Sally Ride RIP

Americana, Psychological Musings

Dr. Ride died from pancreatic cancer last Monday. She was only 61 and is survived by her partner of 27 years, Tam O’Shaughnessy. The fact that she was gay came as a big shock to me. Not that I have spent much time thinking about Sally Ride in the last twenty years.

I was hyper-interested to the space program when it started in 1959 with Mercury and read everything I could on it. But the presentation by the news was so un-factfilled, that it was hard to stay attentive. Project Gemini was more of the same and going to the moon, in its own way, more of the same. In Wernher von Braun’s books, the moon lander would take off from Earth orbit but Apollo had the moon lander take off from a Moon orbit; I never did find out why (and I tried). And the astronauts were so so white bread, so bloodless, so flag-lapel-pin-American, so characterless, that they were not interesting.

Then I read The Right Stuff  by Tom Wolfe and the astronauts were brought to life as flawed, crazy – in a good way – over achieving test pilots. They were fascinating and it makes me wonder why they were presented as so boring. It seems to me that the only time public figures aren’t presented as boring is when the press is getting ready to hang them. By all accounts – made after her death – Dr. Sally Ride was an equally fascinating astronaut and it is too bad that she had to hide who she was and it is sort of nice that she was able to.

May she rest in peace.

A couple of random thoughts on the Colorado shooting

Americana, Current Affairs, Psychological Musings

I keep thinking about the Colorado shootings. It makes my heart ache. All the victims: the people who got killed, the people who got shot and will live, the people who were there and escaped – using the term very loosely because nobody who was there escaped – the people who had to go to the hospital or morgue to identify some child or loved one, Holmes’ parents. All victims of a man who spent alot of time and energy to destroy lives.

I keep asking myself, Why would anybody do this? I guess that it is the obvious question, I guess that it is the questions almost every asks, it certainly is the question the police are asking. Yea, sure, he is nuts, but then I hold the position that anybody who kills somebody is nuts. But being nuts just begs the question, Why did he think he was doing it? I can understand the guys who flew into the World Trade Center; I have never been that dedicated to anything, but I can understand it it. I can even sort of understand Columbine or Virginia Tech, But this is incomprehensible to me.

This was not a suicide: this was not somebody so unhappy they wanted to take their life and then added as many people as they could. James Holmes – does anybody call him Jim? – went out and bought some guns and also bought body armor to protect himself as much as possible, he then went out and shot as many – totally random – people as he could. He seemed to want to live through this. He then told the police that he had booby-trapped his apartment.  Why would anybody do that?

Ever since Charles Whitman climbed up the Texas Tower, we hear the same thing, “He was really shy, really quiet, but really nice and sweet.” I read somewhere that you can tell how likely someone is to have road-rage by the number of bumper stickers they have on the back of their car. But I think that the scary people are the ones who are shy, quiet, and sweet.

As an aside, the even more scary people are like Luke O’Dell of the National Association for Gun Rights who took the opportunity to say  “Potentially, if there had been a law-abiding citizen who had been able to carry in the theater, it’s possible the death toll would have been less.” Scary because they are trying to change public policy and – in many places – seceding. Imagine that nightmare, a shootout in a dark movie theater between several idiots as a way to cut the carnage. End aside.

 

Gordon Parks

Photography, Politics

The New York Times has a slide show of some unusual Gordon Parks photographs that I would like to recommend. To go out on a limb – a little – Gordon Parks was the most important, black, visual, artist of the 1950s and 60s. He became famous – and, therefore, influential – during the disgusting Jim Crow era. It was a time when everything was segregated – at least in the south all the way north to Washington D.C. – everything, not just public schools and parks and public transportation, but restaurants and restrooms. Even drinking fountains.

Black people were kept out of sight and Parks’ photos helped change that. He started out photographing for the the Farm Security Administration where he took the powerful picture above, and eventually became a fashion photographer for Vogue where he published the pictures below. 

But it was his work published in Life Magazine – the premier photo-magazine of the day – where I first saw him and his seemingly naive photographs. They seem so straight forward, and they pack such a powerful punch. Check out the slide show and you will not be disappointed.

 

 

Death Valley Ultra Marathon

Sports

Today is the start of the Death Valley Ultra Marathon.

I love all things Death Valley, well, almost everything. Maybe the Death Valley Ultra Marathon is an exception. The Death Valley Ultra Marathon is a foot race that starts at Badwater – in Death Valley at about 280 feet below sea level – and ends, 135 road miles away, at Whitney Portal (about 8360 feet above sea level)…pause…in July!  In the process, the runners cross two passes, the first one, Towne Pass is at 4960 some odd feet, and then – after going down to 1550 feet – the next one, maybe named Darwin Pass, is at about 5300 feet. That just seems nuts.

Last year, the winning time was 23 hours and 41 minutes; doing the math, I come up with a pace of over 5.7 miles per hour, almost ten minute miles. Oh! And it is hot in Death Valley in July: 120 in the shade – and there is no…. – last year. Last Thursday, Death Valley experienced a record – high – overnight low at 107º, but this week will be cooler, with a high of under 110 and overnight lows in the 80s.

Strangely enough, this race seems to be an old person’s game. Almost all of the runners are over 40. Last year there were 27 runners over 50 and two under 30! Probably proof that people don’t always get smarter with age.

It is astounding what humans can do.

The Peenemünde effect

Psychological Musings

In the early 50’s – the long gone 1950’s when everything was possible – I became obsessed with rockets and space travel. My favorite author was Wernher von Braun who, at the time had written several articles – with lots of great pictures – in a, now-defunct, magazine called Colliers. Then I devoured several well illustrated books that came out of those articles, and, eventually, that lead me to a book about the German V-2 project. I totally missed that the V-2 was a Nazi killing machine – a sort of random killing machine at that – and got caught up in wonder of the whole thing.

Much of the testing was done at a place on the Baltic Sea called Peenemünde and one story I remember was about a night launch. It burned an indelible image in my mind. I can still conjure up the launch: the rocket ignition almost impossibly bright on the dark launching pad, the engine coming up to full thrust with the roar drowning out all other noise, the rocket slowly – at first – lifting, levitating really, off the ground; pushing itself into the sky on a tail of flame. Then, engine cut-off as the missile goes ballistic and is lost in the silence and darkness. Only moments later to reappear as it passes above the shadow of the earth and enters sunlight again.

Almost every warm, summer, night, I see a mini-version of this as we sit in the twilight on our deck and see airplanes turning to land at San Francisco airport, thirty miles away.  We are sitting in the gloaming light and, above us, the airplanes turn orange in the sunset. The air is warm and soft, nobody will be killed, there is no roar, only the groan of the plane’s landing flaps opening; but I still think of it as the Peenemünde effect.