25 Years

Time passes so quickly. Along the way, we find milestones. We divide up time into segments and attach significance to those segments.

For some reason, someone at some point decided that every 25 years, every quarter of a century, would be a significant time-frame for reflection on an event.

25 years doesn’t really seem that long, but it is. And it’s also very quick.

300 months….. 9125 days…. 5,475,000 hours….. 328,500,000 minutes.... 19,710,000,000 seconds.

One day, you’re a sixth-grader, out of school on a snowy teacher workday. The next, you’re a 36-year-old dad-to-be, working as a public relations director at a college.

One day, it’s Jan. 28, 1986. The next, it’s Jan. 28, 2011.

Today is 25 years to the day since the flight of Challenger mission STS 51-L. It has been 25 years since it exploded shortly after launch and its crew – Dick Scobee, Greg Jarvis, Michael Smith, Judith Resnick, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, and Christa McAuliffe – ascended from the Earth into heaven. 

It has been 25 years since those heroes became angels.

It was one of those significant days in history that will be indeliably etched into the minds of a generation - as  the days of the Apollo 11 moon landing, assassination of John F. Kennedy, or the attack on Pearl Harbor were for generations before and Sept 11, 2001 was for another generation.

It really doesn’t seem that long ago. I still remember all the feelings associated with watching it unfold on TV and all the feelings afterwards. The hurt, the confusion… and then later on came the anger as we all learned about the circumstances of the launch and all the political maneuvering behind the scenes.

Is it bad that society as a whole tends to only reflect on significant events like this on their 25th, 50th , 75th, or 100th anniversary? Some may say no. Their argument may include reasons like “Why drag it back up every year?”  or "There's no benefit in talking about it anymore..." Unfortunately, we’re starting to hear that on Sept. 11th.

Is it bad that we don’t reflect significantly on those events more often than 25-year increments? Some people may say yes. Their argument may include reasons like “We constantly need to reflect on our history and what we are learning from it each year…” or “What happened then is still impacting us today….” Or “Those feelings just naturally come up at that time every year.”

I’ve blogged about my passion and interest in spaceflight and space exploration before. I’ve blogged about the impact of the loss of the Challenger crew on my life before. I’m not going to rehash all that right now; if you want you can go back and read it here

Ronald Reagan gave a very profound, inspirational, and impactful speech the night of the Challenger explosion. In it, he said, “Nothing ends here. Our hopes and our journey continue.”

Despite the current state of our space program, our economy, and our general public disinterest in exploring new frontiers, I hope that statement from President Reagan is indicative of greater things to come.

My daughter will be 24 on the 50th anniversary of the Challenger explosion. Many of her generation may only ever read about it in textbooks or on Wikipedia; or hear it talked about on grainy archival news footage.

But I will tell her about how it affected me. I will tell her about the importance of heroes, dreams, and ambition. Hopefully she will find it as inspirational as I do.

 “Challenger wasn’t the final chapter in space exploration; just a transitional chapter in this great book. The book will continue with new exciting chapters of exciting adventures, discoveries and achievements ….  It’s time for the next 25 years to unfold. Let us boldly look to the future,” June Scobee, wife of Challenger astronaut Dick Scobee, said this morning at a memorial at Kennedy Space Center.

So let’s see what the next 25-year chapter will bring.

The 2000s

They say that this was the worst decade ever.

I didn’t live through the Great Depression, but I have a feeling that the 1930s could give the 2000s a serious run for its money as being the worst decade ever.

I just wonder who DIDN’T vote for the 1340s to be the worst decade ever --- despite the fact that it was in the middle of the Dark Ages, a time when belief in science was considered heresy, and it was a decade when nearly 200 million people died of the bubonic plague.

I would tend to think that the 2000s was not the worst decade ever.

It wasn’t exactly the greatest decade ever, I’ll give it that.

I think most people will find that as they grow up, they look back on one or two decades during the life as their own personal favorites. But I think a lot of that is just due to the natural changes in people’s lifestyles, life stages, and outlooks at any given point.

You go through a decade of your childhood – when you just enjoy being a kid. You go through a decade of transition. You go through a decade in the real world when you get what’s left of the recklessness of youth out of your system, establish your identity as an adult, begin a family and begin a career.

Then you go through a few decades of being a provider, father or mother, family leader, and also experience career growth or changes.

And as that goes on, you watch the next generation go through the same cycle.

A lot of people think the 1980s was a cess pool of greed, excess, and debauchery.

It may have had its problems. But I think most of my generation will defend the 1980s to the teeth as a great decade. Was it the greatest decade ever? In some regards maybe, in others probably not.

We experienced the birth of MTV, the video game industry, countless fads and trends – and lots of other cultural changes, new ideals, and role models – all of which helped to shape our outlook, serve as a backdrop for our youth, and mold us into who were are today. We did have one thing going for us though in that the U.S. had its second greatest president ever to lead it through the majority of the decade.

And I don’t think most of us Children of the 80s turned out too bad.

Not that I don’t think that the children of the 2000s will turn out bad as a whole, but something tells me they won’t be as quick to defend the decade of their youth as the Children of the 80s are.

That being said, again, I don’t think the 2000s were an entirely bad decade. It had its pros – and it had its cons.

I just hope as we all have all gone through this decade that the things we have all learned through our shared experiences will help make the 2010s a much better decade.

So here’s to a new decade. It can always be worse than the one before, but let’s hope not.

It's Time To Go Back

Image courtesy of FoxNews.com

It was put into motion 48 years ago.

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish” – President John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961, address to joint session of Congress

Then, 40 years ago, mankind set foot on a celestial body that we had admired in awe, fascination, wonder, and sometimes even fear, since the day that God put our ancestors on this planet.

We committed ourselves to a goal. And we achieved it.

It must have been a wonderous feeling to watch – as the Saturn V rocket launched forward from its launchpad on plume of 7.6 million pounds of thrust; as our astronauts, Neil, Buzz and Michael, soared through the vastness of space toward the moon; as the Eagle descended and then landed; and as Neil put his boot down on the surface of the moon.

He stumbled a little verbally as he searched for the words he wanted to say.

But he said the phrase that we all know: “That's one small step for a man – one giant leap for mankind.”

Awesome.

We had put a man (actually two men that time - 10 more would follow in their footsteps) on the moon.

And guess what…. There’s an AMERICAN flag on the moon. WE did it. It was our boys who were up there. The United States of America achieved that goal.

Granted, it wasn’t all for the nature of satisfying our curiosity. It wasn’t all just to inspire people. There was a Cold War going on. We were in a space race with the Soviet Union. It was a constant game of one-upsmanship and power plays.

Kennedy himself was known to have only set that goal of the moon and of NASA’s rapid rise in the 60s for the purpose of having the edge in the Cold War.

Even still, it’s amazing to think of. In less than 100 years, mostly since the turn of the 20th century, man had pioneered the telephone, radio, car, airplane, television – and space travel. And we put a man on the moon.

I would say that landing a man on the moon was probably mankind’s greatest technological achievement in modern history, if not all of history. It was definitely the most inspiring achievement to the most amount of people at probably any time in history.

But it’s been 40 years. And we haven’t been back in almost 37.

I can honestly say that I don’t think there have been any achievements of any kind anywhere near that magnitude, let alone that inspiring, in the last 40 years. We need to be inspired. We need to have something that we all collectively want to achieve.

It was a moment in which the WORLD came together in fascination. One which still captures the imagination.

We can all say we want world peace. That isn’t likely to happen soon. That would be the best achievement we could ever reach for. But more realistically, we can all reach for the moon. It’s out there. We've been there before. We know it’s not made of cheese. And we know that no cow can jump over it without a rocket system engineered for that specific purpose, with sound life support and environmental controls and an adequate supply of grass for it to chew on.

Man did it though – and we will do it again. We need something to recapture that fascination and imagination.

But by the time we make it back, given no delays on the proposed timeline, it will be 2020 and it will be 48 years since man last set foot on the moon. That’s too long of a time.

Space exploration is something that we can’t hold back on. It’s in our nature to be wonder – to explore – to see what’s out there past our newest frontier. We’re never going to be satisfied to sit here on this rock we call Earth and not explore the heavens.

God made it all for us. He made a race of explorers. He gave us a curious nature. And he provided us with the tools to satisfy that curiosity and to send ourselves out on new adventures.

I think we owe it to the men and women that built NASA, that built our space program, and pushed this nation and mankind to that new frontier to go back to the moon.

But we’ve been spinning our wheels. We’ve lost 17 fine, brave souls in the process, 14 of those in a program that should have long since paved the way for something even more amazing.

We owe it to them to go back. They would have wanted it. We owe it to them to go even further.

On Sept. 12, 1962, President Kennedy, in an address give at Rice University on the space effort, declared “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, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

We chose to go to the moon. And we did. Now let’s get back on track and go back to the moon - go to Mars, go further out, and “boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Stay tuned for Part 2: You Call This Support?

No Fine, No Points, No Problem

I was involved in a minor fender bender a few weeks ago in Spartanburg, aka Sparkle City. I was at a stop light -- the light turned green, traffic started to move, I started to move. Then the guy in front of me slams on his brakes and I in turn slam on mine. Unfortunately, I hit his car -- I was going maybe 5 mph (at the most) at the time. Did very little damage to the other guy's Kia SUV but he insisted on calling the cops, telling me "Man, I gotta call the cops. You hit my car. I want my car fixed." I seriously think he's one of these guys who just likes to screw with people and their finances on purpose.

I was ticketed for following too closely. The Sparkle City police officer that responded wrote me a ticket for 4 points and $144. Neither the cop nor the dumbass that I hit showed up for court. This was the extent of my conversation with the judge:

Judge: Do you see the Mr. Dumbass here today in the courtroom?
Me: No sir, I do not see Mr. Dumbass.
Judge: Well, since the other party involved in the incident is not present, I am going to throw out this case.
--LONG PAUSE AS HE SCRIBBLES SOMETHING DOWN--
Judge: You can go now. Drive safely and have a nice day.
Me: Thank you sir.

I had spent the last three weeks dreading having more points on my license (I already have two from a speeding ticket earlier this year) and having another increase on my insurance. So I was one very happy camper as I walked out of the courtoom and turned on my evil grin as I walked toward the parking lot.

No fine, no points -- not a problem for me at all. LOL

Mine was the second case of the morning. In the case before mine, the girl who had been ticketed had her case dropped also because the other person wasn't there. We were lucky.

I wonder if the girl that was sitting beside me in the courtroom who looked like she had just done twelve lines of coke had a good day or bad day in traffic court. There was an old guy in the court room who reeked of cheap, stale beer. I wonder how his morning went. As I was waiting on traffic court to start, there was a girl who looked no older than 14 or 15 who walked in, pregnant to the nines, holding hands with a man of another race who appeared to be two or three times her age, walking in with a traffic ticket in her hands.

I'm a big people watcher. I have a very inquisitive nature about me and just like to watch how people act in various situations.

Traffic court is one of those places where you really get to see a diverse cross section of your community. You may see an attractive lady in a business suit looking at her watch every 30 seconds, or a disheveled teenager who looks like they were forced out of bed, being led into the room by what appears to be a very angry parent.

I kind of felt out of place because out of 40 or 50 people, I was the only one who had on a tie, other than the judge, and one of four or five people that looked like they had to cut out of their first couple hours of work to come plead their case. I can say that everyone pretty much had the same look of disgust that they had to be there at all. I liken traffic court to the lobby of the DMV. They're both like a box of chocolates - you never not what you're going to get.

But the highlight of the morning (other than, of course, having my ticket being dropped) was when the judge walked out. When I saw him, I almost had to stop myself from saying out loud "Wow, he really takes this naughty or nice thing really too seriously" or "Man, I bet the elves are having a party now with the big guy out of town." He looked like Santa. In fact, I'll bet he's been asked a time or two to play Santa. I'll bet he probably wouldn't have found it funny though if when I approached the bench I had said, "Mr. Claus, I've been a really good boy this year. So what I'd really like for Christmas (other than a totally tricked out Sony VAIO computer) is to have this ticket disappear."

I guess I got my Christmas wish early. Maybe Santa was reading my mind. So I got in my car, headed to work and heard the Kenny Chesney song "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problem" on the radio. I then came up with the name of my next blog.