Well, I have had such a busy day at work that I have missed all of the news, until now.
I am so thankful that Discovery has landed safely.
I am only now logging on to the Internet and catching up on the news of how today’s landing played out. I liked the following comment:
"The shuttle's historic return to flight is one of the triumphant American moments of 2005, and the culmination of millions of man-hours put in by engineers, scientists, astronauts and everyone else associated with NASA."
Those were the words of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, [R-Sugar Land], whose district includes the Johnson Space Center, as he congratulated the Discovery crew and NASA on the shuttle's safe landing.
Coincidentally, after work I went to Chapters for coffee [no... really?] and I happened to pick a book off the shelf as I browsed around the store with my Starbucks coffee....
It was Kurt Vonegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
Early on in the book, the drunken hero (I think his name is Eliot) accidentally blunders into a convention of science fiction writers and makes the following little speech:
I love you sons of bitches. You’re all I read any more. You’re the only ones who’ll talk about the really terrific changes going on, the only ones crazy enough to know that life is a space voyage, and not a short one, either, but one that’ll last for billions of years. You’re the only ones with guts enough to really care about the future, who really notice what machines do to us, what wars do to us, what cities do to us, what tremendous misunderstandings, mistakes, accidents, and catastrophes do to us. You’re the only ones zany enough to agonize over time and distances without limit, over mysteries that will never die, over the fact that we are right now determining whether the space voyage for the next billion years or so is going to be Heaven or Hell.
Today’s successful Discovery landing is science fiction become reality!
It is an engineering, mathematical, technical, and profoundly human FEAT that I hope we never take for granted, or consider commonplace.
Three cheers!
Eliot Rosewater.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great character. One of Vonnegut's earliest creations and I think one of his best. He makes an appearance in the well-known Slaughterhouse-Five too and he tells Billy Pilgrim something to the effect that our psychiatrists are going to have to come up with new lies to tell people or they aren't going to want to live any more.
His flaw: he loves people too much.
I think that Vonnegut, like Robert Frost, had a lover's quarrel with the world. To me, this book seems to reflect that view.
This hilarious but pointed satire would make an excellent book club book. . . if one were inclined toward being the book club sort of reader, that is.
Glad to hear that you had a good vacation, but it is so nice to have you back occupying this space.
Always a pleasure. . .