Space

If Edgar And Loretta Go, Then I’ll Go Too

Yeah, Another Blogger144 Comments

I shuddered a bit when my cell phone rang last Wednesday and I saw who was calling, because I wasn’t in the mood to talk with Edgar Reewright. But when your editor is trying to reach you, you answer.

“Neil, Edgar here,” he said bluntly, as was characteristic of him. “I just started editing the story you’re planning to publish early next week. Here’s my advice: Don‘t! How many times do I have to tell you that you’re overdoing it with the walking-around-while-looking-at-things articles? The ones about nicely-decorated vehicles — the Art On Wheels series — are okay, but this latest creation of yours absolutely eats it. Nobody will want to read about your wanderings through Philadelphia in search of one-way traffic signs that are pointing in the wrong direction. Especially since you didn’t find any. Listen to me . . .  James Patterson wouldn’t be able to write decently about this subject. Ditto for Joyce Carol Oates. And they are a hundred times more talented than you! You need to trash this loser. To reiterate: Don’t publish it!”

I was stunned. Almost speechless. At last, after gulping at least ten times, I managed to talk.

“Oh my, my, my, I see what you mean, Edgar,” I said, my voice dripping with dejection. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Instead of backwards one-way signs, I guess I should have been looking for something with more appeal, such as squirrels line-dancing while balancing acorns on their noses. What am I going to do? I have nothing else to write about right now. For the last two or three years I’ve published a story every two weeks, but I won’t meet the next scheduled publication date. My readers will not be pleased by my dereliction of duty.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” Edgar asked. “For crying out loud, not one soul will notice or care. Look at it as a mini-vacation. Besides, I’m certain that inspiration, if that term even applies to you, will strike again pretty soon.”

“Thanks for the pep talk, Edgar. All of a sudden I’m feeling a little better. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

A long pause took me by surprise.

“Edgar, are you there?”

The pause continued.

Finally, Edgar spoke. Softly. “I’m here, Neil. I have news that I’ve been trying to figure out how to break to you. I’m sorry to say this, but I might not be your editor for much longer.”

“What? It can’t be! Say it isn’t so!”

“Now, this isn’t definite,” Edgar replied. “I’ll let you know for certain soon. But here’s the thing: I’m not getting any younger. I’m 85, after all, though I don’t look a day over 80. Anyway, my wife Loretta and I want to shake up our lives. That’s why we wrote to Elon Musk in April, asking about his SpaceX senior-citizens lunar program. ‘Hell yeah, old farts have just as much right to visit the Moon as anyone else,’ Elon wrote back. ‘SpaceX’s first lunar landing for oldtimers is scheduled for 2026. Start getting in very serious shape, folks. In a few years you’ll be boogieing like there’s no tomorrow in one or two of the Moon’s craters.’ Elon wants us, and we have to give him our decision by the end of the month, Neil.”

“What can I say?” Edgar continued. “Loretta and I probably will begin intensive workout sessions within the next couple of weeks. If we do, I won’t have enough time and energy to edit your stories.”

“Edgar, please don’t leave me,” I managed to say between sniffles. “Ours has been a wonderful partnership. Yeah, Another Blogger would be a total wreck were it not for your candor, superb judgment and eagle eye. Edgar, I need you.”

I wasn’t the only one sniffling. “I know, Neil, I know,” Edgar said with more human emotion than I thought he was capable of. “Hey, wait a minute! I have a great idea. You’re older than dirt, like me, aren’t you?”

“I’m 75, Edgar.”

“Yup, you’re way closer to the end than to the beginning. And there’s no doubt you could use some real excitement before the Grim Reaper arrives. So, if Loretta and I sign up with SpaceX, would you want to join us? I’m positive that Elon would be delighted to have you on board. Maybe Sandy would be interested too.”

“Hang on a second, Edgar,” I said. Then I shouted to my wife.

“Sandy, I might be going to the Moon in 2026 with Edgar Reewright and his wife. Want to be part of the group?”

“Neil, to say you’re out of your frigging mind is an understatement. The Moon?  Count me out!”

“But how about me? Can I go?”

“Sure. Why not? At least it will give you something interesting to write about for a change. I mean, that story you haven’t published yet — the one about trying to find one-way signs pointing in the wrong direction — is a real stinker. Am I right or am I right?”

To quote Rodney Dangerfield: “I tell you, I don’t get no respect.”

To The Moon And Beyond!?

Yeah, Another Blogger96 Comments

It was appropriate that my pal Mike and I, with my wife Sandy, recently went together to a cinema in the Philadelphia suburbs to see the excellent documentary Apollo 11. I mean, a few months short of 50 years ago Mike and I took a road trip through parts of New England and Canada soon after our college graduations, a trip during which the Apollo 11 mission was very much on our minds and before our eyes.

Mike suggested the journey to me in Roslyn, the Long Island town where we grew up and still lived (Long Island is near New York City). There, in a pizzeria, we bumped into each other after being out of touch during our college days. “Sure, let’s do it,” I said, because, clueless and planless when it came to life’s bigger pictures, there was nothing on my agenda, socially or work-wise, to interfere.

And so, a couple of weeks later off we went in Mike’s bright red Ford Mustang convertible. We had a blast, happily taking in the gorgeous landscapes and seascapes that we encountered. And, as the Mustang racked up the miles, time after time we sang along to Bad Moon Rising, The Israelite, and Spinning Wheel, songs that were glued into heavy rotation on radio stations everywhere that summer.

When July 16, 1969 arrived, somewhere in the province of Quebec we watched Apollo 11 begin its journey. Five days later, at another Quebec location that’s faded from memory, we, along with just about everyone else in the world, saw Neil Armstrong and, some minutes later, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin step out of their lunar module, becoming the first homo sapiens to set foot on the lunar surface. While they did their thing, Michael Collins remained in orbit around the Moon in a command module, awaiting his mates’ return.

Yeah, it’s pretty cool that, half a century later, those two former Long Island boys live a mere 15 miles apart from one another in the Philadelphia burbs, are still tight, and in one another’s company got to think about and talk about their glorious Moon-enhanced road trip from the distant past.

Apollo 11 isn’t your typical documentary. There are no reminiscences by Aldrin and Collins, the mission’s surviving astronauts, nor commentary by other talking heads. What we have here, aside from a few newly-made graphics that demonstrate some of the expedition’s technical aspects, are video and film clips and photographs shot during the mission’s duration by earthbound NASA camera operators (NASA is the American space agency), by cameras attached to the command module and to the lunar module, and by the astronauts themselves. And there’s earlier footage, from 1962, of a speech by John F. Kennedy in which he explains why he thinks that the USA must, and will, go to the Moon.

Todd Douglas Miller, the film’s editor and director, did a hell of a job selecting and piecing together the oceanic amount of material at his disposal. Want to feel as though you’re climbing aboard a rocket, then blasting off, and then cruising along on your way to our cousin in the sky? Not to mention inching around gingerly on the Moon’s granular top layer? Right, who doesn’t? Which is why catching Apollo 11 is a good idea.

Lunar module returning from the Moon to command module.
Photo credit: NASA

I thought that one sequence alone was worth the price of admission. The footage, filmed from the command module, shows the lunar module on its way back from the Moon. The LM’s aim was to dock with the command module which, after jettisoning the LM, would transport the three space travelers the rest of the way back home. A softie, watching the Armstrong-and-Aldrin-inhabited craft draw nearer and nearer to Collins’ vehicle made me go limp with wonder. With the stark and stoic Moon as its backdrop, those hard-to-believe images are more dramatic and beautiful than any ever created for a sci-fi flick.

In all, six space missions placed men on the Moon, the last one in 1972. After a while, I think that people became kind of blasé about them though. Lunar overkill, if you will. Still, the accomplishments were undeniably remarkable. But were they necessary? I lean toward the nay side on that. We’re an inquisitive species, and our brains are big, so we always need to push the envelope, investigating and exploring our asses off. It’s what we do and always have done. Hey, it’s human nature.

And I guess that’s fine where Planet Earth is concerned. But is there really any point to traipsing around elsewhere? Hell, it’s not as if we learned the secrets of the universe by going to the Moon. And we sure as shit won’t learn them by visiting or establishing colonies on Mars, goals that are on the drawing boards for several nations and at least one private company. What’s more, people are people. Meaning, we’re highly emotional creatures with more than our share of less-than-stellar instincts. If Mars were colonized by earthlings, it wouldn’t take long before frustrations, hurt feelings and greediness morphed into feuds and armed conflicts (“Hasta la vista, motherf*cker!” I can hear one good ol’ boy saying to another, 100 years from now. “There ain’t enough room on this miserable red planet for the two of us. Which of these roomy craters do you want to be buried in?”). Can there be any doubt?

None of which is to say that I’m not an admirer of the heavens near and far. I am, and in a pretty big way. I love sitting outside on a clear night, staring up at the Moon, the stars, the planets. A little while ago, taking a break from writing this story, I grabbed a look at the night sky (it’s 10:30 PM on March 27 as I type. Publication date remains up in the air, however). It was magnificent. But, wouldn’t you know? The Moon wasn’t in sight. A tad of googling revealed that it won’t rise till almost 2 AM, by which time I’ll have been snoring away for over an hour. As usual, the universe didn’t consult with me when drawing up its schedule.

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The Night I Was Serenaded By Space Aliens!

Yeah, Another Blogger84 Comments

The other day I was gearing up to republish one of my early stories, those poor neglected souls that are buried in the WordPress catacombs, though I hadn’t chosen my victim yet. After all, I thought, wouldn’t it be right to give new life to an essay that almost nobody read when it came out in 2015? Why, back then my blog had fewer readers than Donald Trump has good qualities.

But then I pondered the situation a bit more and said to myself, “nah!” I mean, I don’t really want to read any of that moldering stuff either, so I’m going to spare you. Therefore it is time for me to regroup and write another chunk of new material. But what? Oh well, I’ve been putting it off long enough. I’ve always figured that nobody would believe me (not even my wife Sandy), and that I’d be labeled a kook (just like the other people who’ve gone public with stories almost identical to the one I’m about to tell). But I’m pretty sure I don’t care about that anymore. Sandy and everyone else, hold onto your hats or whatever the hell you want to hold onto. I swear upon my dead goldfish’s body that every word I’m about to type is true. What follows are my recollections of the night I was serenaded by space aliens!

Photo credit: The Virgin Group

It was a dark and stormy night. Damn straight it was. Exhausted, I crept into bed at 12:45 AM, about half an hour earlier than usual, and within seconds was sound asleep. Sandy, even more pooped than me, had conked out at 12:15. That’s what dark and stormy nights will do to you. October 25, 2012, my 65th birthday, was off to a very inauspicious start.

I’d been in dreamland for no more than 40 minutes when I felt a tapping on my shoulder. “What’s wrong, Sandy?” I yelled, shocked out of my deep slumber. But nothing was wrong with Sandy, who continued to sleep the sleep of babies. That’s when I saw a hazy ball of pale green light hovering one foot above me. A thick and long projection, aglow in muted yellow, extended from the ball’s core. The projection, a finger to end all fingers, jabbed me in the shoulder good and hard.

“Yo, nitwit, don’t fall back asleep unless you’d like me to slap you real profoundly upside your head. I’ve come a long way to meet with you, so get out of bed, put some clothes on, grab your house keys and follow me. A surprise awaits you,” the aura said. It’s true that I’m pretty much a nitwit, but despite that I know that in certain circumstances it behooves one to follow orders.

“How’d you get in here?” I managed to ask the aura as we went down the stairs, summoning up an iota of courage from I know not where. “And how come you speak English? Are you of Anglo-Saxon descent?”

The aura stopped moving and looked at me, so to speak, straight in the eyes. “Listen,” it said, “I’d have found a way into your house under any circumstances. But you made it easy for me. You left your front door unlocked, genius! And why do I speak English? I am fluent in every language spoken throughout the universe, of which there are millions. I am not your average Joe. And speaking of Joe, my true name would be unpronounceable for you, so Joe is what I want you to call me. Kapeesh?”

“Yes sir, I mean Joe,” I said.

“Okay, Neil, let’s get going again.” Naturally, Joe knew my name.

Moments later we were outside. I locked the front door and followed Joe, who floated through the air very purposefully, to my backyard. Plunk in its middle sat a sleek round vehicle, maybe 20 feet in diameter and gleaming in what little light penetrated the sky’s turbulent clouds. I was getting pounded by rain. With his sturdy finger Joe opened the spacecraft’s door and waited for me to enter. He then floated inside and closed the door. Joe’s dim glow wasn’t enough for me to make out distinct details of the interior, but I recognized the shapes of a table and several chairs. Even an aura needs to sit, or shall we say rest upon something now and then, I surmised. And a table comes in handy almost anywhere, don’t you think?

In any event, the main things going on involved my heart, which was beating at a faster pace than it ever had, and the state of my bowels, which were poised to soil my pants. What was in store for me? Was this the end?

“Joe,” I said, “give me a break. I’m not too bad a guy. After all, I’m doing my bit to keep print publications alive by subscribing to half a dozen of them. And I helped an old lady cross the street not too long ago. Well, come to think of it, that was last year. But you get the idea.”

Joe ignored my comments. “Sit down, Neil,” he said brusquely. He then reduced the volume of his illumination, lowering it more and more till he was invisible to me. The end, I was certain, was only seconds away. Probably Joe’s versatile finger would be involved in my demise.

Next thing I knew, though, the ship’s interior began to brighten. Within moments Joe was shining like a 150-watt bulb. And Joe wasn’t alone. No, beside him another aura had appeared, and its luminance was the equal of his.

“Neil, I would like you to meet . . . wait, pronouncing her name is beyond human capabilities. You shall call her Jane.” From Jane’s mauve core a baby blue projection, as firm and lengthy as Joe’s, emerged. It reached out to me, gently brushing my forehead. I liked that.

“Hello, Neil,” Jane said.

“Jane, I’m honored,” I gulped.

Jane continued to rub my forehead as she settled into a chair next to mine. Joe sat opposite me, waiting for Jane to speak again.

“Neil, it is for a very good reason that Joe and I have traveled the spaceways to make your acquaintance,” Jane began. “We are cosmic ambassadors of good will and visit your small planet every day, quietly and efficiently, from our home many light years away. Back and forth, back and forth. That’s what we do. And each visit is on the occasion of a special someone’s 65th birthday, a day on which many humans need some cheering up. I say special only in an affectionate sense, of course. I’m not implying that there is anything particularly special about you. And here’s why we are crossing paths: On December 31, 2011 Joe and I threw into a humongous hat the names of every person on Earth who would turn 65 in 2012. We drew names until we had one for each date of the year. Neil, you are the selectee for October 25.”

“Yes, you now are officially old, Neil, but we are here to tell you that you shouldn’t feel blue about that,” Jane continued. “Countless millions of humans are on the same rung of the age ladder as you, or above, so take comfort in their company. What’s more, there might be many more years of good life ahead of you. And if not, well, your journey will have been a fulfilling one when it reaches its conclusion, n’est-ce pas?”

And with that Jane and Joe shoved their remarkable fingers beneath the table and lifted up a chocolate birthday cake. Happy Birthday, Big Guy! it read. Sixty-six unlit candles, one of them for good luck, covered the cake’s surface. Jane aimed her finger at the candles and they instantly ignited, just as I knew they would. As I blew the candles out, Joe and Jane serenaded me with the Happy Birthday song. And I soon joined in. Our three-part harmonies were majestic, reaching the ethers.

“Neil, I want to apologize for the way I acted towards you before,” Joe said after the song was sung, shoveling chocolate cake into his core. “I’m kind of testy, on edge. This Earthly assignment is getting to me. Jane and I have been doing this gig for, what, 100 years? I can’t begin to tell you how f*cking sick I am of the Happy Birthday song. Shit, if my planet had a retirement system I’d be first in line to sign up. Ah, what’s the use? It’s been a pleasure, pardner. Adios.” He opened his ship’s door and out I went.

A few minutes later, stuffed with cake, I was back in bed. Joe and Jane silently had lifted off from my backyard, their ship disappearing from sight in less than a nanosecond. Never again, I’m certain, will I see them.

Nearly six years have elapsed since my 65th spin around the Sun. I think about Joe and Jane every day. And I take delight in the knowledge that studied opinions and from-the-heart outpourings, uplifting or not, can arrive from outer space.

 

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