May 14

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Tuesday, May 14, 2019

So today we introduce what we hope will be regular contributions from people with personal insights that shed light on some moments of our history.

In this first submission Sally shares her family’s activities during the first moon landing.
After reading it and telling Sally I liked the piece, I asked what prompted this memory. Her response:

Hi, Dom, 

Good!  I’m glad you like the piece. 

How the story came about, that single sentence: Do you mean the tidbit on the radio that I heard? There must have been something in particular related to Friday’s date to prompt the report, but I don’t remember it or its specific wording. It was first thing in the morning as I prepared for the day in the bathroom, where I usually have the radio on. I wasn’t really listening, so I missed whatever came before the actual mention of the moon landing.

Are the details of the prompt all that important? I think it’s better as an illustration how something so small – a phrase, a scent, a sound – can transport one so rapidly into a past experience.  To me as a writer, the real value is in the capture of those moments. Such details have little import in themselves, but collectively they enrich our humanness, like seasoning. 

Sally

Tuesday is a throwback to another season: too cold and drear for May.
But let’s be cheerful since the next days will see temperatures climbing into the 60s and the 70s.
And let’s not skip a single step or add a moment of exasperation because of the weather.
The hours are ticking away and if we don’t make the most of our time another day will soon click past.
Unnoticed.
Unappreciated.

Tick Tock.
In clock language:

Enjoy today.
Enjoy the week.

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Postings Count, Weather Brief, and Dinner
Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Our 403nd consecutive posting, committed to 5,000.
After 403 posts we’re at the 8.06 percentile of our commitment, the commitment a different way of marking the passage of time.

Time is 12.01am.
On Tuesday, Boston’s temperature will reach a high of 45* with a feels-like of 39* with rain to boot.

Dinner tonight is sushi.

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Chuckle for Tuesday, May 14, 2019

"Hey, girl. You’re not going through with the wedding?"
"To tell you the truth, I hesitate because I keep thinking about your husband.”
“You rat!”
"Calm down, girl. It’s not envy. I'm afraid I might end up having the same bad luck as you."

average joe

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Tuesday, May 14, 2019
Love your notes.
Contact me at domcapossela@hotmail.com

This from Tommie Toner, weighing in on the definition of ‘regular.’

I loved the discussion on a "regular" person. Having been an educator during my professional life, this term was interesting to me. I had never heard or seen it used before - but in all honesty, I may have forgotten! I love the term "irregular" which I think fits most of us if we observe closely. I think that term fits most students. As educators, we just have to figure out the irregularities.  But, then, I surmise, do we need a baseline for "regular?" Maybe I have had one glass of wine too many!😎

Web Meister responds: Nice take, Tommie.

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Chuckle for Tuesday, May 14, 2019

"Hey, girl. You’re not going through with the wedding?"
"To tell you the truth, I hesitate because I keep thinking about your husband.”
“You rat!
"Calm down, girl. It’s not envy. I'm afraid I might end up having the same bad luck as you."

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Personal Experiences: Tuesday, May 14, 2019

JULY 1969: THE APOLLO MOON LANDING AND THE AGE OF AQUARIUS
Sally M. Chetwynd – May 10, 2019 

The radio news this morning had a brief report about the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing in July 1969. Its mention whisked me, like stepping into a black hole, back to that week-plus of coverage, when my mother and I became addicted to the television for the duration. The two of us consumed all the proceedings like greedy bird chicks. 

Apollo 11 lunar module

I don’t remember at all that any of the rest of the family sat with us. I’m sure my father must have joined us on some evenings when he got home from work. Two of my four brothers had fledged the nest, Brother #1 an electronics engineer in Massachusetts, Brother #2 in the Signal Corps in Viet Nam. That left Brother #3, eighteen months my senior, and Brother #4, nearly four years my junior, still in the household. Maybe it was a guy thing for teenage Brother #3, to express disdain for something his mother was glued to. Maybe it was an age thing for Brother #4. I know they must have watched some of it, but I don’t remember them. Evidently, their participation didn’t matter to me. 

On the other hand, at age 15, I was ripe for this vicarious, real-life, real-time adventure. The first “Star Trek” TV series was one of my top favorite shows. I watched it faithfully every week.  

The single memory is imprinted on my mind, the way one sees the echo of a camera flash inside one’s closed eyelids. We sat in the dining room on hard, maple chairs around the matching, round table that never sat squarely because the floorboards under the linoleum were warped with age. We squinted at the grainy footage on the black-and-white television screen, trying to discern the images despite the glare in the room as the western sun beat in, defying the puny curtains drawn over the windows.  

These were pre-cable days, and snowy reception was an accepted element of TV viewing, along with only four channels of variable visual quality, depending on the weather and if they came in from Portland, Maine, Mount Washington in New Hampshire, or Boston, Massachusetts. One asset helped improve the picture. My father had installed an antenna in the garage under the roof, controlled by a small box in the house. Press the bar on one side, and the antenna rotated clockwise. Press the other side, and it rotated counterclockwise. It wasn’t infallible, but it was protected from storms and it sure beat rabbit ears. Those usually only worked when one of us held the tip of one, the natural conductivity of our bodies extending the antenna’s reach to those air-borne signals. 

The whole affair was a prime novelty: the first moon landing – “firsts” only happen once – and the fact that we were watching television during the day. That happened only one other time, for the John F. Kennedy funeral six years earlier. 

Mother and I planned for our investment in the whole expedition for the long haul - nine days, from launch on July 16 to splash-down on July 24. (Planning is either a talent or an obsession with us. It’s one of our DNA strands.) How would we keep ourselves gainfully occupied, in the swelter of New England mid-summer, while the astronauts soared into the heavens and orbited the moon at over 3,000 miles per hour? 

(I remember the humidity. The heat and soggy air were oppressive, but they rarely persisted for more than a few days. This was tolerable in our rural homestead, doors and windows open to allow a breeze to course steadily through the house.) 

working burnooses [burneece?]

We decided to do embroidery to keep our hands busy while the television engrossed us. My mother had made a burnoose (a popular garment then in the hippie culture) for our parish priest, who wanted something dramatic to wear when he and his cadre of University of New Hampshire students went to the beach. 

Father Lawless was an irreverent man who convinced me, after years of stone-sober Catholic indoctrination, that men of the cloth were not bereft of humor and could succumb to the wiles of silliness. (And yes, he had a cache of speeding tickets to live up to his name.)  

The burnoose was of cotton cloth printed to look like golden-orange rays of sunlight, paired with a dark green yoke that met the God-effect fabric about eighteen inches below the shoulders. This was truly dramatic, but it was missing a focal point. Mother pondered, then realized this: In the budding Age of Aquarius, what better than an embroidered lion, in yellow, gold, tan, and brown threads, to highlight the priest’s Zodiac sign of Leo? 

The Zodiac was a big deal at the time, so I decided to embroider my sign, Capricorn. I found a design in a magazine and drew it on my cloth with pencil. Then we raided the fabric store for every color of embroidery thread in stock. When Apollo 11 launched, so did we. As the astronauts conducted their business, so did we. And as the moon landing mission concluded, and so did we.  

I finished my goat and soon had it mounted as a wall hanging. Mother finished her work but wasn’t satisfied to stop there. She went over the top. When the lion on the front was done, she embroidered the back of the lion on the back of the burnoose. 

The burnoose was glorious. Father Lawless was thrilled.  He wore it to the beach, and his UNH entourage knelt in the sand and bowed down to him with much to-do and clamor. Rumor had it that Father Lawless was the high priest of a new cult that rose out of the Age of Aquarius. Leo was ascendant. 

The astronauts came down to Earth after their adventure. I’m not sure Father Lawless, irrepressible and light-hearted, ever did.

I keep notes on my experiences.
One day I’ll publish them.

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Good Morning on this Tuesday, the fourteenth day of May, 2019
Our homily introduces a new section, Personal Experiences, stories that give personal twists to one or another aspects of American history or sociology.
We posted the weather and date, commented on the days coming, and tracked the number of posts.
Also, a letter from Tommie T, from So Carolina.
And a chuckle.
And the submission from Sally.

And now? Gotta go.

Che vuoi? Le pocketbook?

See you soon.

Your love.