Frank Langella used his eyes, tousled hair, and a turtleneck to seduce you with ease. His youthful seduction has been exchanged for an aged gravitas. He’d rather not have to look at the gradual transformation.

Frank Langella recently said in an interview on NPR that he doesn’t like to look at his movies. He made the analogy of going up into an attic and paging through photo albums, which forces you to look at your own aging over the years – and, as I extrapolate – the loss of the past, which is now contained only in a fragile image and perhaps an even more fragile memory.

For me, I don’t have to page through photo albums. Just watching old films, especially ones from childhood, sometimes brings me an acute sense of time passage and loss. Since I associate movies, TV, and music with specific periods of my life, I am often drawn back to my first viewings. I could never watch Star Wars without a little residual pulse of  the electric jolt I received watching it cinematically  and repeatedly until my mother forbade me from further viewings at the run-down Rogers Theater.

The Rogers Theater after closing in the mid-eighties. In the late seventies, it didn’t look all that different, but the marquee did feature Star Wars for about six months, long enough for my mother to forbid me from wasting any more of her money on it. 

So that analogous photo album in Frank Langella’s attic awaits me on every screen that I activate. Sometimes I don’t know it’s coming.

With the interweb, this takes the form of an instant obit that lands a sucker punch while I’m sipping my first cup of tea in the morning. A recent punch arrived with Phyllis Diller.

Phyllis Diller died last month. 95 is a pretty good damn run, and I think mentally she was sharp for almost all of it. That’s the way to go, I guess.

Phyllis Diller. The serious look must have been brief.

She led a pretty fantastic life, and the fact that the back half was probably the more fantastic makes it all the better. I feel sad that Phyllis Diller died, for her, but for me too, as she somehow took a little bit of me with her.

That would be the nine-year-old kid who sat watching the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts in the seventies, when the humor was barbed but not venomous, crude but not obscene, insulting yet still delivered with a wink of admiration at the target.

I didn’t get half the jokes, but I knew everyone on the daïs, from Nipsey Russell to Buddy Hackett to Ruth Buzzi to Don Rickles to Phyllis Diller. The podium was a place to shoot zingers, but most of them were extensions of the stars’ already self-deprecating humor or public personae. Behold LaWanda Page at George Burns’ Roast. This was an era when insult comedy routines could be followed by kisses that seem genuine, even to the grown-up Raúl:

***

Phyllis Diller needn’t have been insulted by LaWanda Page. If anything, Diller might have been cribbing notes for her own act.

It’s different now, meaner, with more authentic insults using real personal crises and career failures as fodder for cruel routines that aim more to shock than bring out laughs. Times change.

I missed out on Phyllis Diller’s vinyl recordings, but this record just downloaded. Trust me, she was better on TV later.

When a public personality passes, I really do feel a sense of mourning, part of it for the person who I’ve never met but appreciate for how they’ve entertained me or informed my life, but more for myself, as the loss means another tether severed from my own past. I’ve still got the memories, but if I want to access them concretely, I’m back at a strangely distanced screen, looking at a forty-year-old image through the eyes of a child as well as the eyes of an adult.

The growing chasm between the child and adult’s eyes remind me that I’m getting old. I’m starting to reach the age of some of the comedians on the daïs, and they had to be seasoned to get up there, Freddie Prinze and Jimmie Walker excepted.

I don’t really mind growing older; I’ve always expected it and I’m not investing much energy in fighting it. What I mind is the disappearances that come with death. When a public figure dies, a fragment of my memory flashes like lightning and then settles in for a permanent dim. It’s not as if I ever even met Phyllis Diller, but knowing she was still on the planet made her Roast routines more a part of me. Now they’re a part of my childhood. Over.

This year a lot of lights have been dimmed on Raúl’s Memory Lane.

Don Cornelius hosting Soul Train.

Dick Clark on American Bandstand.

My teenaged self, planted in front of the TV on Saturday mornings, got a double-whammy with Don Cornelius and Dick Clark both permanently leaving the schedule. Neither music show host would fit in today’s splintered music scene. They were both far older than their core audiences even during their peaks, which, in today’s youth society, would have made Soul Train and American Bandstand  the subjects of mockery.

I still remember feeling disheartened when MTV fired their first slate of hosts while I was in college. I thought these guys were the video age answer to Don Cornelius and Dick Clark. I would have to adjust to a faster rotation and shorter shelf-life of music hosts.

The five original MTV VeeJays. J.J. “Triple J” Jackson crossed over in 2004.

Actually, I think this is where I checked out of pop music. Part of me must have wanted familiar faces to introduce new music. Without the guidance of an enthusiastic Martha Quinn or a veteran J.J. “Triple J” Jackson, I figured that I could find my way on my own, which I did, and stumbled my way into used record stores to find older folk music, Tin Pan Alley classics, and treasure troves of sixties and seventies music that had been forgotten by radio, not to mention the later discoveries of boleros and French chanson. Maybe cutting the cord was good for me in the long run.

So change can be good, but death is always hard. Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson dying on the same day? There went a chunk of childhood in a single newscast.

Sure, there is a legacy left behind. Dick Clark, low on personality but high on reliability, takes me back with his onstage chats after (often badly) lip-synched performances. His presence, vanilla though it may be, seems ideal for introducing relatively green performers to a television audience. Note him shepherding The Go-Go’s through an interview, acknowledging each member, and encouraging their future.

***

Don Cornelius, high on cool charisma, gave Raúl a chance to see the Black performers from the hit charts then labeled Soul , hence the name of the train. Speaking of the Soul Train, what more can one hope to give the world than the Soul Train Line? Check out the respect Don Cornelius rolls out for Mary Wilson before consenting to join the line himself!

***

Don Cornelius may not have stood for any competition in showcasing soul on TV, but he knew how to treat the post-Ross Supremes without making them look like leftovers, and he even knew how to rib himself for being too old for the line – and I wholeheartedly disagree on that count.

Raúl knows his priorities aren’t proper, but he can’t help what he feels. Dr. Jonas Salk, I may have hated the shots, but they beat a childhood without being allowed to go to the swimming pool or contracting the polio virus. But somehow we never got down to a personal level.

So Dick Clark and Don Cornelius aren’t Jonas Salk. They were both savvy capitalists with cutthroat instincts against rival intrusion into their respective markets. Jonas Salk made sure that I never got polio, but he wasn’t on my TV once a week, so I never really connected to him. Dick Clark and Don Cornelius were familiar strangers, ones who stamped their mark on my childhood and teenage years, which, rightly or wrongly, were largely consumed by pop music. Over.

Donna Summer – On the Radio.

Maybe the biggest divorce from my adolescence came with the unexpected death of Donna Summer. She was far and away my favorite singer, and though I eventually lost interest in her music and patience with her piety, her voice still brings me to a halt when I hear it.

Her 1980 album, The Wanderer, got the most repeated play on my record player, and surprisingly, stands up 32 years after its release, and the adult Raúl can far better appreciate it for what it is: a musical account of a spiritual awakening. She really should have gone gospel after this one because she never regained its musicality or intensity.

The Wanderer, Donna Summer’s 1980 LP on David Geffen’s new label.

Even though I hadn’t really given Donna Summer much thought in decades, I did feel my heart sink when I saw her death announced in a headline. We never made amends. I know, it’s preposterous. She didn’t know Raúl, but he knew her, and he hates leaving important things unresolved, which is what often happens when someone dies without warning.

That cord to adolescence snapped in a second and left me wobbling with dizziness.

Who am I without my touchstones? Touchstones that I’m no longer temporally touching.  Somehow, occupying that same slice of history links a part of me to a broader culture, to the outside world, even one that goes back 35 years. Donna Summer’s passing makes the link to her Soul Train appearance tenuous. Even Don Cornelius is gone. I’m watching apparitions now, ones not connected to anyone left.

***

Somehow occupying the same time, if not space, forges a connection that is tenuous but meaningful. I identify points in my life with songs, shows, and films that I came of age with and grew older with. The milestones are still with me. When they’re gone, I find myself grasping into the air.

Unseen are the reflections from the hidden mirror that expose not contradictions, but parallels between Indigenous South & Central America and Spain. Raúl needed Carlos Fuentes to spell it out explicitly with prose and photographs of art and architecture.

How do I choose these milestone-bearers? Some of it is just demographics, some of it is quirk, and some indicative of a real identification or fascination with a person. Usually a pop star or film star.

While I enjoy reading, the confinement of the written word somehow lacks the same personal connection for me. The experience of reading for me is solitary, and therefore less of a phenomenon that I can share and plot on a personal or even societal timeline. Moreover, I seldom read books when they are published, and frequently read them by authors who are already dead. This doesn’t weaken their words, but it does lighten the personal stamp that the works and the authors leave on me in terms of time and place.

Carlos Fuentes, whose El espejo enterrado, (The Buried Mirror) gave me a deeper insight into the formation of Latino identity through a weaving of prose and photographs of art than I could have ever imagined. But when he passed, I quickly thought of Gregory Peck, who played the title role in the film version of Fuentes’ unfilmable novel, Old Gringo.

Carlos Fuentes. 1928-2012. Writing prolongs one’s stamp on individuals and even cultures, but even Fuentes will fade.

Gregory Peck as American writer Ambrose Pierce adrift in Mexico in the middling film version of Carlos Fuentes’ Gringo viego – Old Gringo. Admit it, the resemblance to Carlos Fuentes is quite strong here.

Movies and music seem to trump even intellectual epiphany. What does that say about me? I don’t feel guilty or stupid or even shallow, but I do feel like I need to spread the love, or sorrow, as the case may be, to a broader set of personalities. Either that, or I need to narrow the set considerably, which is difficult, for as public figures die, they not only flip open and then immediately snap shut chapters in my personal history, announcing the passage of time like an unwanted bell tower, they remind me of my own mortality and what I have done and not done with my life.

Marcel Proust’s flood of involuntary memories famously came from a madeleine cookie from his childhood. Mine flood in unexpectedly from death announcements, often regarding people who I’ve not thought of in years, people whose brand-new ghosts burst into the room, show themselves as vivid apparitions from my childhood or adolescence, and then quickly fade away, taking with them what feels like a bit of my soul that had been built up decades ago but lying dormant until awakened by death.

Robert Hegyes as Juan Epstein from Welcome Back, Kotter.

When the Sweathogs started dying off this year, I didn’t think much of it, until I realized that I’d considered them something close to peers at one point, when as a child I watched them play high school students on Welcome Back Kotter in the seventies. First Robert Hegyes, who played Juan Epstein, the Puerto Rican Jew who always had an excuse for not doing his homework. (My brother sent me his death announcement via an email which read, “Dear Mr. Kotter, please excuse my son for not doing his homework. He has died. Signed, Juan’s Mother.”) Then recently, Ron Palillo, who played Horshack, passed away.

I became somewhat intrigued by Ron Palillo’s story, as death had outed him, just as it had Sally Ride around the same time. Both had long-term partners who became uninivisible, not because they were with their famous partners, but, ironically, because they were standing alone without them.

Ron Palillo as Arnold Horshack in Welcome Back, Kotter.

A homosexual Horseshack. Who knew? The story of his post-Kotter life seems rather pathetic. His Horshack character and the trademark snorting laugh stereotyped him and probably exhausted the public with his presence. He couldn’t get back on track, even when agreeing to appear on Celebrity Boxing in the match-up of the TV geeks, Palillo’s Horseshack from Kotter vs. Dustin Diamond’s Screech from Saved by the Bell.

Not a fair fight. Horshack vs. Screech.

I recall watching the match – yes, I watched it on purpose – with a visiting out-of-town friend, who I’ll call Jackie, who flew into a rage before the two has-beens even squared off: “Horseshack is like 25 years older, 25 pounds lighter, and a foot shorter. This isn’t fair!” The match went even worse than Jackie had feared, with Diamond landing one punch after another onto his senior’s face, making Palillo angrier and the fight all the more futile. Half of Horseshack’s energy rode straight into his eyes, which shot out blistering bolts of anger.

***

Was he angry at Screech, for whomping him in the ring and not respecting his TV forerunner, or was Palillo raging against himself for submitting to a public humiliation so supreme that it didn’t even draw laughs. The crowd even booed Screech as he strutted around the ring in the thrall of victory while Horseshack panted fumes of frustration and fury over a badly swollen eye and very badly dyed bleach blonde hair. It didn’t work as comedy and was simply too sad for Schadenfreude. Ron Palillo became the object of pity, puffing away in the corner as we saw the extent of his bruised face and damaged soul.

At least someone was in Palillo’s corner, though unseen by the camera: Palillo’s partner, who lashed out at Diamond, warning karmic retribution for what Screech had just done to his boyfriend in the boxing ring. The whole account is right here.

Let’s give Ron Palillo a better send-off. Sharp in a tux. No Kotter. No boxing ring. It’s too bad his partner didn’t make the shot. That would have brought a little positive publicity.

Reading about Ron Palillo and his real life outside of mine – with its sadness and hidden layers under a silly surface – popped up repeatedly rather than bursting and fading. There was a real person there behind the Horshack laugh and hand-raising “Ooh-ohh” that made him a temporary phenomenon and a more permanent figure of ridicule. Ron Palillo wasn’t Horshack; I already knew that. I didn’t know how badly he tried to continue acting, the great pains he must have taken to hide his homosexuality, or the failed career and possibly financial desperation that led him into that boxing ring. I certainly could have imagined all of that, but reading it after he died made that Horshack-Ghost take on new forms, unconfined to Welcome Back, Kotter.

It wasn’t about me.

Snap out of the solipsism, Raúl!

Horshack still occupied the 1978-ish spot on my timeline, and indeed, my chronological radar still issued a blip on Ron Palillo’s passing, but his ghost drifted away from ’78 and spilled spectral ink all over the place, as if to announce to me what he’d been trying to tell the world: he wanted more than Horshack.

I was left wondering, in an age where coming out is no longer instant career ruination or necessary limitation, why didn’t he show up at an opening with his partner and kiss him on the lips in front of the one camera that a low-rent paparazzo might have trained on him? It certainly couldn’t have hurt his career by that point. In his sixties, was he still cowed by familial influence or just sitting inside the closet out of anxiety, having made it a way of life for his public adulthood?

What did he think when acting elders like Richard Chamberlain and Tab Hunter and George Takei came out? Did it not register that he could too?

George Takei as Sulu in Star Trek. There are about one million Star Trek shots to suggest a queer take on Sulu. This is one of my favorites.

George Takei is now bigger than he ever was as Sulu, his character on Star Trek that he had never really slipped away from. Takei put his name in a political spotlight and walked away with a new generation of social media fans and a real influence on how the public views gays and lesbians. (I’m less certain of his effect on the BT in LGBT.) With eyes back on him, he had a new audience to hear about life in Japanese internment camp during World War II, raising consciousness about something not related to gayness that drew in the shared experience of an entire generation of Japanese Americans. Hear his testimony about his childhood experience in the camps:

***

And it isn’t all heavy. George Takei’s sometimes cute and sometimes political interweb quotation/photo collection gets posted and re-posted on Facebook, frequently by my high school acquaintances who in their greener days were not hesitant to slurs to denigrate others. But now they celebrate his wit and kindness, rather than dismissing him as a Jap faggot, the phraseology of which now seems mostly confined to anonymous message boards and Youtube comments. The closet has been reversed, and Takei is now out enjoying the natural light.

Publicly coming out is not career-killer when you’re a figment of the pop culture past; it thrusts you into the immediacy of the present for multiple generations and forces the public to reconsider your real life and reflect anew on what it means to them.

Kristy McNichol and Meredith Baxter – a micro-cluster of lesbianism from the 1970s show Family, just made public announcements. I doubt Baxter would have landed on The Today Show otherwise. McNichol seemed to just want it out of the way. Done. She’s got that off her shoulders. I don’t know if a book deal is in the works, and I don’t think she wants to act again, but in thinking about Little Darlings, I realize that if she has even a sliver of the purity she put on the screen then, Raúl would throw his arms open to welcome her back. She gets to find her blip on my radar while still keeping both feet planted in our earthly dimension.

For McNichol, her official announcement was met by some confusion among many lesbians and gays who assumed that she had come out years ago.

What did Ron Palillo think of the younger generation of actors going public as gay? Ricky Martin? Neil Patrick Harris? That guy who plays the nerdy genius on The Big Bang Theory, the one who wins Emmys for playing a simple caricature that Raúl finds just as horribly unfunny as the sitcom itself  - despite unbridled family enthusiasm for the program, expressed both in conversation and in the audible volume that seems to publicize to the entire neighborhood that the show is on.

This guy – okay, Jim Parsons, I looked it up – is like the Horshack of today, except he’s gay, not unapologetically, just incidentally. I don’t see any real difference when I have to watch BBT; it’s an easy, broad character with quirks repeated ad nauseam for laughs. Sheldon and Horshack fall into the same category of characters for me, but Parsons is winning Emmys and doesn’t think twice about  picking them up with his boyfriend in tow.

Anyone older than 40 can tell you that this tabloid piece would have been unthinkable in 1978. We celebrate that Jim Parsons can do this. Do we then also acknowledge that Ron Palillo simply couldn’t?

Did Ron Palillo feel a little resentful that the premiere geek of American TV outed himself with no fanfare and continued to perform on his hit show without a ripple? Was there a lingering bitterness that he had been born into the wrong generation?

Did Palillo fear the catty homosexuals who would not embrace Palillo, but ridicule Horshack, preferring their mainstream gays to be young-ish with viable careers, rather than laughingstocks from yesteryear, with the most recent public achievement being beaten to a pulp by a disgraced actor from Saved by the Bell?

Did he feel out of place, not having twins like Ricky Martin and Neil Patrick Harris?

Neil Patrick Harris and partner with twins in a full- spread celebration rather than condemnation.

Ricky Martin gets cross-cultural approval from the mainstream media as he raises twin boys.

Palillo was not of the openly-gay-celebrity-dad-raising-a-wholesome-family generation.

Neither is George Takei. The opportunity was there. Why Palillo didn’t take it before he crossed over is a mystery to me, an unknown that makes him more real to me as I’m forced to ponder his existence beyond the set of Welcome Back Kotter.

I’m of a generation in between Ron Palillo and Neil Patrick Harris. As a result, I think I understand both. I feel happy for NPH and the success he’s forged out of genuine talent which supersedes his gayness. People respect him. But let’s face it, his life would have turned out very differently had he been born twenty, or even ten years earlier. We need to focus on the present but keep a sharp eye on the past. LGTB people can stand taller now, but they need to remember they’re taller from standing on the broken bones of their forebearers, who carried heavy burdens that crushed some spiritually and physically.

Horshack doesn’t seem funny to me right now. I see Palillo’s ghost instead, and I’m not sure he can leave just yet.

Everybody has a real life, but not everybody’s life gets serious consideration from me.

What happens when a real person, as in someone I know, slips away as suddenly as a Ron Palillo? When someone passes away without warning or without any goodbyes?

Solipsism takes a back seat. I wonder about God. I think about all the people whose lives have been touched and who are now mourning. The standard stuff, I suppose.

Frank Langella’s Attic is now online.

Last month this happened. An unexpected passing. After a flood of photos began to appear on the facebook, some including me, I looked at my friends and myself from ten and twenty years ago. Frank Langella’s figurative attic is now a mainstay of social media. You don’t have to pull down a ladder from the ceiling and fight through cobwebs to get at the old photos. They’ve already been scanned and posted. Lo and behold, I no longer look 22. Thankfully, I don’t claim to feel it either.

Strangely, I can’t place when most of the photos were taken. I can usually guess within a couple of years, but that’s not what occupies my mind. These real events take place on a time line semi-parallel to the distinctly linear pop culture one, this other one full of inaccuracies and grey zones rather than plotted points that can be substantiated by looking up sitcom runs on Wikipedia or IMDB.

Zingers take the shape of an astrological sign to celebrate a birthday.

But it strikes me in a different way. I see a recent birthday party that I showed up hours later for, but then I marvel at the cake, intricately engineered from fucking Zingers™  and splendiferously, lovingly decorated in shimmering, probably toxic red – by someone who is now suddenly, permanently gone. I wonder at the passage of time and the joy of life captured in a proudly displayed birthday cake – and that moment in isolation, when a memory was captured in a blurry photo, though the reproduction carries more than the scanned image suggests, at least to the person who bit into the cake. It was an experience that cannot be watched or listened to again. The cake serves as an access door. What lies behind is for me to find for myself.

And one memory blends into another. I jump from a backyard birthday party to a communal video viewing in a apartment. When? I dunno. Five years ago? More? It’s in the grey zone – the time, not the experience. I remember everyone draped on armchairs, crashed on couches, lying belly-down on the floor, all facing the old tube TV playing a completely unknown 1974 Italian film starring Elizabetyh Taylor, titled in English The Driver’s Seat, picked up at the Dollar Store by our sharp-eyed hostess. Nobody knew what to expect; what we got was gasp after gasp, repeated calls for pausings to examine frames, and demands for rewinds to fully take in what we thought we’d just witnessed. When Liz has a shocking, inexplicable encounter with Andy Warhol, we had to stop the film entirely for a recovery period:

***

The clip, I realize, serves a mirrored purpose. Instead of making me feel forlorn about a shared group of friends that can never be reunited on this earth, it brought something back that was lost, something that I wanted to share, something that could be recreated. I instantly feel the shared shock shot out from the screen into the room. It wasn’t my experience; it was our experience. When I see it now, even alone, in an entirely different context, I have that moment again. I don’t relive it. I just have it and I clutch it tightly. Is it Proust’s madeleine? No, not an involuntary memory – I sought this one out, though I didn’t realize how deeply I would feel what came with it.

My first birthday abroad alone. I know this was a vacation in Bangkok. I didn’t think much of my birthday, but my parents did. I am fairly certain in this conversation I beg for some money and they explain to me how to get a cash advance with a credit card and how much it is going to cost me. Thanks, Mom. Lesson learned early.

Not knowing that depth can be scary. I’ve been toting around a set of cassette tapes for almost twenty-five years, from the first year that I lived abroad. My parents would phone me once a fortnight at great expense, I imagine just to hear my voice, since I actually wrote letters back then. (Oh, letters, how I miss you.) My father’s toys were his technology, and he used to tape record all of our trans-oceanic conversations. I used to feel irritated that everything that I said would be recorded, listened to repeatedly, and then maybe shared with grandparents. Couldn’t we just have a simple conversation, albeit one that took place in two hemispheres? I was a young adult, but I’m now stunned at how much went past me without thought: my parents missed me, they worried about me, they wanted my grandparents to hear me speak because my absence to them in their old age might be permanent. I just wanted to chat, and I blithely ignored what my voice, not my words, meant to my family.

Unbeknownst to me, my phone calls were recorded from  Germany back to the States. Here I discover a tape that straddles Europe and the U.S., where I must be falsely explaining my extended presence in NY, which was actually sleeping on people’s sofas in Manhattan with no real job and no money left. I promised to come soon. And the dates! Who needs Wikipedia when I had my father penciling in dates all over cassette labels? I was in Hamburg exactly 22 years ago. Thanks, Dad. Duly noted in 2012.

Appreciation comes with age and with loss. My father died over ten years ago. I cleared out his piles of tapes after his death. The ones from my first year abroad now sit in a drawer in a bureau in a closet, about as far removed from my eyes and ears as I can make them without ascending to the attic, that Frank Langella attic. I want the tapes close but invisible. I’ve never listened to them. Not once. Of course I am curious. But more I’m afraid and unprepared. I mended a very damaged relationship with my father before he passed away. Listening to our conversations would take me back to a point in my life when I felt I’d escaped my family by moving across the Pacific Ocean, but the physical distance could not overcome the bonds, healthy and unhealthy, that still tied me back to them. I don’t know what I will hear in my voice. Youthful giddiness, post-adolescent insouciance, gratitude, ingratitude, sugar-coated lies, badly concealed homesickness mixed with glee at my first taste of adult semi-independence? I’m betting on everything.

What I can’t bet on is hearing my parents’ voices, and if I remember correctly, the occasional contribution of a visiting grandparent. My own voice I’m almost ready to confront. The voices of the dead I am not. Their spirits don’t scare me. The old voices do. They’re gone and this is the closest I can come to revisiting them. But I haven’t been able to because I will feel the overwhelming rush of the loss again.

Or maybe not. Maybe, like the Liz Taylor movie, the cassette recordings can bring me back without breaking me. I know even the tapes have an analog shelf life. I’ve got to listen to them before they degrade and can’t even preserved in a digital format.

This isn’t nostalgia. It’s about memory and loss. I don’t believe in the good old days and I don’t long to return to my past, but I do want a connection to it, be it a stunning moment of cinematic revelation shared with close friends, my own recorded conversations with people I loved who died ten and twenty years ago, or hearing Shalamar’s irresistible Make That Move while watching the Soul Train Line.

***

I just got home from meeting the same friend who graced us with the Liz Taylor experience. Another friend with us noticed that conversations always seem to circle back to parents’ deteriorating health or how we are taking care of them. And a peer just passed, making death seem more present and real than ever. My time lines are filling up. My friend, I’ll call her Hostess, gave me a hug on parting and said, “It’s going to get tougher for this second half of life.” Yeah, I replied, wishing I had something more soothing to say, but what can you say to the bare truth?

There is something already heavenly about this shot of Liberace with Phyllis Diller. It seems like Liberace wasn’t even possible now that he’s gone, but here he is, and Phyllis Diller will one day seem just as impossible, but here she’ll be. Unreal and real, stamped in my mind and a not insubstantial part of me.

I just watched Goodnight, I Love You, a 2004 film about Diller’s final stand-up performance. As showbiz documentaries go, it’s a lot like a middling project for cable, save for Diller pulling off the mask of the cackling comic and letting us see what it takes to become another persona. She’s extremely proud of her career and wants to leave it while she can still perform without cue cards. Touring and traveling have gotten too difficult, and her pacemaker literally makes the standing part of stand-up too grueling. She’s gotten too old for the gig; the good thing is that she knows it.

Watching her in rehearsal demonstrates that she’s still a pro, ensuring that the lighting, sound, and musical cues are all to her specifications. She even directs the announcer with moments for pausing, just in introducing her longtime opening act, magician Robert Strong. Phyllis Diller may have had a hard time getting to the stage, but once there, she’s in her element.

Phyllis Diller has always insisted on five minutes of complete silence before going onstage. Even at the end of her career. Especially. She loves the silence as much as the laughter and applause.

She likens getting a room maintaining laughter in a dark room full of people to Atlas lifting the world – and loving it. But she’s tired, her memory isn’t as sharp, and the light is dimming.

Her best moments come in both the rehearsals and her interviews, from which we learn that unlike her stage persona, she is a gourmet cook, auto enthusiast, and accomplished pianist. She even plays the harpsichord for us! What we’ve seen on the stage and on the screen is a magnification more of something she recognizes in others than in herself.

By walking onstage in the 1950s stinging herself her self-deprecation, she was unthreatening to male audiences and comics, and slyly appealing to women, who may not have heard a woman in public proclaim herself a horrible cook who hates housework, doesn’t enjoy her children, and thinks her husband is a numbskull – with jokes to back everything up. Roseanne is quite right in acknowledging her as an important forerunner. I did not get that until now. Phyllis Diller may have had to look ridiculous to get our attention and to keep us from identifying with her observations too closely, but she found her schtick and worked it like she does the keyboard on her piano: she knows where to put every note, set each pause, and how hard to tap the key to make her routine work. The fact that it looks like a casual performance brings her the greatest reward.

On the way home after that sad note with my friend on the second half of life, I thought of Phyllis Diller.  Her second half, as I mentioned at the beginning of this now Proustian piece, was her greatest half. She was well into middle age when she made the zingers stick and became what her obituaries trumpet as the queen of the one-liners. What we saw was an act, but reportedly, the crazed staccato cackle was for real. Phyllis Diller was real, and even though she’s gone, she flared up once again in my mind, this time in a new light. An inspiration. The second half is harder, but it can also be, in some respects, better. We don’t really get to choose how we go out. Ron Palillo had a rough go and ended early. Phyllis Diller made the back half the better half. George Takei has become the biggest star of Star Trek by embracing social media to gain laughs and make influential political statements. And Frank Langella? Though he claims not to look at his old films, he certainly looks unflinchingly back at his long life, at least judging from his filterless memoir. And he’s still at it. The Frank Langella Attic is still filling up, and we’ve got plenty to rummage through after he’s gone.

Frank Langella in 2012: writing a tell-too-much memoir and taking star turns as an old man. The eyes say something different. Maybe I’m still too young to understand exactly what.

1. Sally Ride Science Festival

Named for the recently deceased NASA Astronaut Sally Ride, the Sally Ride Science Festival at LSU is designed to exhibit the wonders of science and appeals to young girls (5th-8th grade).

Granted, this “Thing To Do” is obviously not for everyone. If you don’t have a daughter in middle school, you might not be welcome. But, for those of you with girls, especially those who are shy about their interest in science, bring them so they can experience how cool science is.

For more information and to register, click here.

2. Hot Air Balloon Festival

Baton Rougeans were sorely disappointed in August when the annual Pennington Hot Air Balloon Festival was cancelled. Never fear, Red Stick residents! This weekend the Baton Rouge (more accurately, Gonzales) skies will again fill with the brightly colored, differently shaped (yes, there will be Macy’s Parade-esque balloons – hooray!) flaming balloons.

The three-day festivities begins Friday, September 21 at the Lamar-Dixon Expo Center in Gonzales.

Check it out!

3. The HomeGrown Harvest Fest

Again, not technically in Baton Rouge, but Kenner is close enough for incredible local talent, right? Right.

The festival will feature craft vendors, musicians, dancers, and all kinds of beautiful tom-foolery in a three-day (Sept. 21-23) talent-filled extravaganza. (I admit that sentence may have had one too many superfluous words, but that should only make you more excited.)

For more information, click here.

4. F.A.M.E. Fall Fashion Show

The Fall Fashion Arts Music and Entertainment Show will be Friday night at The Office downtown.

F.A.M.E. will feature looks from Hemline, Aristocracy and Frock Candy, break dancers, live painting, and a bonus dance party after the shows.

Doors open at 9 p.m., and the entertainment begins at 10 p.m.

5. The 13th Gate and Necropolis 13

Oh, heck yes. This is, indeed the opening weekend for Baton Rouge’s award-winning haunted house.

Go get in the Halloween spirit as early as 6:30 p.m. Friday, September 21, with tickets beginning at $20.

How excited are you?

So excited?

You should be.

Just be careful around the Mammoth.

Get pumped here.

What will YOU do this weekend? Stories and photos welcome in the comments!

Sally Ride (left) and partner Tam O’Shaughnessy (right) address the ALA.  (Image Credit: ALA.)

Let’s go back in time, shall we?

I know. It seems preposterous, on the Internet, to go back even a few weeks. I’m hoping you’ll feel like humoring me.

Let’s go back to July 2nd, to the Andrew Sullivan piece, in which Anderson Cooper self-identified as gay. Then let’s come forward, to just three weeks ago: to July 23rd and the untimely death of Sally Ride.  In the wake of Ride’s death, the public became aware for the first time, of her 27-year partnership with psychologist Tam O’Shaughnessy. Both Cooper’s public declaration and Ride’s posthumous outing revived our cultural conversations about the closet. Or, at least, they revived our conversations about the closeted. As I mull over the public response to these two stories, I’m aware — once more — of the importance of that distinction.

In response to the news of Ride’s same-sex partnership, LGBT organizations largely embraced her as the newest entry into a Who’s Who of queer heroes. Regardless of how Ride felt about the label “lesbian,” we have now affixed that title to her memory, permanently. We’ve also affixed the awareness that she never offered this information to the public while alive.  In short, she — like Anderson Cooper — was (somewhat)* closeted.

The reaction from LGBT figureheads to Ride’s lifelong reticence about her sexuality – has ranged, so far, from c’est-la-vie shrugs to shaken fingers.  Organizations like the HRC have vocalized an attitude that’s effectively “it would have been nice, but we’ll take what we can get.” Others — among them, columnist Andrew Sullivan — have been less sympathetic. A single day after Ride’s death, Sullivan termed her “the absent heroine,” the lesbian role model who could have been, but wasn’t. Ride, in Sullivan’s view, prioritized her own privacy over the message of hope she might have spread to young queer scientists across the globe. Sullivan’s critiques echo the logic of the Anderson Cooper e-mail he shared in July: “Visibility is important, more important than preserving […] privacy.” From this perspective, the discomfort of the individual around “coming out” pales in comparison to the need for representation.

For those in the Sullivan school of thought, claims of privacy have become increasingly unacceptable. The fact that, legally, it was “privacy” that paved the way for gay rights increasingly fails to hold water, in a queer community where “the right to privacy” so often functions as “don’t ask, don’t tell” — where, in short, privacy means invisibility and invisibility means erasure. In this context, queer celebrities need a far better excuse than “privacy” for staying closeted. Or – better yet – they need to just come out.

Of course, not everyone subscribes to Sullivan’s perspective – or to the HRC’s. The Web is rife with the suggestion that coming out quietly, almost as an afterthought, suggests progress. (This post, from evolutionary biologist Jerry A. Coyne, is one example.) If profiles of Ride have minimally commented on her relationship, goes the argument, it is only because lesbianism has become so acceptable that it no longer warrants any special note. Essentially, we gays feel no more need to draw attention to our orientation than our straight counterparts do to broadcast their own. Queerness is now so mainstream, it’s not worth mentioning.

This is, not surprisingly, an argument being made primarily by straight people.

Claims like Coyne’s, that obituaries and wedding announcements rarely mention homosexuality because we now live in a country where “it’s no big deal,” are not easy for the rest of us to swallow. Not when we remember the teenage lesbian couple shot, execution-style, in Texas this past June. Not when we’re still consistently treated as objects of entertainment or objects of disgust. Not when the right of sepulcher so rarely applies to same-sex partners, when only 6 states recognize our marriages, when we can so easily lose custody of our children. Not yet.

Ride’s gay identity is not irrelevant. We have not passed the point of needing openly gay heroes. We have not assimilated so fully into straight America that our representation is unnecessary.

Still, I struggle to swallow Sullivan’s reprise of the old Harvey Milk edict, “come out, come out wherever you are.” I struggle with queer rights activists who position the closeted as opponents of gay rights. Who ignore the dangers of coming out in so many households, neighborhoods, and subcultures. Who dismiss those dangers as necessary risks.

Gay-on-gay pressure to come out is the “bootstraps” of queer discourse: “It wasn’t easy for me, but I did it anyway. Now, why can’t you?”

Yet, how often do we take issue with straight public figures for not dismantling the closet?  Who’s asked NASA to ensure future queer astronauts have options beyond those of Sally Ride? Who’s demanded science and technology programs invest in our involvement, more broadly? Who’s holding the media accountable? Why are we still so quick to believe we have a right to other people’s private lives — and still so slow to change the public influences upon them?

It is a long known fact in social justice circles that the burden to educate and act against oppressive structures must not rest solely on the backs of the disenfranchised. It is a fact rarely put into practice, however, and here again, it’s getting lost.

Those of us who carry the burden of oppression are the most likely to recognize it exists. We are the most likely to understand how insidious it is and how wrong. We are the most likely to take action against it. But we are not the most responsible for doing so.

We have every right to live our lives privately, safely, and as we choose. Transparency is a powerful tool, but none of us is obligated to make use of it. Until we hold the privileged to the same standard for dismantling the closet, I do not believe in judging members of oppressed populations for their failure to do so.

This is the Internet. We’re meant to do better. We’re meant to move forward.

–

(*It should really be more than a footnote on this point that it’s a bit sketch to refer to two people, both out to those who knew them, as closeted because they “failed” to tell the media. Check out this Tumblr post from Stephen Ira for more on this point.)

All of us are acquainted with Americans who gave their lives for their country. We reserve solemn time and space to ceremonies afterwards to celebrate their gifts to their country in the defense of the principles their country stands for and the people who live in it. We go to parades, we hear speeches lauding such heroic people and are told we must never forget them. Pastors pray for their souls in the hereafter and sad-faced relatives accept congressional and presidential medals to commemorate their service to God and flag and country beyond the call of duty.

Politicians show up in great numbers on such occasions, many of whom were draft-dodgers in their day (such as Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney) and left the defense of God and flag and country to others. (I have described these two earlier as “selective patriots.”) These and other fair weather patriots are always around when it is time to TAKE, but try and find them when it is time to GIVE. Given their histories, it is hard for me to see them with their hands over their hearts as the flag marches by at parades since it is a flag they chose not to defend when it was GIVE time, but a flag they now revere when it is TAKE time. I question their stated “love of country,” especially when I compare their records with those such as Gus Grissom, Sally Ride, Alvin York et al.  

There are others in positions of power these days whose love of country is doubtful. They are tea party members of the congress. They have essentially defrauded the people who elected them by pretending that they were going to go to Washington to govern. They came to Washington and have done nothing but get in the way of those who want to govern. They apparently thought they were elected to obstruct the process of governing via non-participation. If so, they are doing a good job.

 Their views are anathema to me as a liberal, of course, but that is not the point. Whatever their views, they should govern. Their views should merely describe their ways and means of governing, not end of governing itself. We have people in the Senate who range in their views from socialist (the senator from Vermont) to states-righter (the senator from South Carolina). I am almost always opposed to the views of the senator from South Carolina, but I will say this for him: he doesn’t let his views keep him from governing. He doesn’t mistake his right wing views for governing itself. He is into the fray.

Tea party people in the House are not in the fray; they from all appearances came to Washington to put an end to the governing process. They sit, like pouting kindergarteners, and just say no. They are each cheating the 600,000 or so people who elected them since such people are as a result not effectively being represented in the process of governing. They are rather being treated to a “just say no” scene.

 I hope such people will not vote to continue such a ridiculous pretense that these so-called “representatives” represent them. To continue such people in office is a certain recipe for continuing gridlock and lethargy in governing. The same applies to Democrats. If I voted for a liberal Democrat and he or she went to Washington and obstructed every initiative proposed, sat on their hands and just said no, I would call my lawyer for the rules of recall in my particular jurisdiction. I want to be represented.

I have to question the patriotism of such “representatives.” Democracy insures that they can have any political views they choose to have, but it does not insure that they can NOT govern. Indeed without representative government, democracy as our undergirding pillar of government is itself at stake. It probably is not treason to NOT govern when elected to do so, but it certainly raises the issue of whether these people are for a continuation of a governing democracy or for their own narrow view(s) of what governing outcomes should be.

This was not an issue for our now dead heroes; they gave their all without regard to whether right or left wing, Democrat or republican, black or white. They did not refuse to participate. They served their country with great valor. Tea party or any other member of congress ought to take a lesson in patriotism from such sacrifice. If they don’t like the environment in Washington, they should think of the environment of others in trench warfare and on the beaches of the South Pacific and all the dead and mangled minds and bodies of the heroes who died for a representative democracy these tea party people are now placing at risk with their juvenile antics. NOT participating is patriotic? Not in my book!

They have the cart before the horse. If they wish a certain outcome as a result of their efforts to govern, then GOVERN! Don’t just sit there! If you have right wing or left wing views, fine, get up on the floor and have your say, but don’t just sit on your hands and say no while putting out the PR releases to the folks back home about how you are keeping the “beasts” at bay,” since YOU, sir or madam, ARE the “beast.”

Representative democracy and its continuation as the bedrock of America’s reason to exist is too precious for us to be forced to watch it bandied about by anyone out of mere political orientation. For those who wish to continue this unpatriotic practice while serving in congress, I recommend voting for his/her opponent, whatever the party. As I have blogged before, I was an American long before I was a Democrat, and I intend to act like it.

I invite tea party people and others to join me. Win or lose, let’s govern!  GERALD  E

Born on May 26, 1951, Sally Ride grew up in Los Angeles and went to Stanford University where she was a double major in physics and English. Ride received bachelor’s degrees in both subjects in 1973. She continued to study physics at the university, earning a master’s degree in 1975 and a Ph.D. in 1978.

That same year, Sally Ride beat out 1,000 other applicants for a spot in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) astronaut program. She went through the program’s rigorous training program and got her chance to go into space and the record books in 1983. On June 18, Ride became the first American woman in space aboard the space shuttle Challenger. As a mission specialist, she helped deploy satellites and worked other projects. She returned to Earth on June 24.

The next year, Sally Ride again served as a mission specialist on a space shuttle flight in October. She was scheduled to take a third trip, but it was cancelled after the tragic Challenger accident on January 28, 1986. After the accident, Ride served on the presidential commission that investigated the space shuttle explosion.

After NASA, Sally Ride became the director of the California Space Institute at the University of California, San Diego, as well as a professor of physics at the school in 1989. In 2001, she started her own company to create

educational programs and products known as Sally Ride Science to help inspire girls and young women to pursue their interests in science and math. Ride serves as president and CEO.

For her contributions to the field of science and space exploration, Ride received many honors, including the NASA Space Flight Medal and the NCAA’s Theodore Roosevelt Award. She was also inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the Astronaut Hall of Fame.

On July 23, 2012, Sally Ride died at the age of 61, following a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer. She will always be remembered as a pioneering astronaut who went where no other woman had gone before.

Source: http://www.biography.com/people/sally-ride-9458284

When I woke up this morning and heard the news that Sally Ride had died, I was devastated.  Although I hadn’t thought about her since the 5th grade when we all had to do presentations on famous women and I acted in my friend’s Sally Ride skit, I nonetheless felt very keenly the loss of an amazing women.  Whenever I’m working on a “play project” it’s always 3 weeks in that I start to lose the motivation and inspiration.  It’s times like these when I need motivation more than ever so I thought I would dedicate a blog post to this amazingly inspiring woman!

“Mustang Sally” on a space mission

Sally Ride was a real boundary pusher when it came to proving that women were just as capable as men in the fields of science.  She’s best known for being the first American woman in space but also still holds the record for being the youngest American in space.  Sally held BAs in english and physics from Stanford (proving both her left and right brain were highly developed) as well as an MA and PhD from Stanford both in physics.  So much for girls aren’t good at math and science!  When Sally was a NASA astronaut in the early 80s she had to endure embarrassing questions from the press like “what’s it like to menstruate in space?” and “do you cry when things don’t go well?”  To think that it was only 20 years ago that it was so strange for a woman to be an astronaut.  

What really made me even more sad than Sally’s passing was the fact that Sally was in the closet about her sexuality during her lifetime.  It was only upon her death that her partner of 27 years Tam O’ Shaughnessy was recognised as one of the family that Sally leaves behind.  Given that Sally was such a private person, I understand Sally’s desire to stay in the closet during her lifetime.  I don’t think that Sally would have wanted her sexuality to upstage all of the great work she was doing pushing the boundaries for women.  So let’s not dwell on irrelevant points!

courtesy of the Telegraph

Here’s a few Sally quotes that I loved:

“All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary”

It’s W-week (as in wedding!) here… The big day is a few sleeps away and things are very, very busy, exhausting, stressful, wonderful, beautiful, awesome…  I was going to take the week off from blogging, but then, noticed a few people using social media to thank their firefighters and police officers on the anniversary of September 11, 2001, and was moved by it.

NYPD Facebook cover – 9/11/12

When was the last time you sent a thank you letter?  A genuine, personal letter thanking someone you’ve met for helping  you, for volunteering for your organization, for buying lemonade from your kid on the tree lawn, for taking good care of your mom when you couldn’t be there?    Thanking people using social media platforms allows you to be creative, public and personal, to encourage interaction, increase engagement and loyalty, and to create original, searchable content.

After Sally Ride’s death, singer songwriter Anne E. DeChant created a tribute video featuring her song Girls and Airplanes. DeChant’s video is an excellent example of a way to both honor and recognize someone who has touched your life AND create meaningful, searchable content, which further optimizes your organization for search.

So you’re not a lovely and talented singer songwriter?  No worries! Thanking one of your volunteers, or someone who’s done something kind for you on Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, or a blog is easy, and it means giving “public” recognition for their dedication.  Your message will be seen not only by the recipient, but all of their friends.   Sometimes, thanking is as simple as “liking” them back or acknowledging their comments as DeChant does here:

With social media, and a little imagination, the possibilities are endless and potentially quite moving.  A video of an elementary school janitor cleaning the floors dutifully and interacting with the children; a classroom full of second graders looking eagerly at their teacher with hands raised; a small child holding a tray in the lunch service line – these are the kinds of scenes that would move people to like, share or forward a message, giving a simple “thank you” to the teachers and staff of your local elementary school a new, global reach.  It’s the ability to share these human stories that makes social media exciting.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Use photos and videos.
• Use a platform like Animoto to make a video out of photographs you upload, and set it to music.
  

  Personal thank yous on Facebook

• Don’t just say thank you – tell your readers who this person is, what makes them special, how they help you or impact the lives of others.  Keep it personal and meaningful.

• Design a badge and give it as an award, encouraging the recipient to post it on his/her Facebook wall and/or blog.
• Retweeet regularly.
• “Like” them back, and “likes” are even more meaningful when they are accompanied by comments.
• Feature volunteers and the work they do on your own wall (be sure to tag them by name):

Volunteer featured on Facebook Page

• Write a feature story about them, or allow them to share their own story in their own words like this Diet Coke love story:
  

  Diet Coke is the netcar of the gods… Making this a match made in heaven (and, an excellent way to use social media to engage followers AND build a brand).

  For other great ideas, check out this blog.

  A thank you post isn’t complete without acknowledging those of you who like and share this blog regularly.  Thanks so much for your patience as I learn along with you!  Please feel free to leave comments, ask questions, suggest topics, etc.

  This post is dedicated to all the fantastic friends who’ve listened to the planning rants, run the errands, and are otherwise helping me to survive W-week:  Nancy, Keith, Adam, Carolyn, Marj, Sheryl, Joe, Michelle, and of course, Deb.

Neil Armstrong’s Death: A Reminder of our Fallen Heroes

portrait astronaut Janice Voss (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“I’ve written this letter to express my debt of gratitude. I can speak only on my behalf, but I cannot fathom that other young minds weren’t also inspired by your strength, your courage, and your humility. You represent a spirit of exploration, a hunger for worlds unknown, stories untold, that those who may follow in your footsteps might otherwise be afraid to embrace.

Today we live in a world ravaged by war, poverty, consumption, and greed. Our politicians and leaders are shackled by the weight of superstition, favor, and promises impossible to keep. But you four, you remind us that even in a time of social unrest, even when we fear we’ve lost our way, our aspirations can be greater than the opposition, we can boldly go into the great beyond, and knowledge, reason–science–can be our guide.

You viewed your own successes modestly. You were reluctant heroes who lead private lives with your families, friends, and loved ones. And although you may not have known it at the time, you made great sacrifices–you risked your lives–for future generations, for people like me, so that we may be inspired to find our candle in the dark. To reach beyond the stars. And for that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and the depths of my mind.”

Ride became the first American woman in space on 18 June 1983, and she is to this day, the youngest American astronaut launched into space. She was the third woman in space, after Valentina Tereshkova (1963) and Svetlana Savitskaya (1982). After Ride’s death, it was revealed that she had been in a 27-year relationship with her partner Tam O’Shaughnessy, making her the first known LGBT astronaut.[4] When someone has the courage and determination to challenge unjust social barriers, to show that they are just as capable as members of the majority group, that person is often remembered for taking a step forward and bringing society with them. It is for this reason that Sally Ride is remembered not just for her own wonderful accomplishments, but also for the impact she had had on others, by inspiring those who have heard of her and speaking out about science education, especially for girls.

The exploration of space fascinates humanity, regardless of the genders of the astronauts, due to the great amount of knowledge that waits for us out in the vastness of that frontier. The fact that there have been female astronauts and at least one LGBT astronaut who worked hard and fought to be included despite the discriminatory assumptions made about them makes me feel that my love of science and of space is shared and understood. It gives me inspiration to keep fighting when someone tries to stop me from accomplishing my dreams. It gives me hope for a better future for science, for our country, and for our world.

I just want to say: Thank you, Sally Ride. Thank you.

Because of Sally Ride and others like her, who worked hard and fought for their dreams, the lives of girls and women who want to go into science are better. We have more opportunities than we would have if they hadn’t done what they did. In their actions and successes, we have historical precedents and inspirational stories. Because they followed their dreams, we can follow ours, and the people who will be able to see that amazing view of the Earth from space in the future will hopefully be drawn from all of humanity.

Ride, Sally Ride.

We go through it routinely, this cycle. Whether through typically purposeful media hype or other more organic mechanisms, we inflate celebrities to the status of heroes. Then comes the inevitable, but somehow surprising fall of these faux heroes due to their completely predictable human failings.

Maybe the problem lies, not with those we’ve chosen to elevate, but with ourselves and our choices of heroes.

After all, what is it we think a hero is?

A hero is not someone who just does extraordinary feats. If that were true, every circus freak would be a hero. No, a hero is someone who does extraordinary feats: (1) while exposing themselves to risk (physical, emotional, to their reputations) or danger; and (2) doing so in order to benefit others. Examples might include, exploring previously undiscovered places, saving others in time of war, or teaching girls to read in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

By that definition, and I say this as a dedicated fan of sport, there is nothing inherently heroic about athletics; athletics being simply being a category of popular entertainment.

The latest revelations about Lance Armstrong have led to a by-now typical round of hand-wringing about the loss of our “heroes.” At this late date, anyone – and I mean anyone – who holds sports personalities as heroes must be: (1) a child, (2) hopelessly ignorant, or (3) both blind and deaf.

Since 1998, more than a third of the top finishers of the Tour de France have admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs at some point in their careers or have been officially linked to doping.

Major-league baseball’s latest, but by no means only high-profile cheaters, Melky Cabrera and Bartolo Colon. Colon was having a solid year and Cabrera was selected MVP of the All-Star game before being caught taking banned performance enhancing substances.

In previous years, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Manny Ramirez were all-star baseball players who used banned drugs.

Olympian and universally-beloved “golden girl” Marion Jones admitted to using steroids.

Want real heroes? Find people worthy of the title.

At the age of 32, Physicist Sally Ride became an astronaut and was the first American woman to orbit the earth. Marine sergeant and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer risked his own life to save 13 US troops and 23 Afghan soldiers by providing the cover in a firefight necessary for their escape. Mohandas Gandhi exposed himself to prison, beatings and ridicule in his fight for Indian rights and independence.

Barry Bonds and his ilk, pardon the expression, aren’t even in the same league.

As long as we continue to elevate entertainment personalities, both athletes and others, to the status of heroes, we’ll continue to go through this wrenching but, in the end, essentially empty and meaningless cycle of apotheosis and public destruction.

La Voyage dans la lune (1902)

Considered to be the first known science fiction film, the 14-minute-long La Voyage dans la lune (also known as A Voyage to the Moon or A Trip to the Moon) is a showcase of technical advances in filmmaking. Georges Méliès innovated various special effects and animation techniques to shoot this story about a group of six astronomers who launch themselves in a giant bullet toward the moon. The lunar surface is depicted as a cavernous, mushroom covered landscape inhabited by a race of insect-like aliens called Selenites. This classic film has received considerable attention since being restored with hand-colored frames for a re-premier at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival (along with an excellent new soundtrack by Air). Martin Scorsese’s Hugo also features the famous moon landing scene, and even incorporates Georges Méliès into its storyline.

Aelita (1924)

Long before Tarkovsky, Russian film began its cosmonautical love affair with Yakov Protazanov’s Aelita, the first feature-length science fiction silent film. The story follows a man who, after arriving on Mars by rocket ship, starts a Martian revolution and becomes the love interest of the voyeuristic Queen Aelita. Elaborate costumes and fantastical set designs abound.

Frau im Mond (1929)

Fritz Lang’s silent film, Frau im Mond (released as Woman in the Moon in the UK and By Rocket to the Moon in the US) was one of the first films portraying modern rocket technology in a realistic way. The main characters of the film make the surprising discovery that there’s no gold on the moon. It does, however, turn out to have a breathable atmosphere.

Rocketship X-M (1950)

Even astronauts make a wrong turn or pull off at the wrong exit from time to time. In Kurt Neumann’s Rocketship X-M, a crew is on an expedition to the moon but winds up going to Mars instead. The first of many sci fi films to feature a theramin score.

Destination Moon (1950)

George Pal’s depiction of a rocket launch to the moon, done in a documentary style, is one of the first science fiction films to offer a realistic portrayal of a successful space flight program. The film also offers interesting connections to the more recent cuts on government funding for NASA, suggesting in a rather Cold War-inflected tone that the future of space travel will be dominated by private interests. Watch the full movie here.

Project Moonbase (1953)

Richard Talmadge’s Project Moonbase is most interesting for what was at the time a highly progressive, realistic vision of a future in which women are given egalitarian treatment, anticipating the progressive tone of many other famous science fiction classics, such as Star Trek. It’s even better with the MST3K commentary.

Abbott and Costello go to Mars (1953)

On the other end of the science fiction spectrum is the famous screwball comedy team’s movie about a pair of astronauts heading for Mars who inadvertently take a detour to New Orleans Mardi Gras, get hijacked by bank robbers, and end up on Venus. Watch the trailer above.

Cat-Women of the Moon (1953)

Arthur Hilton’s Cat-Women of the Moon is the height of campy ’50s sci fi movies. An expedition discovers a race of — you guessed it — Cat-Women living on the moon, who attempt to use their feminine guile to distract the male crew members and hijack their spaceship. As you could probably guess of a movie about alien Cat-Women, love becomes the source of their undoing, as one of the aliens gives away the sinister plot to one of the handsome astronauts.

Conquest of Space (1955)

Another venture in realism by George Pal, the tagline of Conquest of Space reads: “See how it will happen in your lifetime!” While the film dutifully portrays the hardships of space travel and a refreshingly uninhabited and inhospitable Martian landscape for ’50s, the movie ends on a rather heavy-handed improbability: The thirsty crew is inexplicably saved by a Martian Christmas snowfall. A precursor to Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, perhaps?

The Angry Red Planet (1959)

Imagining what extraterrestrial life might look like has played a prominent role in the history of science fiction film. One possibility, explored in Ib Melchior’s The Angry Red Planet, is a grotesque hybrid of a bat and a spider. But let’s hope not.

It’s true that I don’t believe in wasting massive amounts of money on honoring the dead.  If I’ve offended you by saying that, I’m sorry for you and your losses.  After all, I sell fake flowers to people who perpetually put them on grave sites.  However, I’ll admit that when I was in London, I did have the urge to visit High Gate to put a towel on Douglas Adams’ tombstone, just not enough time in that vast city to do it.

I do, however, believe in passing on the legacy of the deceased.  Here are five people whose work has had a profound influence on my life, and perhaps on yours as well.  My only regret is that I’ll never get to thank them for what they’ve done.

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”  -The Tempest Act 4, Scene 1, 156-158

Neil Armstrong (August 25th)

I grew up with a firm understanding and education on the space race.  I have relatives in Houston, TX who always supplied my brother and I with enough memorabilia from NASA’s control center to feed our young imaginations.  Neil Armstrong was a household name like Charles Dickens or even Paul the Apostle.

That’s why it bothered me when one of my university professors didn’t know his name.  I was in her office and she was doing a crossword puzzle.  She read the clue out loud, “Man on the moon…Armstrong…”  I blurted out, “NEIL ARMSTRONG!”  For a space geek like me, this was horrifying.  It was difficult to contain my shock that any human being on God’s green earth wouldn’t know the name of the first man on the moon.  You might as well have asked an actor, “What’s the name of that playwright…first name William…?”

Mr. Armstrong really has fueled the imaginations of people from around the world.  He fulfilled the “prophesies” of Edgar Allen Poe, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells and all of science fiction writers and film makers of the 1950s and 1960s.  They all could only speculate on what a trip could be like in their respective works.  Even after he left the “magnificent desolation” behind, he still fuels our imaginations today from the third Transformers movie, to the plethora of Apollo mission conspiracy theories, to the hopes, dreams and ambitions of eager children, and a blog post writer who still wishes that she could be the first woman on the moon.

Cheers, Neil!  Who knew that mankind would make such a huge leap?

Sally Ride (July 23rd)

Twenty years after Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space.  Not only that, but she still holds the record of being the youngest American astronaut to be launched into space at age 32.

As mentioned before, I grew up with more of an in-depth knowledge of the space program than most other kids.  When I was in preschool, my parents gave me a space shuttle birthday party.  Good times!

Sally Ride will continue to have a legacy of inspiring young women to pursue their dreams.

Andy Griffith (July 3rd)

One day my father came home with a VHS of six hours of the Andy Griffith Show.  We watched the majority of that tape during a family New Year’s celebration.  My brother and I instantly became fans.  When the family took road trips, he and I would sit in the back seat quoting almost entire episodes from memory (“The Big House” was our favorite).

Andy Griffith was more than just an actor.  Within his role, he showed how an ideal father could work in an ideal law enforcement job and help protect an ideal American town.  The lessons that his character taught Opie are still useful to this day.

Ray Bradbury (June 5th)

The first book that I willingly read more than once was The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.  The second book that I willingly read more than once was Fahrenheit 451.  This was the book that taught me how to write.  Bradbury’s characterization, sentence structure, use of minimalism, use of horror elements, use of imagery, and method of writing action sequences all have fueled my style.  Later, I enjoyed some of his other works such as The Martian Chronicles and a short story called The Veldt.  Before I discovered science fiction, reading had been my most difficult skill in school (other than math).

Recently, I’ve had this fantasy of winning the Ray Bradbury award for science fiction and giving a speech along the lines of, “I am glad to be continuing the legacy of Mr. Bradbury.  Because of his works I am standing here today.  I hope that I can fuel the minds of the builders of tomorrow as he filled my mind as a dreamer for tomorrow.”

Alas, I shall never be able to meet him.

Maurice Sendak (May 8th)

It was the last day of a long haul through college.  On Tuesday, May 8th, I was typing out a paper on King Lear and going over my notes for my exam in my children’s literature class.  During a break in studying and a mental re-boot, I managed to go on facebook and catch the news:  Maurice Sendak had passed away.  Of all days to go and of all people to go!  Even as I took my final and wrote Where the Wild Things Are for one of my answers, I did feel like the timing was just a little too coincidental.

I can’t say that I’m much of a fan of the rest of Mr. Sendak’s work, though I did study it for the mentioned class.  However, I will say that Where the Wild Things Are helped me get back into picture books as an adult.  It helped me understand them as more than childhood entertainment, but sophisticated and multidimensional works of art.  Indeed, I studied it so much that the teacher would often ask me to interpret sections and provide random trivia (such as publication date:  1963).  But of course, any college student who goes as Max for Halloween deserves to get such queries.

Now, I can’t wait to have kids so that I can read this wonderful book to them.

Conclusion:

Whether it be in literature, in science, in television, in parenting, or just in the everyday activities of life, we all leave a legacy.  Neil Armstrong’s footprints will still be on the moon until a future generation returns to the Sea of Tranquility.  That’s the kind of permanent impression that I hope to leave for mankind.

Photo credits:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/bios/neilabio.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahljacobs/2012/07/25/sally-rides-surprise-legacy/

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20609074,00.html

http://kids.britannica.com/comptons/art-167648/Maurice-Sendak

Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Neil Armstrong died this week. It was mentioned in news and repeated in a myriad of status updates on Facebook. While reading something totally unrelated on one of my blog sites I discovered that Sally Ride, first woman in space had died at the age of 61 from pancreatic cancer… Last month. In addition to being the first woman to travel into space she has a PhD in physics from Stanford University and headed the committee that investigated the Challenger tragedy, which resulted in major change in the safety regulations surrounding space flight. She started math and science summer camps for girls and was a major influence for a whole generation of scientifically minded women. Although her contributions to space travel are just as important as those of Neil Armstrong (in some ways more important I think) it seems that her death was less widely noted. I have been told that it was in the news but as far as I can tell it didn’t cause very much of a ripple in our collective awareness. I for one am deeply saddened and apologetic.

Armstrong died following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures, his family said in a statement. It didn’t say where he died; he had lived in suburban Cincinnati.

Armstrong commanded the Apollo 11 spacecraft that landed on the moon July 20, 1969, capping the most daring of the 20th century’s scientific expeditions. His first words after becoming the first person to set foot on the surface are etched in history books and the memories of those who heard them in a live broadcast.

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” Armstrong said.

(Armstrong insisted later that he had said “a” before man, but said he too couldn’t hear it in the version that went to the world.)

In those first few moments on the moon, during the climax of a heated space race with the then-Soviet Union, Armstrong stopped in what he called “a tender moment” and left a patch to commemorate NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who had died in action.

“It was special and memorable but it was only instantaneous because there was work to do,” Armstrong told an Australian television interviewer this year.

Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent nearly three hours walking on the lunar surface, collecting samples, conducting experiments and taking photographs.

“The sights were simply magnificent, beyond any visual experience that I had ever been exposed to,” Armstrong once said.

The moonwalk marked America’s victory in the Cold War space race that began Oct. 4, 1957, with the launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1, a 184-pound satellite that sent shock waves around the world.

Although he had been a Navy fighter pilot, a test pilot for NASA’s forerunner and an astronaut, Armstrong never allowed himself to be caught up in the celebrity and glamour of the space program.

“I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer,” he said in February 2000 in one of his rare public appearances. “And I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession.”

A man who kept away from cameras, Armstrong went public in 2010 with his concerns about President Barack Obama’s space policy that shifted attention away from a return to the moon and emphasized private companies developing spaceships. He testified before Congress and in an email to The Associated Press, Armstrong said he had “substantial reservations,” and along with more than two dozen Apollo-era veterans, he signed a letter calling the plan a “misguided proposal that forces NASA out of human space operations for the foreseeable future.”

NASA chief Charles Bolden recalled Armstrong’s grace and humility in a statement Saturday.

“As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind’s first small step on a world beyond our own,” Bolden said.

Armstrong’s modesty and self-effacing manner never faded.

When he appeared in Dayton in 2003 to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight, he bounded onto a stage before 10,000 people packed into a baseball stadium. But he spoke for only a few seconds, did not mention the moon, and quickly ducked out of the spotlight.

He later joined former astronaut and Sen. John Glenn to lay wreaths on the graves of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Glenn introduced Armstrong and noted it was 34 years to the day that Armstrong had walked on the moon.

“Thank you, John. Thirty-four years?” Armstrong quipped, as if he hadn’t given it a thought.

At another joint appearance, the two embraced and Glenn commented: “To this day, he’s the one person on Earth, I’m truly, truly envious of.”

Armstrong’s moonwalk capped a series of accomplishments that included piloting the X-15 rocket plane and making the first space docking during the Gemini 8 mission, which included a successful emergency splashdown.

In the years afterward, Armstrong retreated to the quiet of the classroom and his southwest Ohio farm. Aldrin said in his book “Men from Earth” that Armstrong was one of the quietest, most private men he had ever met.

In the Australian interview, Armstrong acknowledged that “now and then I miss the excitement about being in the cockpit of an airplane and doing new things.”

At the time of the flight’s 40th anniversary, Armstrong again was low-key, telling a gathering that the space race was “the ultimate peaceful competition: USA versus U.S.S.R. It did allow both sides to take the high road with the objectives of science and learning and exploration.”

Glenn, who went through jungle training in Panama with Armstrong as part of the astronaut program, described him as “exceptionally brilliant” with technical matters but “rather retiring, doesn’t like to be thrust into the limelight much.”

Derek Elliott, curator of the Smithsonian Institution’s U.S. Air and Space Museum from 1982 to 1992, said the moonwalk probably marked the high point of space exploration.

The manned lunar landing was a boon to the prestige of the United States, which had been locked in a space race with the former Soviet Union, and re-established U.S. pre-eminence in science and technology, Elliott said.

“The fact that we were able to see it and be a part of it means that we are in our own way witnesses to history,” he said.

The 1969 landing met an audacious deadline that President Kennedy had set in May 1961, shortly after Alan Shepard became the first American in space with a 15-minute suborbital flight. (Soviet cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin had orbited the Earth and beaten the U.S. into space the previous month.)

“I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth,” Kennedy had said. “No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important to the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”

The end-of-decade goal was met with more than five months to spare. “Houston: Tranquility Base here,” Armstrong radioed after the spacecraft settled onto the moon. “The Eagle has landed.”

“Roger, Tranquility,” Apollo astronaut Charles Duke radioed back from Mission Control. “We copy you on the ground. You’ve got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.”

The third astronaut on the mission, Michael Collins, circled the moon in the mother ship Columbia 60 miles overhead while Armstrong and Aldrin went to the moon’s surface.

Collins told NASA on Saturday that he will miss Armstrong terribly, spokesman Bob Jacobs tweeted.

In all, 12 American astronauts walked on the moon between 1969 and the last moon mission in 1972.

For Americans, reaching the moon provided uplift and respite from the Vietnam War, from strife in the Middle East, from the startling news just a few days earlier that a young woman had drowned in a car driven off a wooden bridge on Chappaquiddick Island by Sen. Edward Kennedy. The landing occurred as organizers were gearing up for Woodstock, the legendary three-day rock festival on a farm in the Catskills of New York.

Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, on a farm near Wapakoneta in western Ohio. He took his first airplane ride at age 6 and developed a fascination with aviation that prompted him to build model airplanes and conduct experiments in a homemade wind tunnel.

As a boy, he worked at a pharmacy and took flying lessons. He was licensed to fly at 16, before he got his driver’s license.

Armstrong enrolled in Purdue University to study aeronautical engineering but was called to duty with the U.S. Navy in 1949 and flew 78 combat missions in Korea.

After the war, Armstrong finished his degree from Purdue and later earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California. He became a test pilot with what evolved into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, flying more than 200 kinds of aircraft from gliders to jets.

Armstrong was accepted into NASA’s second astronaut class in 1962 — the first, including Glenn, was chosen in 1959 — and commanded the Gemini 8 mission in 1966. After the first space docking, he brought the capsule back in an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean when a wildly firing thruster kicked it out of orbit.

Armstrong was backup commander for the historic Apollo 8 mission at Christmastime in 1968. In that flight, Commander Frank Borman, and Jim Lovell and Bill Anders circled the moon 10 times, and paving the way for the lunar landing seven months later.

Aldrin said he and Armstrong were not prone to free exchanges of sentiment.

“But there was that moment on the moon, a brief moment, in which we sort of looked at each other and slapped each other on the shoulder … and said, ‘We made it. Good show,’ or something like that,” Aldrin said.

An estimated 600 million people — a fifth of the world’s population — watched and listened to the landing, the largest audience for any single event in history.

Parents huddled with their children in front of the family television, mesmerized by what they were witnessing. Farmers abandoned their nightly milking duties, and motorists pulled off the highway and checked into motels just to see the moonwalk.

Television-less campers in California ran to their cars to catch the word on the radio. Boy Scouts at a camp in Michigan watched on a generator-powered television supplied by a parent.

Afterward, people walked out of their homes and gazed at the moon, in awe of what they had just seen. Others peeked through telescopes in hopes of spotting the astronauts.

In Wapakoneta, media and souvenir frenzy was swirling around the home of Armstrong’s parents.

“You couldn’t see the house for the news media,” recalled John Zwez, former manager of the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum. “People were pulling grass out of their front yard.”

Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were given ticker tape parades in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and later made a 22-nation world tour. A homecoming in Wapakoneta drew 50,000 people to the city of 9,000.

In 1970, Armstrong was appointed deputy associate administrator for aeronautics at NASA but left the following year to teach aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati.

He remained there until 1979 and during that time bought a 310-acre farm near Lebanon, where he raised cattle and corn. He stayed out of public view, accepting few requests for interviews or speeches.

“He didn’t give interviews, but he wasn’t a strange person or hard to talk to,” said Ron Huston, a colleague at the University of Cincinnati. “He just didn’t like being a novelty.”

Those who knew him said he enjoyed golfing with friends, was active in the local YMCA and frequently ate lunch at the same restaurant in Lebanon.

In 2000, when he agreed to announce the top 20 engineering achievements of the 20th century as voted by the National Academy of Engineering, Armstrong said there was one disappointment relating to his moonwalk.

“I can honestly say — and it’s a big surprise to me — that I have never had a dream about being on the moon,” he said.

From 1982 to 1992, Armstrong was chairman of Charlottesville, Va.-based Computing Technologies for Aviation Inc., a company that supplies computer information management systems for business aircraft.

He then became chairman of AIL Systems Inc., an electronic systems company in Deer Park, N.Y.

Armstrong married Carol Knight in 1999, and the couple lived in Indian Hill, a Cincinnati suburb. He had two adult sons from a previous marriage.

It’s the second death in a month of one of NASA’s most visible, history-making astronauts. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, died of pancreatic cancer on July 23 at age 61.

One of NASA’s closest astronaut friends was fellow Ohioan, Mercury astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.

Just prior to the 50th anniversary of Glenn’s orbital flight this past February, Armstrong offered high praise to the elder astronaut and said that Glenn had told him many times how he wished he, too, had flown to the moon on Apollo 11. Glenn said it was his only regret.

Noted Armstrong in an email: “I am hoping I will be ‘in his shoes’ and have as much success in longevity as he has demonstrated.” Glenn is 91.

At the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles on Saturday, visitors held a minute of silence for Armstrong. His family’s statement made a simple request for anyone else who wanted to remember him:

“Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.”

Related articles

• Photos: Neil Armstrong, the first man on moon has died (photos.denverpost.com)
• Neil Armstrong, 1st Moonwalker, Undergoes Heart Surgery (news.yahoo.com)
• Former astronaut Armstrong has heart surgery (newsday.com)

Oh, and a disclaimer, I suppose. This in no way reflects the actual field I’m doing research in at the moment. It does, however, reflect the random things that catch my attention in the never-stopping science news flow that I happen to catch. I should probably make a better effort to keep up with news that are more relevant to my research (note to self).

Pulling all-nighters to study doesn’t really help (much). Ha! I knew the system of studying more or less continuously (which I used all through high-school and university) and then just going to bed early before tests worked much better than late-night cramming, and now there’s actual data on it.

Green tea 1:0 tumours. I’m always a little sceptical about the studies that find yet another way to treat cancer in mice, but so long as we know that this just ‘shows promise’, sure, why not. However, I love how they used something as simple as tea and added it to these little vesicles (which are kind of bubbles of fat with a space within them) which also carry a key (protein transferrin) to unlock and get into cancer cells (they have transferrin receptors to which the protein attaches and then the cells eat it and the vesicle).

This is from last week, but it’s still cool this week, in my opinion. A new family of spiders discovered in a cave somewhere. If you don’t like spiders, better not look – there are some awesome close-ups in there.

Not strictly news, perhaps, but I guess this article on Yoshiki Sasai, a scientist trying to understand and control stem cells is probably the most relevant thing to my own research that I managed to catch this week. Some pretty fascinating stuff, though again, lest someone blows this out of proportion, these are just delicate tissue layers and not, you know, actual developed eyes.

Genomic sequencing of bacteria helps track a breakthrough. I have no idea how this works. A group of smart geneticists did a load of sequencing and saw answers in the results. I envy them.

Also, not a news item, maybe, but a cool article on Nature site, about computational sciences taking a turn for the social. First, it was physicists in mid 20th century leaving their field to study Biology, now this. Interesting.

Lastly, a study on theatre audience demographics (I hope that’s the right word for it) which I find interesting because I love going to the theatre. I guess, I belong to the “cultural” group.

Science-ing out,

Noodle.

P.S. The new broke out while I was writing this post that Neil Armstrong died. RIP. Almost exactly a month ago, Sally Ride, the first female US astronaut died. RIP.

Neil Armstrong, the first man to step foot on the Moon, donned a red shirt today.

As I was thinking of something more poignant to say, I realized that we overlooked the passing of another historic astronaut.

Sally Ride, the first woman in space, lost her battle with pancreatic cancer just over a month ago on 7/23/2012.

Both historic firsts in space travel that deserve to be recognized.

My personal favorite female scientist is Sally Ride.

Sally Ride was born in the fifties in Southern California.  She died this summer to cancer and is buried just steps from my home, her grave is not marked yet, but I plan on bringing my own daughter and a personal tribute to her to thank her for inspiration.  I  heard of a story that she was the only female student in a physics class and the professor asked her if she was lost and she calmly replied, no, I want to learn physics.  After getting a Ph.D., Ride was chosen by NASA to be an astronaut.  I heard when I was young that to be an astronaut you had to be very committed as well as strong in character, also at that point, all were first borns which I was too so I thought I could do that as well mostly because I am a first born.  The year I graduated from college, 1983, she became the first woman in space as a crew member on the Challenger space shuttle.

She wrote several children’s books about space, including The Mystery of Mars(1999), To Space and Back (1989),The Third Planet: Exploring Earth from Space (2004), andVoyager (2005).

Sources:
NASA
Wikipedia
About: Women’s History

Famous Explorers

“The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church – Ferdinand Magellan (Portuguese navigator and explorer)

Outrightly rejecting the claims of the religion, conventions of the society. A deep desire to explore the unknown, unveil the unseen. These must have been the motivation when the famous explorers we read about today, set out on voyages to discover new lands. Below is the list of the world famous European, French, Spanish and American explorers, whose discoveries changed the geography as well as the history of the world.

Christopher Columbus
The first name that comes to mind whenever famous explorers of the world are mentioned, it has to be that of Christopher Columbus. A Portuguese by birth, Columbus is popularly known the world over for being the first one to discover the new world. Christopher traveled across Atlantic ocean as well as some parts of west Indies. When he set out to finding India, by way of sailing through the west, he accidentally landed in western hemisphere which he thought was India. In spite of this mistake, Columbus is credited by historians for opening tremendous opportunities for Europeans in the western hemisphere.

Hernando de Soto
Hernando de Soto is the first European explorer to have discovered the Mississippi river. During his voyages, he sailed from the western coast of Florida, far to the Tampa Bay. He sailed to the north of Alabama as well as to the southeast region.

Sally Ride
An inspiration for generations of women to take up scientific vocations, Sally Ride was the first American woman who orbited the earth from outer space. Sally Ride who defied all norms by entering this male bastion, worked as an astronaut and completed two flights on the “Challenger”, the American space shuttle.

Henry Hudson
This Englishman is popularly known as the discoverer of the “Hudson River” – which is known by his name today. He set out on a voyage through the Dutch East India Company, to discover a northwest passage to the east. On his way, he discovered Chesapeake Bay as well as New England’s Cape Cod.

Samuel de Champlain
One of the most famous French explorers, Samuel de Champlain, spent a major part of his life traveling through the region we refer to as Canada today. It was king of France Henry IV, who funded his travels. The king of France wanted him to find a waterway that would connect the Atlantic, through North America to Pacific. Champlain was not able to do that but he did claim the northern North America for the king of France. He founded “Quebec” and spent his life trying to co-exist with the native people in this region.

Sir Francis Drake
This European explorer was the first one to have circumnavigated the world in a ship. His expedition was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth, queen of England herself, to fight with the Spanish so that England could control the sea route towards the eastern part of the world. Going through the biography of Sir Francis Drake, one infers that initially he set out on his trip with five ships, but he lost four of them during his journey. Nevertheless, he was able to discover many islands in Atlantic and Pacific, which he claimed for England.

Marco Polo
Marco polo, an Italian by birth, was an explorer who introduced the Europeans to central Asia, India and China. He traveled across the region for seventeen long years and when he came back, he gave Europeans a lot of useful information about the orient. Along with him, he brought ivory, silk, porcelain and jade. Marco Polo introduced the Europeans to the use of money, compass and coal as was done by the Chinese.

Robert Edwin Peary
One of the most famous north American explorers, Robert Edwin Peary, explored the arctic region and was the first one to reach the North pole. He was successful in surviving in such a cold region as he learned everything that native people of the region did to beat the weather conditions such as building igloos, dressing up warmly and driving a group of sled dogs in order to explore the region. Most of his expeditions were funded privately, by organizations such as the national geographic society as he did not receive any government help at that time.

Besides the ones mentioned above, other explorers in history are Francisco Pizarro, Ferdinand Magellan, Sir Walter Raleigh, Amerigo Vespucci, Sir John Hawkins, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, Vasco da Gama, Gaspar Corte Real, Sebastian Cabot, Cabeza de Vaca, Estevanico, John Cabot, Juan Rodriguez Sir Martin Frobisher, Bartolomeu Dias, Pedro Alvares Cabral and Louis Joliet. All these explorers are known today for their contribution to making the world what it is today. They inspire each one of us to explore ourselves and the world around us.

Among the topics I reviewed was some of the research and protocols available to us all through Scientific Learning.  See: http://www.scilearn.com

Among the discussion points was the seriousness with which we treat the notion of brain fitness, and neuroscience interventions to boost students’ capacity in memory,  attention, sequencing, and processing.  Excerpts from the last slide of my presentation are reprinted below:

Scientific Learning’s research confirmed the concept of lifelong brain plasticity – that the brain can reinvent and reconfigure itself throughout life.

Just as exercise promotes fitness, exercising our brain improves brain fitness in the areas of memory, attention, processing and sequencing.

Brain fitness develops a brain to better capture, process and retain proven instruction efficiently and effectively.

So…The Difference is focusing on how the brain learns to accelerate performance and build fluency.

I look for Allendale to explore adding these protocols to their work this school year.  It should add aptly to the work our colleagues from Atlantic Research Partners have committed to doing with Allendale.

Joseph Wise

With the passings of Ray Bradbury and Sally Ride, and the successful launch of Curiosity, I’ve been thinking a lot about space exploration and the importance of science and the drive to learn more, to ask why, to discover. As the mother of a three-year-old, I want desperately to bottle her sense of wonder and to do everything I can to prevent it from disappearing.

The older I get, the more worried I am that the fantastic is fading more quickly than we can capture it. I know it’s a natural progression. We have to think about mortgage or rent, putting food on the table, clothing our families, paying for retirement or college. We hear stories about kidnappings and heartache, and we create ways to shield ourselves and our children from them. We manufacture human interest stories where there are none and ignore the ones that matter most.

I don’t discount the importance of practicality (this blog is, after all, named practical whimsy), but by focusing on the mundane to the exclusion of the fantastic, we lose some of what makes life worth living.

The practical keeps us alive – fed, clothed, sheltered. The fantastic, the wonder, the whimsy, on the other hand, is what makes us live - really truly live. Think about the days that are your most memorable – the ones that make you smile months or years later. Now think about trying to capture a little of that every day. For me, the best way to do that is through exploration. Without curiosity – and the drive to satisfy that curiosity – we often live a mundane life. It’s the unusual, the unexpected, the different that drives the happy moments. When we stop trying to learn, when we accept without questioning, when we focus on the worries of the present instead of the possibilities of the future, that’s when it’s easy for us to become bored or despondent.

The amazing thing about science and space exploration is its potential to capture the imagination, deliver on the fantastic and satisfy the practical – all at the same time. And yet year after year, we fund (lightly) the practical applications of science (important yes, but limiting) and continue to de-fund the science of the imagination. And that’s a shame. We need to reach for the stars to help us find the starry night around us and the light of inspiration within us. I want desperately for K to see that as an adult there is still wonder in the world and that no matter how much she learns that there is something fantastic to learn just around the corner.

Others have expressed this far more eloquently than I, so I will leave it to them to make my case for me.

From NPR’s story on the passing of Ray Bradbury:

In 2000, when I was the editor of a magazine called Space Illustrated, I commissioned Bradbury to write an essay about Mars and its hold on our imaginations. His response was the best expression of the why of space exploration that I’ve ever heard. He called us the betweens on a journey from the cave to the stars, a journey the universe requires us to take.

We have been given eyes to see what the light-year worlds cannot see of themselves, Bradbury wrote. We have been given hands to touch the miraculous. We’ve been given hearts to know the incredible. Can we shrink back to bed in our funeral clothes? Mars says we cannot.

To quote Sally Ride: 

“Studying whether there’s life on Mars or studying how the universe began, there’s something magical about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. That’s something that is almost part of being human and I’m certain that will continue.”

Despite being unable to develop the lone astronaut’s narrative, I can easily trace the different threads of information that likely led to her appearance in my mind’s eye. First and foremost, the first American woman in space, Dr. Sally Ride, died on July 23 at the age of 61, after quietly suffering from pancreatic cancer for more than a year. After her groundbreaking trips on the shuttle Challenger in 1983 and 1984 and their attendant media circuses, she lived out of the limelight, retiring from NASA in 1987 and then pouring all her energy into teaching and running the company she founded in 2001, Sally Ride Science. Ride’s high school classmate and sometime book collaborator Dr. Susan Okie recounts in The Washington Post her driven friend’s company mission to promote science and technology as “cool” for middle school students and their teachers, to inspire young girls especially to pursue careers in these fields. I don’t have a scientific or mathematical mind (I really wish I did!), but I so deeply respect Sally Ride and all of her accomplishments.

The pioneering American astronaut Sally Ride. Photo courtesy of NASA, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. Accessed at The New York Times.

Then I read, before the August 1 premiere at Georgetown University, about a show titled History Matters/Back to the Future, Scenes by Historic Women Playwrights: Read by Luminaries of the Stage. I’m no authority on the theater, but I know enough to understand where the event’s organizers are coming from: there is an alarming disparity between the number of produced plays written by men and those by women. Washington Post reporter DeNeen L. Brown opens her account of the theatrical production, which coincides with the university’s Women and Theatre Program’s yearly conference, stating the cold, hard truth:

It is a peculiar distinction in the world of playwrights: Works written by men are often called plays. But works written by women are often categorized as “women’s plays.”

“There is a notion in the canon, when men write plays, they speak to the entire human condition, and plays written by women speak to women,” said actress Kathleen Chalfant, a 1993 Tony Award nominee for best actress in a play for her role in Angels in America: Millennium Approaches.

Even plays written by men that are “particularly masculine and talk about issues particular to men, are never called ‘men’s plays,’ ” she added.

Now, I don’t envision the lone astronaut’s narrative trajectory taking place on the stage (I don’t think in terms of the theater). But Brown’s and Chalfant’s observations made an impression on my psyche. Specifically, Chalfant’s choice of words really struck a chord with me, when she argues that there is a perception that plays written by men “speak to the entire human condition” whereas ones by and/or about women can only hope to speak to women, as if the woman’s experience is less than or at least incapable of elucidating the human experience for everyone. Certainly, this isn’t a new controversy or even one confined to the theater. There is a persistent gender bias across all art forms, manifest in libraries and bookstores, museums and galleries, and—most precious to me—cinemas. I think the image of the female space cruiser appeared to me unconsciously as a direct response to the bone-headed notion that women playwrights can’t, in Chalfant’s words, “speak to the entire human condition.” The drive to explore the worlds beyond our own and the desire to comprehend our purpose and beginnings are characteristically human. I know the lone astronaut’s journey of self-discovery is something of a hyperbole, but what if her story could capture for men and women alike a uniquely feminine take on the human experience?

Admittedly, I can’t wave any sci-fi geek flag, having never read Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, George Orwell, or even Ray Bradbury. (But tell me, does Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World grant me at least a few colors? ‘cuz I loved that as a teen.) I’ve only ever seen two episodes of Star Trek, and that number indexes all iterations of the series. I’ve never cracked open a comic book, let alone picked one up. However, I can and do appreciate smart, sophisticated, hard-core sci-fi movies, particularly the kinds that tackle what it means to be human. This is why I love Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) and will never tire of it. I also like Duncan Jones’s directorial debut Moon (2009), starring the criminally underrated Sam Rockwell as the lone astronaut on a three-year-mission stationed on the massive titular rock. While I don’t suspect the female space explorer of my imagination is ultimately on a quest to discover her true identity in the same way that Rockwell’s Sam Bell does (see, I’m trying not to spoiling anything!), I see her journey as equally alienating, mundane, but also extraordinary.

Most importantly, I envision her story as one that doesn’t hinge on her relationships with men or children. She isn’t escaping a tumultuous love affair, or searching for her true love on another planet, for that matter. She isn’t trying to put her life back together because she lost a child or because she can’t have one. Don’t get me wrong: she’s not without her problems, but her problems don’t define her. And I’ll be damned if I ever base her entire identity on whether or not she has a significant other and/or whether or not she is a mother. After all, wife and mother are historically the only culturally acceptable roles prescribed to women. And in the cyclical culture wars about women’s place in society, debates about the constitutionality of accessible birth control measures and the (im)possibility of a woman “having it all” (meaning: balancing a rewarding career with a family) abound today. Just look at the uproar new Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer caused when she announced that she plans to return to work soon after the birth of her first child. The first hot-button issue affects me directly, whereas the conversation about rich white women’s struggles to negotiate their seemingly opposed desires for a career and family addresses me in no way at all. I have no career to speak of and, as of right now, I would be happy never to have children.

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The roles afforded women in movies are no better. We’ve heard this a million times before. Writing an op-ed piece for The Washington Post, Melissa Silverstein, the founder and editor of the Indiewire blog Women and Hollywood and the co-founder and artistic director of the woman-centric Athena Film Festival, argues that the upper echelons of the American film industrial complex, aka “Hollywood,” should be more accommodating to stories about women because they represent half the ticket-buying public in the U.S. (she cites data from the Motion Picture Association of America). Silverstein writes,

Imagine the successes if there were more female characters onscreen than the 33 percent that appeared in the 100 top-grossing films in 2011. And imagine if more than 11 percent of those movies had female protagonists.

I find it alarming that the films she uses as evidence that female-driven movies can be resounding box-office successes include Sex and the City (Michael Patrick King, 2008), Mamma Mia! (Phyllida Lloyd, 2008), and Twilight (Catherine Hardwicke, 2008) as well as its first sequel. Especially since this is coming a little more than two months after she published a short editorial about how purging “chick flicks” from our culture is absolutely necessary. I know, I know, she’s merely pointing out that there is a “hungry, underserved female audience” for movies about women, but all of these examples represent just what she wants to see banished:

You know the kind of movies I mean. They inevitably star Kate Hudson or Katherine Heigl. Most involve a wedding, a boyfriend or, usually, both. And they’re often just bad movies.

Arguing that even Oscar-winning films like Terms of Endearment (James L. Brooks, 1983) and Thelma & Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991) are tainted with the label “chick flick,” Silverstein opines, “I want Hollywood to stop making these formulaic films and branding all movies starring women, good and bad, as chick flicks.” I definitely agree with this sentiment, and if we return to Silverstein’s first op-ed piece I mentioned, I also concur that having more women directing, producing, writing, photographing, and editing films would help alleviate the problem. Though, when you look at her three examples for women-focused blockbusters, Mamma Mia! and Twilight are both written and directed by women. Yikes.

I will say this: Silverstein sure does like to invoke Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011) and its approximately $170 million domestic overhaul. But she fails to draw attention to the fact that its star, Kristen Wiig, wrote the screenplay with her old friend from their days with the improv group The Groundlings, Annie Mumolo. You’ve read me attest to Bridesmaids‘s assets before, so I won’t indulge in too much praise here now. Suffice it to say that, despite a subplot involving Wiig’s romantic dalliances with two diametrically opposed males, the film is actually about female friendship, as Wiig the maid of honor and Maya Rudolph the bride must adjust their long-term intimacy in expectation of the latter’s nuptials. Moreover, I think remembering that Wiig, the darling of Saturday Night Live from 2005 to 2012 and the scene-stealer from the likes of Knocked Up (Judd Apatow, 2007) and Adventureland (Greg Mottola, 2009), co-wrote her own breakout role isn’t just necessary, it is also a starting point when examining the trend making the rounds this year in film and on television.

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Of course, I’m talking about actresses making their debuts as produced screenwriters in order to address the dearth of quality film roles for women. Within the last two weeks alone, indie starlet Zoe Kazan has released Ruby Sparks (Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris, 2012), her critical dissection of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype that men often write for their male protagonists, and just two days ago Rashida Jones went against type in Lee Toland Krieger’s Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012). A regular from my favorite TV comedy, Parks and Recreation (2009-present), Jones acknowledges in an interview with Melena Ryzik of The New York Times that she usually plays “the dependable, affable, loving, friend-wife-girlfriend,” and that as co-scribe with former boyfriend-turned-best-friend Will McCormack, she was finally able to star as “a character that’s maybe less than likable.”

French-American actress Julie Delpy’s fourth feature, the sequel to 2 Days in Paris (2007), hits theaters next Friday. 2 Days in New York (2012) may not be her first film as writer-director-star, but like Kazan and Jones, she aims to write a “real” woman, not a fantasy that men have of (French) women, she tells Karina Longworth of LA Weekly. In the new film, she co-stars with Chris Rock as a successful, artistic/intellectual couple forging a blended family, and the arrival of her father, sister, and former lover from France threatens to upturn what they’ve built, albeit comically so. Casting Chris Rock as her romantic lead may provide a pointed commentary on race in contemporary America, especially since neither Marion nor Mingus make a big deal of their interracial coupling (it’s presented matter-of-fact, according to Longworth), but you might even say that as much as the role is a welcome leap for Rock, it may also bring fans of his raunchy stand-up into the art-house.

Mingus and Marion in bed, trying to overcome the vagaries of adult life in 2 Days in New York. Image courtesy of http://www.girls-can-play.blogspot.com.

I wish to avoid analyzing a film I have yet to see (for the record, though, I really like 2 Days in Paris), and I want to acknowledge Delpy’s frustration with being categorized as a woman filmmaker: “By making it obvious that it’s rare, you also minimize my work.” In this way, she echoes Nora Ephron, who, of When Harry Met Sally… (Rob Reiner, 1989) and You’ve Got Mail (Ephron, 1998) fame, died June 26 of pneumonia at age 71 (she had suffered from acute myeloid leukemia). As recounted in Charles McGrath’s obituary in The New York Times, Ephron wrote in I Remember Nothing, one of her book of essays, that she won’t miss panels on Women in Film when she dies (sorry, Melissa Silverstein). Although Ephron’s films are dominated by female protagonists and might even have been branded “chick flicks,” her screenplay for When Harry Met Sally… is such a cultural touchstone that men and women often agree that the film is, in the words of Vulture’s editors, “arguably the greatest rom-com of all time.” In conversation with All Things Considered‘s Audie Cornish on NPR, Rashida Jones interpreted the interviewer’s observation that Celeste and Jesse Forever resembles Ephron’s beloved story about friends turning into lovers, although in reverse, as “the biggest compliment.” I haven’t seen Jones’s film yet, so I cannot weigh in on that score.

Upon their arrival in New York, Sally and Harry enjoy a bite at Katz’s—much to Sally’s memorable delight. Image courtesy of http://www.impassionedcinema.com.

But are these women of summer, written and actualized in each case by the same woman, really a step in the right direction? According to The Washington Post‘s chief film critic, Ann Hornaday, that answer is “no.” She recently published a critical inventory of the season’s female characters, girls and women alike. While she finds much to celebrate when it comes to young women defying stereotypical roles, she finds the women leave much to be desired. And I quote:

At the box office, the summer of 2012 may be about breaking records with movies about boys and their toys (“Hulk smash,” indeed). But culturally, the season’s been all about the girls. Beginning with Snow White and the Huntsman, continuing through Brave and with a dash of talk-worthy premium cable thrown in, girls seem to have taken over screens both large and small, their inner struggles magnified into mythic battles, their most mundane problems examined with probing, disarmingly frank intimacy.

Hornaday also reminds us that Tim Burton’s version of Alice in Wonderland (2010) and this spring’s mega-hit The Hunger Games (Gary Ross, 2012) also feature strong-willed female teens who don’t need a Prince Charming to rescue them, as they fight epic duels on their respective quests to right evil social injustices. By comparison, the female leads of Ruby Sparks and Celeste and Jesse Forever, for example, are pathetic. In particular, Hornaday writes,

But as clever as Ruby Sparks is in puncturing the male wish-fulfillment fantasy of unconditional acceptance and worship, Kazan’s Ruby never gets to be her own fully realized character, instead playing a role similar to that of the Magical Negro, who exists chiefly in order to help the white male hero find transcendence, meaning and the happy ending that was somehow never in doubt.

As you might recall, I had similar misgivings about the conclusion of Ruby Sparks; it upholds the convention of other love stories featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls when the narcissistic novelist finally releases his titular creation from his magical spell and later goes on to meet the girl of his dreams who resembles his ideal far too much. When it comes to Celeste and Jesse Forever, Hornaday laments that Jones’s eponymous character, a

put-together and on-track young woman who, as she navigates a complicated relationship with the far less directed man in her life (played by Andy Samberg), is made to look either uptight, witchily judgmental or miserably alone — before she sees the light and realizes that she’s the problem, what with her intelligence and high expectations and all [emphasis in original].

Celeste and Jesse Forever: a couple tries to stay best friends through a painful divorce. Image courtesy of http://www.cnn.com.

Certainly, I cannot just take this one critic’s word as the gospel truth. I will see these movies, eventually, to make up my own mind, but I can understand what Hornaday is saying. After all, both Ruby and Celeste are characters defined by the relationships that they have with the men in their lives. Marion of 2 Days in New York, which Hornaday doesn’t discuss, also fits the bill, and she’s also a mom.

But there’s one last facet to this trend of actresses writing their own parts: overwhelmingly, their chosen genre is the romantic comedy, which is historically perceived as a woman’s form (even though, of course, it has more male writers than it does female ones). As if men don’t enjoy movies about the pursuit of love and that very special happy ending! (There are enough movies focalized through the heterosexual male point-of-view, such as Annie Hall [Woody Allen, 1977] and Knocked Up, which are both written by men, to warrant a future article about the so-called masculinization of the romantic comedy.) To cut a long story short, I would like to see more female filmmakers work in other idioms and elevate female film characters to be more than just the wife and mother, the Madonna or the Whore. How about a chilling thriller or detective story? or a smart and sophisticated actioner? I would love a provocative sci-fi movie, too. I know what you’re thinking, doesn’t Another Earth (Mike Cahill, 2011) qualify? Well, star Brit Marling may have co-written the script about the possibility of finding redemption as if in a parallel universe, but—spoiler alert!—her character winds up having a sexual affair with the man whose family she killed in the car accident, an irreparable act for which she seeks forgiveness as a means of escape. This plot point is hardly original, as it falls into that same class of tropes I can’t stand.

There is some hope, though, that more complex female characters will continue to spring up. I would venture that at the moment only Girls, the controversial HBO comedy-drama series created by its star Lena Dunham (who also writes and/or directs some episodes), presents a convincing and nuanced vision of (young) women’s relationships—to men, parents, work, culture, and friends. The program follows the runaway success of Dunham’s first full-length motion picture, Tiny Furniture (2010), which she also wrote, directed, and starred in; it’s an acerbic and poignant study of the post-college malaise and the attendant struggles to understand the world and be understood within it. Girls may ostensibly be an urban exploration of recent college grads’ experiences with love and sex, tracking their conflicting desires for independence and dependable partnership, but in actuality it is a brilliant love story about two best friends, Hannah (Dunham) and Marnie (Allison Williams), who live together and grow apart while trying to make it big in the city.

Hannah and Marnie are Girls and best friends who try hard not to let their dealings with men dictate who they are as individuals. Image courtesy of http://www.trippedmedia.com.

In the fall, Mindy Kaling, a staff writer, producer, and regular cast member of The Office (2005-present), will premiere her own show, entitled The Mindy Project (check out the trailer here). Yeah, I sincerely hope that as the program’s creator, producer, and writer, she changes the name before it first airs; as it stands, the title makes it sound like the comedy series, in which she plays a gynecologist, is a celebrity-hosted reality show or stand-up special. The trailer demonstrates that the self-professed lover of romantic comedies has deployed many generic conventions in creating this universe of characters and situations, including, but not limited to a drunken toast at an ex-boyfriend’s wedding, women’s anxiety over aging, and a female sidekick who tells her, “Your life is not a romantic comedy!” I know, I probably shouldn’t be looking forward to this, but I like Mindy Kaling, and I hope that her show—in the very least—offers an interesting critique of socially acceptable behavior for women. If not that, then maybe I’ll watch it just to dissect it.

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Let’s return once more to the image I have of a woman astronaut gliding through space alone. I’m still nowhere closer to developing her back-story or devising her narrative purpose. Right now, she just represents the potential of female characters in fiction, but films in particular, who have interesting, fully realized inner lives that eschew all the narrative tropes that heretofore define women. She’s out there, doing it her own way, and if she comes back, maybe then I can make sense of her. Perhaps she will fulfill my fantasy and teach us something about what it means to be human—and not just a woman.