Forty years ago this month, Americans landed on the moon. There are still people who don't believe it really happened. They say it was staged on a Hollywood set to make it look like Americans had the capability to go to the moon. That's ridiculous of course. NASA has the pictures taken on the moon, right?
Only they don't. I read in the paper this morning that NASA erased the tapes from the first moon landing and used them again, to save money. What were they thinking? How could they erase history to save a couple of thousand dollars? Historians everywhere are shuddering.
So here is the joke. NASA took tapes of television news from those dates and sent them to a Hollywood studio to be "cleaned up" so they could be used as the official record of the moon landing.
The conspiracy people will be going crazy.
At the time we all thought that the moon landing would be the start of regular travel to and from the moon. When my daughter was young she looked up at the moon and asked "When can I go to the moon?" and I told her that by the time she was grown up she would be able to buy a ticket and go. Didn't happen.
Moon
by Billy Collins
The moon is full tonight
an illustration for sheet music,
an image in Matthew Arnold
glimmering on the English Channel,
or a ghost over a smoldering battlefield
in one of the history plays.
It’s as full as it was
in that poem by Coleridge
where he carries his year-old son
into the orchard behind the cottage
and turns the baby’s face to the sky
to see for the first time
the earth’s bright companion,
something amazing to make his crying seem small.
And if you wanted to follow this example,
tonight would be the night
to carry some tiny creature outside
and introduce him to the moon.
And if your house has no child,
you can always gather into your arms
the sleeping infant of yourself,
as I have done tonight,
and carry him outdoors,
all limp in his tattered blanket,
making sure to steady his lolling head
with the palm of your hand.
And while the wind ruffles the pear trees
in the corner of the orchard
and dark roses wave against a stone wall,
you can turn him on your shoulder
and walk in circles on the lawn
drunk with the light.
You can lift him up into the sky,
your eyes nearly as wide as his,
as the moon climbs high into the night.
by Dylan Thomas
In my craft of sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages.
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.
