral, in an office in Daytona Beach, Fla. Thousands joined the Moon Mission, most of them answering JFK’s call although he was no longer around to cajole and promise. Lyndon Johnson would be president when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon on July 20, 1969 after being launched from the Cape on July 16. Johnson was glad for a bit of good news after the battles of the 1960s which weren’t over yet. Camelot a distant memory. On this hot July day in Florida, hundreds of thousands of space-age lunarnauts and millions more around the world rooted for U-S-A!

July 20 always brings footage from the lunar event. It seems like yesterday that I watched it in black-and-white telecasts beamed from the lunar lander. I am 72 and retired. I look through veils of nostalgia. I sometimes share my memories with my two 30-something children. They are mildly amused. At least they believe that we landed on the moon. I think they do but it’s difficult to know for sure. All of us carry different memory-loops through life and they change as time passes.

What do I remember from this time? Some things I know for sure. Others are a bit foggy so I conjure what seems closest to the truth. I have not made up anything that follows but I may remember it imperfectly. That’s life.

I was 13.67 years old in August 1964 when our family of 10 moved to Florida. I was not pleased to be moving to the third state I would live in during the past eight months. In January, I’d been yanked out of St. Francis Grade School in suburban Wichita in the midst of basketball season and the wooing of classmate Patty Finn. In February, I was walking to the bus stop in snowy Denver to attend the split session at a junior high packed with Boomer kids and the site of at least two knife fights and a teacher mugging during my short time there. In June, my father came home from work to announce his new job with G.E. and our Florida move. He had finished the task of hiding nuclear missiles among the sagebrush of the West. The space program needed his accounting skills and our family was going along for the ride. Dad moved immediately. We sold our house, packed our goods, said goodbye (again), and off we went.

Next: Night Swimming in the Sunshine State

"For All Mankind" shows what the U.S, space program could have been

As I move on to the second season of “For All Mankind” on Apple-Plus, I keep asking the same question:

What happened to us?

By us, I mean U.S. as in US of A. The show posits a vigorous space program motivated mainly by the Soviets beating us to the moon in 1969. One member of the Soviet crew is a woman cosmonaut. Down on earth, Americans with hangdog looks are watching this on TV. They can’t believe the Reds beat us to the moon. Didn’t President Kennedy promise us that we would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade? We did, in fact, land a man on the moon on July 20, 1969, well ahead of the Russkis who never managed it.

The genius of this show is showing how the U.S. took the Soviet challenge, recruited women astronauts (Nixon’s idea) and landed one on the moon to claim a spot on the rock. The astronaut was a chain-smoking blonde, Jerrie Cobb, who was one of the first choices back when NASA tried to match the Mercury 7 men with a female contingent. The Cobb in the series (Molly) goes to space while the real Cobb, an accomplished aviator who passed all the NASA tests, did not. Season 1 Episode 4 is dedicated to her.

That’s the cool thing about the series, imagining what could have been. It resembles the “Hollywood” series on Netflix which imagined a post-war Tinseltown that appreciated its gay actors and didn’t demonize them. Also, in the dystopian TV world, the U.S. lost World War II and was divided up between Nazi Germany and Japan. Or you can see an America which is now the Gilead in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Also, zombies. Zombies everywhere.

I ask again: what happened to us? What happened to the U.S. space program? My father worked for the space program from 1964-69 in Daytona Beach. We kids watched all of the launches. We were happy when July 20, 1969, came around and showed the U.S. what we were made of. Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. Ran into trouble with the balky shuttle, losing two crews and our sense of adventure. Vietnam kicked our ass as did all the turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s.

We get to see what could have been on “For All Mankind.” I am only on the second episode of the second season so I do not yet know what ultimately happens. But I do know what has not happened during my lifetime. And that’s very sad. 

1969 moon landing memories linger on the beach and in The House of the One-Eyed Seahorse

I like to think that I was a witness to history during Moon Landing Week in July 1969.

I witnessed the launch from the beach the morning of July 16. The Hartford Avenue beach approach in Daytona is located 62 miles northwest of Cape Canaveral. The Saturn 5, NASA's largest-ever launch vehicle, lit up an already bright morning and its sound waves seemed to ruffle the smooth Atlantic. The rocket arced into the sky and out to sea. It was visible only a few minutes. When it was gone, we went back in the water. Or maybe I was in the water already. I forget, as I saw so many launches during my 14 years in Florida. They merge into one big launch that shows the U.S. commitment to space exploration in the 1960s and into the 1970s. JFK showed the way with his 1961 speech. Congress shoveled money at the program as it took seriously Kennedy's vow of a man on the moon in 1969. An American man on the moon. Take that, Russkis!

It was all about the Cold War. The USSR ambushed us with Sputnik, Laika the Space Dog, and Yuri Gargarin. We fought back with Mercury and Alan Shepard and Gemini and finally Apollo. We won the Space Race with the moon landing. It was important to win something in the mid-60s, since we were losing in Vietnam and young people were lost to their elders and some of our biggest heroes were gunned down by assassins in 1968.

My father was a rocket man. He didn't fly them or test them. But he was a contract specialist with General Electric and later NASA. He worked out deals with suppliers of nuts and bolts and many of the gadgets that went to the moon. He could look at a launch with pride and announce that the big hunk of metal ferrying Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin to the moon was partly his doing. He and thousands of other Americans had worked together to get the U.S. first on the moon.

But all was not well in Rocketland. Workforce cutbacks had started two years earlier. One day, GE honchos told Dad that his services were no longer needed in Florida. He accepted a transfer to Cincinnati where GE was building all kinds of new and wonderful things. He said he would go on alone and the family would join him when school got out in June. Dad didn't like Cincinnati and we couldn't sell our house in Daytona as hundreds were leaving and  it was a buyer's market. This well-educated workforce that had come from New York and Ohio and New England in the fifties and sixties were no longer needed. It hurt Daytona. It was not exactly the Silicon Valley of the 60s. Most jobs were in the service industries that fed the tourist industry. I worked some of those jobs. Busboy, bagboy, laundry pick-up guy for beach motels, worker on a beach float stand. My brother was a gremmie selling suntan lotion by a hotel pool. One of my sisters was a nursing assistant taking care of old people who flocked to Florida's Promised Land. The engineers who made the rockets (and their families) would be missed by local businesses and schools.

But Dad grew tired of city life and found a job with NASA back on Daytona. I was happy because I had just made my high school's basketball squad after a year's worth of practice and visualized a bright future as a power forward.

On the afternoon of July 20 when Apollo 11's Eagle landed near the Sea of Tranquility, I was parked by the Atlantic Ocean with my girlfriend K. The radio news followed the ship's descent which we only partially listened to. When "The Eagle has landed" was announced, we paused our kissing and fondling for several minutes to let history wash over us. It rained heavily and the beach seemed deserted, odd for a July afternoon. Minuscule waves broke on the sandbar 50 yards in front of us. No surfing today. Once the announcers returned to just talking about the landing of the Eagle, we returned to our previous engagement.

I know the exact spot where this happened. When I'm in town, I walk by it and remember that historic afternoon. I see my rusty red Renault Dauphine with the light blue door that replaced the original, sheared off in a hasty back-up from my garage. Two people are inside, at least I think it's two people, as the windows are fogged. The spirit of that day drifts over that spot as does the memories of an eighteen-year-old me. This presence remains at the beach even when I'm back home in Wyoming. It may still be here when 68-year-old me and then (God willing) the 78-or 88-year-old me toddles down the beach, cane poking holes in the soft sand. When I'm gone, will the ethereal presence remain of the radio broadcast and the automobile and the young man and young woman, their thumping hearts and hopes and dreams? I like to think that beachgoers in 2069, parked in the same spot in their futuremobile, will pause their canoodling to listen to the voices of astronauts landing on Mars or orbiting Saturn. Maybe in the background they will hear a faded voice: "The Eagle has landed." 

That night, in The House of the One-Eyed Seahorse, I joined my family to watch Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon. The video feed was grainy but I could make out Armstrong and then Buzz Aldrin cavorting on the lunar surface. We watched on a TV that struggled to pull in signals via antennae supplemented by a coat hanger and a broken channel changer replaced by vice grips. Nine kids are tough on TVs, even ancient ones that received but three channels. We no longer live there, haven't in a long time. My brothers and sisters and I carry around those memories. Fifty years ago, we were plotting our escape. Now, in quiet times, those memories swirl in our aging heads. They also exist somewhere in the house that almost burnt down in August of '69. We could have lost everyone but for the quick actions of my sister Molly. I was on a date and running late so I salvaged one of the cars, the other one burned to a cinder in the garage where the fire started. My memories would be vastly different as a lone survivor.

This all will be on my mind as I watch film of the July 16 launch and the July 20 walk on the moon and the July 24 splashdown.

Scouting report: Finding the best Wyoming spot to watch the eclipse

View from The Castle, looking west toward Laramie Peak.

The family and I drove to Guernsey State Park for Mother's Day. This is only my second visit to the park in the 26 years that I've lived in Wyoming. The first visit was in May 2008 when I joined my colleagues at Wyoming State Parks and Cultural Resources to celebrate the 75th anniversary of FDR's New Deal, which included the Civilian Conservation Corps and WPA projects for writers, artists and actors. Writers earned a buck from Uncle Sam by writing field guides of the states and conducting oral histories of residents, as Zora Neale Hurston did with ex-slaves in Florida. Nelson Algren and Richard Wright researched and wrote in Illinois. Noted author Vardis Fisher wrote the Idaho guide, still regarded as one of the best of its kind.

CCC workers built many magnificent structures in this park. Guernsey is home to The Castle, a rock-and-timber shelter that overlooks the park. A few paces down the walking path is a restroom dubbed the Million Dollar Biffy. The interpretive sign says that workers gave it that name not because it took a million dollars to build, which is a lot of Depression-era money, but that it took so darn long to build. Unemployed young men from Iowa and Tennessee hewed the timbers and cut the rock and forged the iron. It should last a thousand years, causing archaeologists of 5017 to remark, "These ancient humans certainly built quality restrooms." In 5017, the biffy and The Castle may overlook a teeming inland sea. The waves will be bitchin'.

We visited the park to see if it would serve as an outpost to watch the total solar eclipse set for high noon on August 21. We are a bit late getting started. Some have been planning eclipse activities for years. Hotels in Casper, eclipse epicenter, have been booked up for months. Campgrounds, too along the event's path in WYO, which runs from touristy Jackson in the west to sleepy Torrington in the east, with stops in Riverton, Hell's Half Acre, AstroCon 2017 in downtown Casper, the burg of Glenrock, and Douglas, home of the state fair,  Chris and I  are trying to find an eclipse-watching spot somewhere in there. We bought a Guernsey day pass for Aug. 21. We also got on the campsite waiting list. We thought that might be fun during this grand ol' party celebrating the majestic universe which can't be any older than 6,600 years, give or take.

Chris and I won't be around the next time, when Colorado gets the nod in 2045. By then, we will have experienced a total eclipse of the heart. We hope that the words of the Federal Writers Project will survive, although in what form it's hard to say. Thee printed word has gone through amazing changes since Gutenberg. Since the 1930s, books have gone from typed-and-printed form to e-books. It happened a lot quicker than that -- from the 1980s to now.

One hopes that books survive as long as the biffy.

In "Interstellar," the future is as corny as Kansas in August

Imagine that humankind gives up its dreams of space travel to farm corn in Kansas full-time.

That’s the kind of boring future imagined by Christopher Nolan in the film “Interstellar.”

Humans no longer shoot for the stars. An unnamed blight is killing all the crops except corn – and even its days are numbered. Dust Bowl-style storms blot out the sun and everything (laptops included) is coated with a fine layer of dust. Unemployed astronaut Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) farms corn with his two kids, an irascible father and a fleet of robotic combines. His daughter gets into trouble at school when she writes a paper contending that the U.S. did land on the moon as “corrected” textbooks proclaim that we invented our space triumphs to bankrupt the Russkis. The new reality is not to “look to the skies” but look down at the dirt as humans try to save a planet that’s beyond saving.

A fascinating conceit for a movie. We make fun of conspiracy nuts who contend that the moon landings were invented on a Hollywood soundstage. In Nolan’s universe, scientists are the kooks. Waste money on rocket ships when the earth is dying? No sirree bob -- not with my tax money.

NASA’s scientists have been driven underground. They are busily at work launching space probes to find other habitable planets to screw up. They recruit Cooper to join other astronauts to explore those likely places to resettle the populace. As we know from the Kepler telescope observations, earth-like planets exist but they are 100-plus light years away. The solution: fire a rocket through a wormhole that has mysteriously appeared near Saturn. “They” put it there, whoever “they” are (their identity is revealed by film's end).

Will the scientists find a new home for earthlings? That’s the question that involves the viewer for most of the movie. Great special effects, as befitting the CGI era (no streams of flashing lights as in “2001”). The robots are cooler than HAL, equipped with wit and sarcasm. The main robot threatens to shoot one of the crew through the airlock as happened in the pivotal scene in “2001.”

Woven through all this are complicated human relationships. In the end, that’s what motivates humans – their relationships with others of their kind. Cooper would not leave his beloved family behind, especially his daughter Murph, unless he could save them by jaunting off into space. Turns out that Cooper’s colleague in space, Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway), has a love interest who was on an earlier space probe. It is love that motivates humans. As the Beatles sang, “love is all you need.” Not bad when you can wrap up a sci-fi epic with a sixties melody.

What else is there? What makes us distinctive among known life forms? Any big-brained chimp can plant corn or build a space ship. But it takes love for a wife or daughter or father to motivate us to reach for the stars. Humans are a mess, for the most part. But we are always offered a path to redemption that is as mysterious and complicated as the physics of a wormhole.

Love is all you need…

This progressive wants to go to Mars

You can't spell "progressive" without "progress."

That's a fact. But you can be a political progressive without believing in all forms of progress.

Take space exploration, for instance. Baby Boomers recall the space race of the 1960s, the fuss we made over the original batch if astronauts and our passion for the the moon landing. Progressive hero JFK said we would land a man on the moon by the end of that decade and, by gum, we did.

Forty-five years later, I was impressed by the successful Orion launch. Many of my fellow progressives were not. Some considered it a stunt by aerospace companies to suck more money out of taxpayers. Others looked at it as NASA's showy way to continue it's storied but error-plagued ways. Many conservatives aren't fans of NASA, one of those wasteful gubment agencies. Libertarians, of course, want space to be left to free enterprise. Progressives see it as a waste of money and resources in a time when our country's infrastructure is crumbling and the middle class is disappearing. Wouldn't our money be better spent in fixing problems here on earth than it would be to go gallivanting off to Mars?

We can do both, of course. We can tend to business here on earth and still reach for the stars. It takes vision and we have to prioritize. We'd rather snipe at one another than shoot for Mars. Human failings. If we choose, space exploration can help us transcend our earthbound ways.

While all of Friday's fireworks happened at Cape Canaveral, Fla., much of Orion's hardware and software was built by Colorado companies. This from The Denver Post:

Orion will go farther into space than any NASA spacecraft built for humans in more than 40 years, powered by Colorado aerospace: It was designed and built by Littleton-based Lockheed Martin Space Systems, has antennae and cameras from Broomfield-based Ball Aerospace, and will hurtle into space on a Delta IV Heavy rocket, made by Centennial-based ULA. 

But these big players could not do what they do without the help of some very specialized skills supplied by businesses such as Deep Space Systems, which worked on backup flight control electronics and camera systems. 

There are Colorado companies with as few as six employees working on Orion, all specialized in one specific aspect of engineering or technology.

There were hundreds of employees from these companies observing the Orion launch this week on the Space Coast. I didn't realize Colorado's crucial role in this latest space venture. I wondered if there were any Wyoming aerospace companies in the mix. Cheyenne and Laramie have been friendly to auxiliary companies to larger ventures in energy and electronics. What about space? I did several Google searches on the topic and came up empty. Do my loyal readers know of any Wyoming-based companies involved in the Orion project? It would seem to be that Cheyenne, the northern terminus of The Front Range, would be a great location for companies involved in propulsion systems and materials and engineering, among a few I can think of.

But back to politics.

I want equality and accessibility and justice and all those other things that progressives believe in. I also want to go to Mars. Not personally, as astronauts may not get there until 2035 or 2040, which would make me much too cranky for the venture. But just to think that it could happen in my lifetime. That's exciting. That's progress.

Curiosity celebrates launch birthday, keeps on rollin' around Mars

Throw in a few clumps of sage and a tumblin' tumbleweed and this might look like Wyoming's Red Desert. But this is Rocknest on Mars. According to NASA, "this is a mosaic of images taken by the Mast Camera on the NASA Mars rover Curiosity while the rover was working at a site called Rocknest in October and November 2012." Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems. On Monday, the aptly-named Curiosity celebrated the first birthday of its launch from Cape Canaveral. Happy launch birthday, Curiosity! And thanks to LeftofYou at Kossacks on Mars.

In search of spring's Pink Moon

After reading about “the pink moon” on Facebook for several days, my daughter Annie and I decided to take a look for ourselves.

Each full moon has its own name and stories. The Pink Moon is April’s moon. Here’s how it’s described by the Farmer’s Almanac:

The name came from the herb moss pink, or wild ground phlox, which is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. Other names for this month’s celestial body include the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and, among coastal tribes, the Full Fish Moon, because this is when the shad swam upstream to spawn.

Susan Tweit, a nature writer out of Salida, Colo., had mused about the pink moon for several days. Susan has a fine moon-viewing venue in the Colorado mountains. On Thursday night, she posted a gorgeous photo of the full moon. It wasn’t pink (at least to the camera’s eye) but it was big and bright, lighting up wispy high-altitude clouds and what looked like a jet’s contrail.

That night, I saw the same moon from my Cheyenne backyard. A fast-moving storm was rolling in. I called my wife Chris and daughter Annie to come out and take a look. But within minutes, the moon was hidden by clouds.

“What moon?” they said.

“It was here a minute ago.”

Friday night brought more commentary and another smashing photo from Susan. I watched the moon emerge from behind my neighbor’s house. Not pink but still glorious. Even though I was wearing a jacket, the cold wind drove me inside when all I really wanted to do was stand and stare.

Last night, I decided to view the moon’s rising. I found the time and Annie and I jumped in the car and drove down Dell Range to the Culver’s parking lot. It was after nine but people were still diving into those butter burgers. We found a strategic spot and watched the moon rise.

“It’s pink, I think,” I said.

“Looks more yellow,” said Annie.

I forgot to bring the camera but that probably was a good thing. Snapshots would not have done it justice. The moon’s big face looked down on us. That’s how Annie described it.

We sat in the lot and watched the moon slowly shed its pink and take on more of a yellowish cast. It began to brighten to white. We talked of space travel and some of the sci-fi movies we both like. 2001, A Space Odyssey;  Apollo 13;  Star Wars;  Star Trek, etc. I spoke about our country’s space program. My father – her grandfather – had been a part of the race to get a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. I talked about Alan Shepard and Yuri Gagarin and John Glenn and how Gus Grissom and his crew died in that terrible launch pad fire. We talked about walking on the moon – what a thrill that must have been. It was thrilling enough to watch on black-and-white TV. And what a view that must have been, to see earth from a rock 238,000-some miles away!

Sitting there in the front of the Ford, we spoke of the vastness of space. So wonderful but yet so frightening. Annie said that, given the chance, she probably wouldn’t go into space. I had to agree. It frightened me too. I have been having trouble lately dealing with my own “inner space.” I have depression and lately have been struggling with it. If I can’t handle this tiny space I inhabit, how could I possibly face the vastness of space? I could easily be crushed by the universe!

But that won’t happen. The wonder and curiosity in Annie’s voice helps me realize that embracing the universe and its marvels only expands my inner self. Pink moons. Spiral nebulae. Black holes. Vast, empty stretches of space.

On this night in the Culver’s parking lot, we sit together, my college student daughter and I, gazing on the Pink Moon of April. She was born under another full moon, the Full Worm Moon of March (Farmer’s Almanac), the time when earthworms begin working the soil and the robins and the crows reappear and the snow begins to crust over as it thaws by day and freezes by night. Annie was born with a full head of dark hair with silver tips. I told her she had been kissed by the full moon. It was a pretty good story at the time and it seems as good an explanation as any.

On this Saturday during Easter weekend, moonlight shines down on us and the Cheyenne streetscape. We eventually head for home. I am feeling comfortable in my body for the first time in months. Perhaps the light of the Pink Moon carries some healing powers. But I suspect the brightening of my mood has more to do with what’s happening right here on earth, within the orbit of  my own loving family.

Convergence Wyoming: Historic preservation not just for Earth anymore.

Milford Wayne Donaldson, California’s state historic preservation officer, will be a featured speaker at the Convergence Wyoming 2011 in Cody Oct. 6-8. He will speak about some of the finer points of historic preservation. And its most otherworldly ones. In 2010, Donaldson successfully sought historic preservation status for the Apollo 11 moon landing sites.

The reasoning behind the first-of-its-kind designation was simple: Scores of California companies worked on the Apollo mission, and much of their handiwork remains of major historical value to the state, regardless of where it is now or what it was for used for then.

“It has a significance that goes way further than whether it came from a quarter million miles away or not,” Mr. Donaldson said. “They are all parts of the event.” 

While Apollo 11 was indeed a landmark mission — during which Neil A. Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon and he and Buzz Aldrin apparently ditched their boots — it wasn’t exactly tidy. Worried about the weight of their landing capsule, the harried lunar explorers left behind tons of trash, including empty food bags, electrical equipment and, yes, several receptacles meant for bodily waste. 

There is also a collection of artifacts of historical note and emotion: Mr. Armstrong’s footprint, for example, and an American flag. Apollo 11 also left behind a mission patch from Apollo 1, in which three astronauts died in a fire, and a message from world leaders. 

And while some of the garbage might seem like, well, garbage, California is just one of several states seeking protection for the items in the face of possible lunar missions by other nations as well as a budding space tourism industry. 

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Mr. Donaldson said he hoped his commission’s vote might help goad the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization into placing the landing site on the World Heritage List, an international compilation of famed landmarks. 

“I think there’s a threat from private companies,” Mr. Donaldson said. “And with today’s technology, they could probably pinpoint this.” 

That said, Mr. Donaldson admitted that there were no “space cops” available to safeguard the state’s newest historical resource. But, like the Apollo astronauts themselves, he seemed optimistic that Friday’s vote might lead to bigger and better things. 

“Hopefully,” he said, “this will take off.”

Register for Convergence Wyoming at http://www.convergencewyoming.com/register-today/. Article source: New York Times

Photo: Space Shuttle Atlantis climbs to the heavens

Cool shot by my sister Mary Powell of today's Shuttle launch

Stuck outside of Hogtown with those Shuttle Launch Blues again

Insignia for the first shuttle launch

We were just outside of Hogtown when the first Shuttle went up. Other cars joined us along the side of I-75 to view history. We were disappointed, not with the launch, but with the fact that we weren't on the beach at Daytona. That was our goal when my wife Chris, my brother Dan and I left Denver two days before.

Stuff happens. A batch of bad gas in Mississippi, or maybe just an aging vehicle. We were stalled for several hours at a truck stop on the Florida panhandle. The car still wasn't running right when we pulled off the highway for the launch.

An impressive sight. Heard and felt it, too. After it climbed out of sight, leaving its contrail drifting in the clear Florida sky, we looked at each other and said, "Let's go to the beach."

All three of us had viewed many launches over the years, some from the beach and some from our backyard. My father worked for the space program out of Daytona, for NASA and G.E. Chris's father used to take her and her sister down to the beach to watch the spectacles. I heard "The Eagle has landed" via the car radio as my high school girlfriend and I were parked on the beach during a July thunderstorm (yes, I was paying more attention to the moon landing than to the business at hand).

I'd like to be on the beach today. To watch the launch and to be on the beach, my old haunt. Chris is in Daytona for her high school reunion. She'll see the launch with her sister and old Seabreeze High School "Fighting Sandcrabs" pals. I don't care much for reunions. But I'm miffed that I'm missing the last Shuttle launch.

Some of my progressive colleagues don't see the value of the space program. They contend that it's too expensive. They don't see the value in the scientific research. They don't understand why we have to send actual humans into space when robots can do the work cheaper and with less risk.

But "manned flight" (lots of women in space, too) is important precisely because it's in our genes to explore. One major benefit from the Space Shuttle are the fantastic images captured by the Hubble. They have opened up the wonders and terrors of our universe like nothing else. Colliding galaxies and collapsing stars and black holes and artistically-shaped nebulae and all of that space (what's with that dark matter?). We must go there to see these wonders and to figure out what they are and what they mean.

I grew up reading Tom Swift and then Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury. Sci-fi fed my imagination. And then came the space program. I had the great good fortune to live at the epicenter of Mercury and Gemini and Apollo.

One closing note: that first shuttle launch happened 20 years to the day after the first manned space flight by the Soviet Union. In 1981, we were still going toe-to-toe with the Reds in space and on the ground (Reagan was newly elected). Now that the U.S is Shuttle-less, guess who we will depend on to get groceries and extra batteries to the space station?

Those darn Russkis. History is a funny thing.

Star Wars Festival "food-raiser" set for July 7

Is it possible that Darth Vader is a force for good in the universe?

We often rely on arts and music and creativity to lift our spirits during hard times. They also help turn on lights where darkness reigns.


Fellow prog-blogger and minister Rodger McDaniel announces this good (and fun) cause:


Highlands United Presbyterian Church announces its "Star Wars" Festival “food-raiser” for NEEDS. The STAR WARS FESTIVAL, is scheduled for 6:30-9:30 p..m., Thursday, July 7, at the Highlands United Presbyterian Church, 2390 Pattison Ave., Cheyenne . The public is invited to attend. Admission is FREE with the donation of any non-perishable food item or baby item such as diapers. All items collected will be donated to NEEDS, Inc. for its food bank.


A variety of events are planned as part of this family evening: 

6:30 p.m. - Intergalactic Meet-and-Greet
Want to meet Darth Vader, Imperial Stormtroopers or R2D2? Come early to the talk and meet some of your favorite characters from the Star War films. Bring your camera and take as many pictures as you like! Re-enactors include members of the Mountain Garrison of the 501st Legion -- www.501st.com. Members reside in both Colorado andWyoming.

Dr. Toby Rush presents "The Music of Star Wars"

7:30 p.m. -- Presentation: The Music of Star Wars 
This 90-minute multimedia presentation from UNC music professor TOBY RUSH, includes excerpts from all six films. Dr. Rush will present the music of Star Wars and explore how John Williams used the soundtrack to help tell George Lucas' epic tale.

9 p.m. -- Costume Contest
Wear your Star Wars costume! Guests are encouraged to dress as characters from any of the Star Wars films. A short fashion show, allowing guests to strut their stuff, will be held following Dr. Rush’s talk. Prizes will be awarded for the top outfits!

All this FREE with your donation for NEEDS! So bring the family, this is one event you don’t want to miss! And it’s for a good cause – with all foodstuffs to be donated to NEEDS Cheyenne. 

Highlands Presbyterian Church is located in north Cheyenne at 2390 Pattison Avenue. From Dell Range at Mountain, drive north onMountain Road to the intersection of Pattison and Mountain.

For more information, contact Rodger McDaniel, pastor of Highlands Presbyterian, at 307-634-2962 (church office) or rodger.mcdaniel@bresnan.net.

D.C. gathering asks "Arts or Sciences?"

At an April 8 gathering in D.C., "Arts or Sciences?" was the topic. We need both, of course

Peter Cunningham, Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach at the U.S. Department of Education, had a few things to say:

Some people would also have you believe that we have to choose between the arts and other subjects—but that’s a false choice. We need them both...

--snip--

We care about poetry and we care about the stars and—believe it or not—there’s a literary magazine devoted to poetry about stars. It’s called Astropoetica, and you can find it on the internet.

We live in a great country. Let's keep it that way.

Couldn't agree more, Mr. Cunningham. And we can't have a great country without science and poetry and the arts and research. These are all areas that House Republicans are targeting in their budget cuts. Medicare and Medicaid, too. And so many other things that are crucial to life in the 21st century.

Read more at Arts or Sciences?

Photo (from NEA blog): Nébuleuse Nord America, Luc Viatour © GFDL, www.lucnix.be

Livin' not always easy on 1960s Space Coast

My father's work with the U.S. space program ended about the same time as Neil Armstrong walked on the moon on July 20, 1969.

Thousands of Americans worked for the space program. Some, such as my father, got their start in ICBMs. Nukes used the same missile that took astronauts to the moon -- the Atlas. It didn't take much to jump from the jargon of throw weight and megatonnage to space capsules and lunar rovers.

Besides, my father was an accountant and not an engineer. He kept the books and one line item on a spread sheet is pretty much the same as the other.

They revelled in the mission. Put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Can-do, boss. Give us a challenge and lots of dough and good people -- and we can do anything.

I was proud of my father's work, whether he was tallying costs of blast-proof silos on the prairies of Colorado or Kansas -- or counting Atlas booster widgets in a sweltering war-surplus Quonset hut on Florida's east coast. He lost his ICBM job in 1964 once most of the Atlas rockets were parked underground throughout the West.

That's how we got to Florida. Five years later, he was laid off from his space job in July 1969. His work was done. From 1967-69, thousands of NASA amd G.E. employees and space workers of every stripe from Florida's "Space Coast" were transferred to other less-exotic locales such as Schenectady and Cincinnati and Houston. Our Daytona neighborhood had a dozen homes for sale. They weren't selling because people were moving out, not in.

Those who stayed were laid off (such a strange word) and had to find other employment. My father went to work with the state as an accountant. That move entailed a 180-mile round-trip daily commute to Jacksonville. He finally ended up renting a small apartment and staying up there during the week. Other laid-off spacers opened small businesses or pumped gas like one of my father's engineer friends. Some tried other jobs for awhile and then moved on anyway.

You have to remember that 1969 Central Florida was pre-Mickey Mouse and beachside condo-building craze. Orlando was the size of Tallahassee, Florida's sleepy capital city. Air conditioning was fairly new -- we never had A.C. nor did any of our friends. Retirees had been coming to Florida for years, but mostly lived in rural trailer parks or dilapidated downtown hotels in St. Pete or Miami. Most real jobs were still located in Detroit and Cleveland and Newark and St. Louis and Chicago and L.A. These postwar-boom auto and steel workers were still raising their families and not yet ready to join the huge waves of Florida-bound retirees in the 1980s. At the same time, Rust Belt industries began collapsing under the weight of their own stupidity and Reaganomics. Younger workers headed to new opportunities in warmer climes. Many more followed.

Florida still has a space industry. Smaller now, and much less exotic. It's tempting to romanticize that Apollo 11 mission of four decades ago. I've seen that happening this week on cable news, with paeans to the astronauts and our can-do spirit on getting to the moon. "Moon landing -- 40 years later." But there were also headlines like this: "Moon -- one giant leap or one very small step?"

It was both, I suppose. One giant leap for the imagination. I still support the space program and was briefly encouraged by George W. Bush when he announced future missions to Mars. Then we discovered that he meant Mars, Iraq, and the wind went out of our sails.

I hold out hope for future leaps of the imagination. Look up! Imagine other worlds! Build spacecraft and go forth!

Man in the Moon is so very lonely

Lots of newspaper articles and TV coverage marking the 40th anniversary of the U.S. moon landing. All of them seem to ask the same question: WTF?

It was a gallant quest, sparked by a challenge from JFK. A challenge that got many of us pulling in the same direction for a brief shining moment. JFK also kept us heading down the road to ruination in Vietnam. JFK's successor, LBJ, turned that road to ruin into a ten-lane expressway, and decided not to run for a second term in the wake of disastrous results, leaving the field open to Nixon. He did continue NASA's lunar flights but, in his second term, was distracted from the mission by break-ins and paranoia and Christmas bombings and cross-border incursions and trips to China.

Our lunaracy ended about the same time as Nixon's. And we haven't been back to the moon since.

Beating the Bolsheviks to the moon had more to do with beating the Bolsheviks than it did with the moon. We were demonstrating our superiority as the planet's only God-fearing democratic capitalist republic. We not only demonstrated this in space, but also in Hue and Managua and Cuba and Laos and Berlin and Tehran and Taiwan and Jakarta. We were so busy spreading democracy in these places that we forgot about the Sea of Tranquility -- ran out of money, too. Not to mention imagination. Reagan, too. Don't forget about him.

Think about all this next time you wonder: Man on the Moon -- WTF?