Cosmic Reflections

We two like to think of July 20 as the one truly global holiday.
When man set foot on the moon 42 years ago today, human consciousness shifted. Humans looked back at Home. That Milt played a part in making that happen still amazes me. So I propose we set this day aside to do something out of the ordinary, for there was nothing ordinary about July 20, 1969.
I begin strawberries and blueberries in fat free cottage cheese: a red, white, and blue breakfast reflecting a USA achievement shared. “One giant leap for mankind,” echoed loud and clear over the generator-powered transistor radio in rural Nicaragua where I was volunteering in a medical clinic.
We had just attended to a birth and cut the umbilical cord. The newborn lay on his mother’s belly; the family’s rooster hopped up to have a look. Without a television, we could only imagine what was happening on the moon even while our children were drawing horses in the dust of the earth.
That the Apollo space program was named for a Roman god delights me, for his twin sister Diana helped deliver him when their mother ran into difficulty, thus becoming the goddess of childbirth. Diana was also the goddess of the Moon.
These two concepts come together for me in the image of a human being pushed out of the womb of the Earth into another whole dimension of awareness and experience.
That in the process we were reunited with the piece of our planet that had once been blasted off feels like a home coming, of sorts! And well worth an appropriate celebration.
Thus we decide to spend the day at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Watched over by replicas of dinosaurs, we make our way to the Space Odyssey exhibit area.
It is a feast of wonder, and wondering, appropriately reflecting the posted words of Carl Sagan: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
The hands-on exhibits hook the curiosity of grownups and children alike. Listening to the kids during a presentation in the planetarium, I am heartened and humbled to realize how much more their generation knows than mine did or does.
For example, when the 20-something year old presenter deliberately refers to Pluto as a planet, younger voices call out from all over the auditorium: “it’s not a planet!”
When I lived in Flagstaff, I enjoyed spending time at the Lowell Observatory from where Pluto was identified and named (beginning with PL for Percival Lowell himself). All of the planets (other than Earth!) were named for mythological gods, except, we learned today, for Uranus, which was originally called George (for King George the First).
Just like us, our ancestors were intrigued by the sky! Unlike us, however, they had no way of knowing how far back in time or across what distance of space those nightly lights extended.
Our knowing has exploded since the dawn of the Space Age, an era that officially ends today when the final NASA shuttle heads home from the International Space Station.
We punctuate our private celebration by purchasing some freeze-dried Astronaut ice cream to send to a friend, someone who worked, as did Milt, on the Cassini project.
Though we just might eat it ourselves!