Usually, this is an annual post I can kind of phone in. Naturally, the shootings last night upset that comforting assumption, as life has a disturbing tendency to do. Death stalks us at every moment, and tragedy is only a slip away. I will write about the horror of this day some other time. Not a very happy Moon Day, 2012. But Happy Moon Day, nonetheless…
Perhaps the finest moment in the life of our species. Forty-two years ago today, on a hot summer evening.
A species from this planet …
Landed on its moon.
And walked around.
And changed our fundamental understanding of the Universe.
Not many sentient species ever accomplish this feat.
A holy day, whether a holiday or not.
Happy Moon Day!
(This was as reprint of last year’s post, in lieu of my previous annual Moon Day post, “A Secret History of Neil Armstrong,” which is read virtually every day all around that blue marble we stared at from lunar orbit in 1968.)
Courage.
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Hidden somewhere deep within the bowels of my garage is a box of 35mm slides. It includes photos of the TV screen taken when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon.
While Michael Collins quietly orbited overhead.
A mere three weeks after I returned from Vietnam.
Truly; “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times”.
Yes. 1968 and 1969 were the single worst two years of my life, personally. And, until recently, the worst two years the USA has experienced in my lifetime.