fly me to the moon
A lot of us were on the edge of our seats last week, hoping all went well with the Artemis II astronauts’ return to Earth. And we were all cheering when the splashdown hit the bullseye.
This crew was diverse, including the first woman, the first black astronaut, and the first Canadian to visit the moon. Bob Greene wrote, “Artemis crew members are joining a tiny club of humans who can look up at the moon on a summer night and think, I went there.”
The astronauts said that looking down on Earth, everything seemed peaceful, while here on the ground the whole place is bickering and divided.
In 1964, Sinatra sang “Fly Me to the Moon," an optimistic space age tune. A year later, Barry McGuire had a number-one hit with “Eve of Destruction.” That one seems to fit better today.
I gotta tell ya, I look at that full moon and think of my dad, who died during a full moon, and my brother David, who died recently and who we called “Moon.” Remember, it was JFK who gave a famous moon speech in 1962 at Rice University, calling for landing astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade. He said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” Apollo 11 landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. Keep your dukes up.
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