Nobody Asked Me, But...

Can you believe that it was forty years ago (40 years ago!) that we first saw a man step onto our moon? At the time, the event might have been the biggest scientific achievement that occurred during our lifetimes. I recall that it was a source of pride in what man can accomplish and not just in America but for the whole world. Yes, it was part of a silly space race that had the technology of the U. S. up against that of the mighty Soviet Union but I think most of us in the know realized we were going to win that one simply by noting that our spacecraft looked like something out of Star Trek and theirs reminded us, on first glance, of a cement truck. Truly, though, the entire world shared in this triumph of what man can do that had never been done before. Our family especially felt proud in that my father was part of the developmental program. Having retired from the military, he had taken a management position working on the project that produced Apollo cloth, the materials that International Latex of Dover, Delaware developed and constructed into the spacesuits worn by the astronauts. I remember he was so pleased that the suits functioned properly. I recall him telling me that he knew then what his highest purpose in life had been, and this from a man who was a glider pilot on D-Day. I think it was a pride he shared with the tens of thousands of other people who worked for NASA and its contractors when the entire mission worked nearly perfectly. For someone like Dad, who first piloted a bi-plane with a wooden propeller, the advancement from that time to landing men on the moon must have been something that was the ultimate gratification.

That was probably the high point for NASA, as the space station and the shuttle program haven’t quite captured our imagination in the same way. This follow-up has cost us a huge amount of money and the payoff has mostly come from the Hubble Space Telescope providing “fantastic images of deep space” that are really just nice pictures. We’ve sent probes and landers to nearby planets that are uninhabitable and further space exploration outside our solar system just won’t be in the cards until we can conquer travel in multiples of the speed of light (Star Trek’s “warp speed”). Meanwhile, here at home we keep figuring out new, better and faster ways to pollute the home planet into a state of vulnerability to all sorts of nastiness that can be visited upon us by nature.

And, really now, looking back, unless we can all see beyond our own little worlds of desires and wishes for material junk, what was all that moon shot effort and expense in aid of? I think that magnificent achievement had to do with looking at the possibilities that are there for us to live a good life and be good people instead of all the nonsense and foolishness that seems to occupy so much of our little time on this planet. Time to turn off that noisy box, walk outside at night and look upward. That’s when you realize what its all about.

Having said that, it saddens me that, as a nation, we seem to have lost much of our magnificent vision of those days when we seemed capable of just about anything. But look what has happened. We are losing our boys, mostly to roadside bombs, in Afghanistan. Afghanistan! Can anyone tell me why we are there and what we are trying to accomplish? Maybe the Prez should interrupt prime time for that instead of some vague plan for “health care for all” when what he really means is health insurance of some unknown quality and cost for those that do not have it for a variety of reasons. Does anyone believe that this will not cost us taxpayers money? We are supposed to trust our government to do it right. You know, that same government that we hear about with the self-serving “earmarks”, bribes from lobbyists, stacks of money in their freezers at home (How do you not get prosecuted for that?) and a press corps reporting on them with somewhat less veracity it seems than the late, great Uncle Walter, Eric Severeid and John Chancellor did in their day in the big chair.

It is tough to accept but I feel that crew in D.C., regardless of political affiliation, is so far detached from the rest of us that they don’t know how to listen and, worse yet, don’t much care. And, you know what? I truly believe that there are some pretty quick and easy fixes to most of the problems that everyday Americans actually care about. You just have to go do something and not worry about pleasing a party boss, lobbyist or some other moneybag. So, we watch our nation sliding down the chute as the power of the people disappears.

By Jay Dunn, Editor, Rodgers Forge Community, Inc. Newsletter