Fifty years ago this May, Alan Shepard became the first American in space. Later this year, the space shuttle will fly for the last time, marking the effective end of the country’s manned spaceflight program. And right in the middle, 25 years ago last Friday, was the loss of the space shuttle Challenger, which broke apart 73 seconds after its launch, killing seven people and, unbeknownst to me at the time, consuming much of the next three years of my life.
Will the Internet be the death of spelling and maybe the English language? Sometimes it seems so. A quick look at much that is sent or published online leaves the impression that the most powerful communications tool the world has ever seen is populated by people who did not complete fifth grade.
When the word came, it was like news that an old friend had died, albeit an old friend I hadn’t seen for years. A small camera shop in Kansas the last Thursday in 2010 turned off the last machine in the world capable of processing Kodachrome film. The best color film ever made is now gone, probably forever, a victim of the digital revolution.
There was an episode of Doctor Who a few years ago in which the Doctor found in the pocket of his bathrobe a tangerine. He called it a “satsuma,” which is the word for tangerine in England and outer space. He then launched into a short speech about how there was always one in the toe of the Christmas stocking.
It was a good year for mice. The headline in Medical Daily last week is typical: “Reproductive scientists create mice from 2 fathers.” It seems that through impressive scientific jiggery-pokery in the lab, researchers at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center were able to extract a cell from each of two male mice, combine their DNA, put the results into a surrogate mouse mother, and produce a mouseling that was not genetically related to the mother at all. (What has this to do with cancer research? Good question.)
It happens, at least to me, every spring: I’m all fired up to get and stay ahead of the lawn and the garden, always mindful of my grandfather’s advice that keeping a place looking good is a lot easier than getting it there in the first place.
It was an unusual Monday in many ways. Thirty years ago today, I started work at the supermarket celebrity tabloid called Star Magazine. I was supposed to have gone to work at WOR Radio, at the time the number one radio station in the country, but that had gotten postponed a month. I’d already left Gannett newspapers. So Star was something to do until the WOR job began.
It is a good thing that there’s a new Harry Potter movie. I have no idea if “Harry Potter and the Beginning of the End” or “Voldemort Strikes Back” or whatever it is called is any good. The New York Times says it is, but it might be anyway. The Potter movies have been wonderful (well, except maybe for the last one).
We’ll soon be hearing more and more about the Civil War. Or, as it is sometimes called, the “Great Rebellion,” the “War of Northern Aggression” — in some places, it is still simply called “the War.” That’s because we’re soon to begin commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of hostilities. Some of us remember the centennial of the war. I do.
We’ve entered the time of year when things are different from how they look. As the skies and the woods and the yards turn to gray and brown, the things that stimulate our other senses grow stronger.
That’s especially so out here in the country.