Food For Thought

July 21, 2012 By

[**This post was originally posted on July 20, 2009 in honor of the first Moon Landing.]

People, some smart people, are messing with my moon landing.

Someone like Tom Wolfe, for example, the author of  the novel “The Right Stuff” of the Mercury astronauts, wonders in yesterday’s New York Times, whether it was one big leap into nowhere (nowhere was the word–this from the author of a books and journalism titled,  The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby and The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. Vocabulary is not one of his weaknesses, OK?)

He basically argues that since that moment in July, 1969, NASA has not had a philosopher able to articulate why we should do more.

He quotes Wernher von Braun, German rocket scientist, but suggests (plausibly) that a former Nazi scientist could not become a US Philosopher King, even if he crossed the pond in 1945.

But, what Tom Wolfe remembers of a speech von Braun gave close to the end of his life when he knew he was dying from cancer is my food for thought on this fortieth anniversary of the moon landing and walk.  (From NYTIMES)

Here on Earth we live on a planet that is in orbit around the Sun. The Sun itself is a star that is on fire and will someday burn up, leaving our solar system uninhabitable. Therefore we must build a bridge to the stars, because as far as we know, we are the only sentient creatures in the entire universe. When do we start building that bridge to the stars? We begin as soon as we are able, and this is that time. We must not fail in this obligation we have to keep alive the only meaningful life we know of.”

Gulp.

I think my “food for thought” requires an adult beverage.

On this historical day permit me to make one small leap to the scotch cabinet.

©Pat Coakley 2009

PHOTOGRAPHY CANNOT BE USED WTIHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

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Filed Under: Creativity, Historical events, History, Life, MOON LANDING, Personal, Photography, Space Program Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Ocean Voyage

April 14, 2012 By


My father took this photograph of the Queen Mary just before we boarded in late May,1956.  I was 11.  We returned from Europe on the Andrea Doria, in mid-June, her last completed trip to New York before she sank off of Nantucket in July, 1956.

No surprise that I’ve had a life-long interest in ship disasters and their histories.  No one saw James Cameron’s “Titanic” more times in a theatre than pre-teens and yours truly. They were there for Leo.  I was there for the ship.

On this 100th anniversary year of this disaster, I went to the 3-D version of Cameron’s “Titanic” which is the only 3-D movie I know that looks better without the glasses.  Why James Cameron bothered to mess with trying to retrofit and wrangle this movie into 3D technology is beyond me.  But, as it turns out, not even he can ruin his own movie.  When I took off my glasses at some point for three reasons:  wondering why the colors were so dull, distracting blurred foregrounds of heads and columns were bothering me, and, lastly, the constant irritation of the boundaries of the glasses limiting my view of the screen, I realized it looked better without the glasses!

I watched the final 45 minutes of the unraveling of this ship without complaint.  Even if parts were blurry, the enormity of this tragedy was there on the screen, in spite of 3-D.  His original film should have been re-released.  But, hey, he didn’t ask my opinion.

The BBC has offered audio files of the wireless transmissions from the Titanic.  They asked an “audio artist” to translate the transmissions into synthetic voices.  They can be listened to here.  I was astonished to hear the wireless operator upbraid another ship for interrupting him with a clear, ominous warning about icebergs and ice fields directly in their path.  The ship reported they were stopped in the water.  The wireless operator’s transmissions of boring first class passengers “Hi, how are you? I’m on the Titanic” messages (written before encountering the iceberg) were somehow more important?  He not only told the ship to stop interrupting him but also never sent the message to the bridge.  Other messages of ice sightings had been sent to the bridge, although none of them were in the same exact location as the Titanic.

When they did strike the iceberg and the Captain came down and told him to transmit SOS/CQD signal, he did stay at his post, transmitting the distress signals over and over again till after 2 AM.  He had full knowledge that the ship was sinking from midnight on.  In the minutes before she sank, he somehow managed to land into a collapsible life boat, but died from exposure before the Carpathia arrived on around daylight.

PBS has two programs. “Saving the Titanic” which focused on the engineers and boiler men (stokers) who managed to keep the lights powered on the ship right up until minutes before she sank.  I had always wondered how that was possible.  Now, I know. 50% heroism, 50% total ingenuity.  None of them survived.

Another PBS program narrated by Len, a judge from Dancing with the Stars, I almost didn’t watch because…well, because  it was narrated by Len, a judge from Dancing with the Stars.

What possibly could he tell me?  Turns out, quite a bit.  Click Here to watch it. He interviewed relatives of crew members as well as descendants from survivors.  Stories I’ve never heard before.

Finally, I am still listening to audio files that the BBC has put on-line from interviews they have done over the years with survivors of the Titanic.  They can be accessed here.

The anniversary is tomorrow.  One first class woman describes being told to get to the lifeboats.  She threw on her fur coat and before she left her stateroom, she locked all her trunks as well as porthole windows. She gave the keys to the steward telling him to keep a watch over her things when the ship was towed to shore.  The steward told her to kiss her trunks goodbye.

That’s one way of saying it.

PS.  I also read for the first time Charles Dickens account of his first ferociously unpleasant transatlantic voyage to Boston. He described the cramped cabin on this supposedly “luxurious” mail boat as “a hearse with windows”.  He also described the horrible passage in such Dickensian terms and detail that I am surprised the another ship was built.

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Birds Flying High. Beginning A New Day Ending with Polka Dots.

January 1, 2010 By

“Birds flying high. You know how I feel.  A new day.  A new age.  And, I’m feelin’ good.”

Happy New Year and I really am feelin’ good.

This is from a series of photographs I took early early this morning on the first day of January, 2010.  Snowing yet again.  Gray gray gray.  But, birds flying high.

Why they aren’t already far south of this freeze box,  I’ll never know.

But, I’m thankful for them and their patterns and their movement and the ghosts of motion all in the same instant.

It is that very new first day of the month, the year, the decade, and god help us all, the rest of our lives and attention must be paid.

I ended the decade and began the new one reading a short biography of Franklin Roosevelt by Alan Brinkley.

A meditation on friendship not history ensued.  I read about his relationship with Missy LeHand, the long-time secretary and companion/hostess of FDR.  Although it appears this was not a romantic relationship (at least on FDR’s part), he was dependent and attached to her skills.  Years of traveling with him, years of managing his personal and professional life; he was her life.

She was often Eleanor’s substitute hostess (with Eleanor’s approval) on numerous social occasions as well as his companion on his travels in search of cures and hope once he was stricken with polio and before he became president.

When he was elected President, she served in the same close position until she had a stroke and was unable to continue working.  She lived in a room in the White House but FDR reportedly never went to visit her. Not once.

His relationship was done once she was no longer any use to him.  Or, he was the sort of friend who could not bring themselves to witness physical deterioration.  These folks sometimes say, “I didn’t know what to say,” and genuinely feel that is a good reason.  Or, they say it but have the grace to look at their shoes while saying it.  Given his own paralysis, that seems unlikely, yet still possible. Fear of seeing life’s possibilities can be paralyzing even in unheroic lives.

“Ouch” in any context of explanation.

“The New Deal”, indeed.

Do you know folks like this?  I mean “regular” folks–not ones who need biographers.

Yep, I guess we all have.

Hopefully, Missy LeHand’s stroke wiped out her cranial friendship acreage before she realized the truth.

I then went to sleep and woke up with Maira Kalman’s last column on the New York Times website about her year long pursuit of democracy.   Her magical lovely illustrations and photographs on a previous topic, “The Principles of Uncertainty” inspired me to begin this blog.

Anyway, her last illustrated column is about George Washington.  Do yourself a New Year’s favor, go take a look.

Oooo, Maira.

Birds flying high, you know how all of us feel– desirous of that luscious lemon layer cake to celebrate and savor the moment.

I have a red room.  I can buy white calla lilies.

But, that lemon layer cake?

I’m hoping for a friend who bakes to read this and deliver to my door sometime in my future this lemony surprise because you know, don’t you, how I feel about pastry?

It is the devil.

And, besides, tho’ not deserving of a granite monument to my contribution to our national life,  I’ll visit you for sure if you have a stroke.

Birds flying high, sings Nina Simone. New Day. New Age.

Nina, you are the lemon layer cake of artists all.

So, I begin a new day, a new month, a new decade knowing what I know and wishing I could fly south out of freezebox USA without waiting in a three hour security line checking for explosives sewn into my polka dot undies.

Now, there’s an image for your New Year.

©Pat Coakley 2009

PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

**Select photographs from this blog and my larger archive can be purchased and/or downloaded at: www.patcoakley.com

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Filed Under: 2010, BIRDS, Historical events, History, ILLUSTRATED COLUMNS AND BLOGS, MAIRA KALMAN Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 22

November 22, 2009 By

I have spent the day watching television just as I once did on this date in 1963.

It began with PBS “Bill Moyers Journal”, an hour-long program of Lyndon Johnson’s telephone tapes with his military and civilian advisors trying to wrestle with the complications of Vietnam.

Take out “Vietnam” from the conversations and insert Afghanistan and Iraq and you might be overhearing the conversations that are going on in Washington these past months in the lead-up to President Obama’s announcement about our course in that war.

It was chilling.  It was presented without contemporary commentary as the listener provided all the stunning parallel to make the point.

Next, were several installments of another PBS program, “American Experience” about Native Americans.  One that miraculously told the truth.  As one of the narrators in the introduction states, “what happened here was nothing short of ethnic cleansing.”

Yes.  This is the program that Ken Burns should have done rather than the National Parks.  I’m not sure there’d be an IPHONE App for this bit of American history, though.

As I began to feel glued and cemented into the chair, another American Experience program followed about the Kennedy family.  It was not the idealized hagiography that one might expect on this anniversary of JFK’s assassination, but fearless in presenting the strengths as well as the profound weaknesses of their personal as well as public behavior.

So, now, it’s time to turn it off.  I’m not in a college “smoker” room as I was in 1963, but I’m feeling a bit shaky just as I did all those years ago.

I could change the channel and watch professional football, The New England Patriots and the NY Jets pummel one another into the ground.

Somehow, history and sport all seem like the same thing to me in my shakiness.

Cocoa with marshmallow is the only option.

©Pat Coakley 2009

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1638 to 2009

February 24, 2009 By

widehousec1

I could begin the reasons one might love living in New England with its four distinct seasons, but, since I’m more than slightly deranged at the thought of it being 18 degrees (again) this morning, I’ll skip the weather angle and go right to history.

History with a capital “H”.  This house, this town, Dedham, Massachusetts, is just one of many around me that have survived a very long time through big, bad times and, wonder of wonders, is still standing, albeit sagging a bit here and there.

There are days when a girl just needs to remember this.

“Need” to remember, as this house “needed” its oak summer beam to support the rest of the joists and its chimney to center the house–to boil the cast iron pots, to warm the spines of generations of the Fairbanks family.  I imagine that on some February nights back in the 17th century, the elders in the family might have occasionally struggled for sleep, turning from one side of their bed to the other, wondering what their world was coming to and whether it was going to keep on spinning.

It’s tough to put in a tourist brochure, but sometimes, particularly when bad times boil, we may all just need to live in New England to steady our nerves and our gait.

Although, I swear to you, if there’s one more icy morning, I’m going to Rio.

“The Fairbanks Homestead”, open for tours May to October, reminded me of this today.

©Pat Coakley 2009

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Filed Under: Aging, ANXIETY, History, NEW ENGLAND Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Guitar Man at Inaugural Concert

January 19, 2009 By

011809guitar

I am posting a series of photos today of the Inaugural Concert performed in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday, the 18th.  I am not a concert goer so photographing performers is a new subject.  I have the advantage, though, of loving music and having a HD set in my living room that allows me to zoom up and down with my camera with no one obstructing my view!

Hey, maybe I could have been a rocker.

Nah.

But, I enjoyed taking these shots and was glad I was alone so no one would be passing by the living room giving me worried looks as I appeared to be dancing while photographing the TV screen.

Photography for Shut-Ins.  I’m not kidding.  It’s my niche.

I hope you enjoy these but most of all I hope you heard the concert.

©Pat Coakley 2009

PHOTOGRAPHY CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

This is the sixth post in my series called “Driving to the Inaugural.”   I am driving from my computer with the assistance of memory and past images and television and internet. Triple A doesn’t have road service for this journey even though I have a premium membership.  Here are the others in the series:

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Driving to the Inaugural Series, Historical events, History, PHOTO BLOGGING, Photography, Television, The Inauguration Tagged With: , , , , ,

All Eyes On Washington, DC

January 18, 2009 By

alleyesarewatchingdct

This is the third in my “Driving to the Inaugural” series.  I am driving from my computer with the assistance of memory and past images and television and internet. Triple A doesn’t have road service for this journey even though I have a premium membership.  Here are the others in the series:

Day One

Day Two

____________________________________________________________

One could be persuaded by the smiles of the crowds and the President Elect that there is only joy and hope riding the rails into Washington, DC.

The washington post.com reports this morning that homeland security folks, FBI are bedding down in government buildings in order to not get caught in gridlock.

It also reports that when he was nominated in Denver, the Secret Service made the largest order of bulletproof glass in its history.

“The service requested about 5 tons of “transparent armor,” laminated with four layers of virtually unbreakable plastic to resist chemicals, flames and multiple gunshots.

When Obama is sworn in as the nation’s 44th president Tuesday, the ballistic shield will provide a final layer of safety in a massive exercise in presidential security, the culmination of two years of a steady ratcheting up of the protection around Obama to a level unseen for any of his predecessors.”

This moment is complicated in its joy. Fearful in its hope.  But, we as a nation have been here before.   Lincoln’s journey  to Washington for his inaugural was done under threats of secession as well as threats to his life.  He and his family were forced to make the anticipated change of trains necessary back then to continue on to Washington in the cloak of darkness when a creditable threat surfaced at the scheduled change station.

These fears and complications we feel today are the transparent layers of our past as well as our future.

©Pat Coakley 2009

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Filed Under: 2009, Creativity, Events, History, Inauguration, Inspiration, Life, Personal, Photography, The Inauguration Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

I Remember the Plane

November 22, 2008 By

jetplane

45 years ago, on this day, President Kennedy was assassinated.

I was in a college on a hill alongside the Hudson River and in the basement of my dormitory in “the smoker” playing cards.  The adjacent room had a 19 inch black and white TV and the soap operas were on and had their usual viewers.  My card game was Bridge which makes me laugh just thinking about it.  My mother taught me the game which was truly a blood sport to her and one time while playing with her and some of her friends, I trumped my own ace and I believe whatever love she had for me vanished in that instance.

I don’t ever remember playing again after this particular November day, either, but I could be wrong.

The game was interrupted by girls yelling that their soap opera was suddenly off the screen.  Then, we heard why.  The rest of the day is a blur of this TV set, crowds in front of it, standing room only for the rest of this day and throughout the weekend.

I remember watching dry eyed for the first few hours with this strange feeling in my stomach that I now know was fear.  Then, I simply lit up another cigarette.

I fell apart when I saw Air Force One land back in the Washington, DC area with the harsh spotlights on the rear of the plane where the coffin was off loaded.  After the coffin was taken from the plane,  Mrs. Kennedy appeared with Robert Kennedy holding her hand and she was lifted off the plane from the cargo platform by what appeared to be a sea of raised arms waiting for her on the ground.

I don’t like remembering this image.  It was my first example of history being personal and invading my soft tissue like the assassins bullet.  The scar is still there but our nation is, too.

That aspect is good to remember 45 years later, with fear gripping my insides in similar ways.   In 2008, it is remarkable to remember that for a moment there in the chaos of that November afternoon, no one was sure of their future.

We were all waiting in a dim, smoky room for raised arms to catch us.

©Pat Coakley 2008

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Filed Under: Creativity, History, Personal, Photography, Presidential Assassinations Tagged With: , , , ,

One Giant Step

November 5, 2008 By

nasa4-earth-moon-1

Not since this moment in 1969 have I felt quite like this.

Never have I/we needed it more.

But, this time.  This time?

The whole world seems to feel more like Neil Armstrong than a bystander looking up.

To be sure, this morning we begin our journey back to gravity and those Earth problems haven’t changed.

But, they seem more soluble as we shake moon dust off our shoes and sandals, and in my case, my 8 year old black Merrells.

They look brand new, people.

Brand freakin’ new.

©Pat Coakey 2008

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Filed Under: change, Creativity, ELECTION, ELECTION 2008, Events, Government, Historical events, History, Inspiration, Life, News, PHOTO BLOGGING, Photography, SCIENCE, Space Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Ohio 18 Wheeler

November 4, 2008 By

ohio

Let’s just say, I turned the TV on and this truck is now called my Ohio 18 wheeler.

©Pat Coakley 2008

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Filed Under: Creativity, ELECTION, ELECTION 2008, Events, History, Life, Photography Tagged With: , , , , ,
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