Going to the moon

Letter to the Editor

ThePost & Courier

Charleston, SC

Published: June 29, 2019  

Going to the moon

 On June 23, I watched the CNN special “Apollo 11”  which will be re-broadcast at 9 p.m. June 29 and at midnight June 30.   

From the beginning to the end, I was captivated by the telling of the story, using film seen fifty years ago and new, previously unseen, film.     I knew that the three men, Neil Armstrong,  Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins would return to earth safely, but the presentation was so effective, the apprehension felt was real when Armstrong and Aldrin left the lunar module and climbed down the ladder to walk on the moon.    

After the capsule re-entry, it made me proud to see the aircraft carrier Hornet standing around the drop site in the Pacific, and helicopters circling overhead.    

Nothing was spared in the effort to pluck these three brave men out of the water and onto the Hornet to the clapping and thunderous cheers of the crew and other officials.     

It was a fitting end to the presentation to see President John F. Kennedy at the podium at the University of Texas in September 1962 proclaim to the world, " We choose to go to the Moon...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 we intend to win.” 

   
We have not seen such gravitas in the White House since.

(Send comments to arch@archibald99.com)

Harper's Review of the Week

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May 2, 2017 By Joe Kloc          U.S. president Donald Trump, who once hosted a radio show on which he discussed how there was "no question about it" that Britney Spears had "gone down" in sexiness because she got married, gave himself an "A" for his performance in his first 100 days in office, a time period during which he implied Frederick Douglass was still alive at a breakfast celebrating the start of Black History Month; said on the eve of Martin Luther King, Jr., Day that Georgia representative and Freedom Rider John Lewis was "all talk"; commented at the National Prayer Breakfast that he wanted to "pray for" Arnold Schwarzenegger's "poor ratings" on The Celebrity Apprentice; accused former president Barack Obama of "wiretapping" Trump Tower in Manhattan, which the FBI had legally surveilled for two years as part of an investigation into the money-laundering ring of a Russian mafia boss known as "Little Taiwanese"; ordered the launching of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles valued at $60 million at an airfield in Syria, which he described as an attack on Iraq that he carried out while eating "the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake" and which his secretary of commerce, Wilbur Ross, referred to as "after-dinner entertainment" that "didn't cost the president anything"; and played golf more than twice as often as the previous three presidents combined, despite having once criticizing Obama for golfing "while America goes down the drain." "I don't stand by anything," Trump said. Trump told interviewers that he thought being president "would be easier," and that the constitutional system of checks and balances is "a really bad thing for the country." Reince Priebus, Trump's chief of staff, said that Trump, who has tweeted that the media is "the enemy of the American people," was considering abolishing the First Amendment. Trump, a former casino owner who once paid $1 million for an ad campaign alleging that the Mohawk people were cocaine traffickers and on another occasion claimed he "might have more Indian blood than a lot of the so-called Indians," said that his campaign for president was "most like" the "very mean and nasty campaign" of former president Andrew Jackson, a slave owner and frequent cockfighting gambler who signed legislation that forcibly removed indigenous tribes from the southeastern United States. Trump praised as a "smart cookie" North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who has executed hundreds of people for offenses such as slouching and having a bad attitude, and invited to the White House Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, who has been accused of ordering the extrajudicial killings of 8,000 people. "I am tied up," responded Duterte, who added that he had already made plans to visit Russia, the government of which the FBI and both houses of Congress are currently investigating for interfering in the 2016 presidential race in order to elect Trump, whose Las Vegas steakhouse was once shut down for serving customers two-week-old tomato sauce and a five-month-old duck. "We," said Press Secretary Sean Spicer, "want to start talking about the next 100 days."  Sources are footnoted at the permanent URL  for this Weekly Review. Comments, clarifications, and corrections are always welcome at harpers-weekly@harpers.org. Please note that your letter may be included in next week's mailing and on Harpers.org. © 2017 Harper's Magazine Foundation

Let's Move On

Some people just can’t or won’t let go. Fifty years ago a lone gunman, a misfit, shot and killed the President of the United States in Dallas, Texas. For most of November 2013 the news media has given coverage to the eternally suspicious conspiracy speculators among us that Lee Harvey Oswald was not acting alone when he killed President John F. Kennedy. That horrific act still sells papers and promotes television. It’s called titillating the masses. It is good and healthy for a nation to remember, but it is long past the time when we ought to have moved on. Thanksgiving will be next week and something else will lead on the front pages and evening news teasers.  Read and watch.

Senator Edward Kennedy dies; he fought to make America fair, equal and just

For almost fifty years Senator Edward Kennedy carried the torch for Americans who needed it the most. He never lost his enthusiasm, his optimism, his core belief that America's best days always laid ahead. He was the premier Senator of the last half of the last century. He died today, August 26, 2009.

He was a rich man's son who carried the torch for those less fortunate. He never had to work for a laborer's salary but he fought always for those who did. Until late in life, he was generally healthy and robust, and he relentlessly found time and energy to work hardest for those who were sick and who depended on government assistance. He had a top-notch education himself and yet he fought to assure that "no child would be left behind" in this great nation.

Any domestic legislation in the last fifty years that benefits all Americans bears his imprint somewhere in the details. Americans owe "Teddy" a huge debt that can be repaid if we work together and remember his words at the 1980 Democratic convention: “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”


We will miss you Teddy. God Bless you throughout eternity.