I'm blown away by the pictures sent back from the Curiosity Mars mission: The clarity is just amazing, given that the images have traveled something like 225 million kilometers (my best guess there, I'm sure someone will correct me in the comments).
On a hot, July day in 1969, the images on television were much fuzzier, like something from a convenience store security tape, . However, those images are as clear to me today as they were over 43 years ago.
We were visiting family in Great Falls, Montana and all of us, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, my brothers and parents had gathered around the huge television set that dominated one wall of the living room. With the drama of the landing over, all of us having breathed a sigh of relief that the Lunar Module didn't sink into the surface or explode into flames, we waited patiently as Neil Armstrong began climbing down the ladder to take his first steps on the moon.
The room was silent. Even Walter Cronkite could not be moved to speak at that moment.
My cousin Danny, a year older than me, chimed up, "I bet a moon monster pops out of one of those craters and eats him!"
"Shut up, Danny!" I shot back, appalled and , my eight-year-old mind not convinced that my cousin was entirely wrong. More than that, his sarcasm had shattered a sacrosanct moment. It was as bad (or worse) than if he had started singing "Splish-Splash" while the priest was performing the Eucharist.
The room exploded in cheers as Armstrong took his first steps on the lunar surface. My bet is, the entire country cheered at that moment.
At that moment, it was as if time stood still. And indeed it had -- that moment is as clear in my memory as if it happened a few minutes ago.
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We all have those moments that, like it or not, sustain themselves with utmost clarity, with every detail accessible as if we could, years or decades later, reach out and touch them. The moment the nurse held a small bundle out to me and asked, "Would you like to hold your daughter, daddy?" The utter silence and stunned looks of suddenly-polite drivers who, attentions locked onto the announcer's somber voice, listened to events unravel on September 11, 2001. The empty beer mug that I twirled on the bar as I watched the Challenger shuttle explode, the opening lines of Gravity's Rainbow repeated endlessly in my mind.
As it is with that stuffy den in Montana, the stench of my grandmother's filterless Pall Malls, my dad and uncles toasting with iced 7 and 7s, all of ebullient with what our country had just accomplished, manifest in the steps taken and words spoken by Neil Armstrong.
It was at that moment I wanted to be Neil Armstrong.
A month or so later, as a started second grade, I wrote an earnest letter to NASA, putting them on notice that I was volunteering to take part in the space program. Although I knew that I could not be Neil Armstrong (after all, there could only be ONE first man on the moon), my dream was for an entire country to cheer my first steps onto the surface of Mars.
As we all have those moments that are locked forever in our memories, so too we all have those dreams of greatness. Not just individual greatness (my NASA fantasy has since switched to writing the next Great American Novel) but national and global greatness. Without exception, all of us -- conservative and liberal, Democrat and Republican, American and the rest of the World -- dream that what is before us at this moment will transform into a better future.
Unfortunately, the future looks grim as we watch our climate quickly reacting to how humans have rushed to industrialize without regards to the consequences. For many teenagers and young adults, the prospect of employment and working towards prosperity appears futile. Millions of Americans grieve over the loss of their homes and fortunes, feeling impotent and ripped off as the very bankers who created that situation grow richer by the day. Our dreams, it seems, have been co-opted into a mere survival instinct, marginalized by greedheads and tiny-minded ideologues. The dreams we once held regarding our potential as a race have shriveled up into a pinched, cynical sneer, desiccated by the cold wind of dissension and a climate of disapprobation.
It didn't use to be that way. With few exceptions, no one doubted that we would eventually land on the moon. Even though our country was split over a war that looked to be unwinnable (the doubters were correct on that one) and millions took to the streets to demand equal footing in the American Dream (were are still involved in that fight), almost all of us knew in our hearts that we would succeed in breaking the bonds of Earth, and our limited imaginations, to set foot on land where our DNA was alien.
And when we succeeded in that, all of us celebrated.
I'm told that my cell phone has more computing power than Apollo 11 had when the mission took Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon (props to Michael Collins for hanging back behind the scenes and making sure the other two got a ride home). While that is impressive and points to the success of dreams dared by millions of engineers and coders, I have to confess that I couldn't tell you where I was or what I was doing when I got my first cell phone. More than that, I can say with confidence that many more kids have wanted to be Neil Armstrong than have wanted to be Steve Jobs.
Not that there's anything wrong with wanting to be Steve Jobs and I'm proud that my 11-year-old daughter wants to be him. (she also wants to be Al Roker but kids are funny like that). My point is, it feels like our dreams have diminished, that we no longer have permission to "go big" with our aspirations. We need to return to that.
President Obama is the same age as me and I assume he was, like me, watching with absolute wonder on that hot day in July. Likewise, I'd be willing to bet that he also wanted to be Neil Armstrong. While he obviously did not realize that dream, I'd say becoming the first African-American POTUS was going pretty damned big.
It's time to go big. Yesterday, when Mitt Romney announced his energy plan and his intention to make the US energy independent by 2020, I was appalled at how dismally unambitious his "plan" was. First of all, it was clearly pitched at Big Oil and Coal, pandering to those small-minded elements who continue believing our national security relies on continuing to pump greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Secondly, it did nothing to address the billions of dollars and millions of jobs that would come from developing renewable, sustainable clean energy.
Going big would have been saying the US would be energy independent by 2020, with 75 percent of our energy coming solar, wind, geothermal and other sustainable resources. Going big would have been saying we would, as a nation, reduce our carbon footprint by 90 percent by 2020. Going big would have been saying that, as long as the potential for meltdown exists and we have no safe way to store spent nuclear fuels, we would pursue clean energy and not build another fusion reactor.
That would have been a "We're going to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade," dream. That would have, like the Apollo program, brought our country together in the pursuit of that dream. Like that hot July day in 1969, we would raise a nationwide cheer as our dream of energy independence and breaking the bonds of carbon fuels had been achieved.
We wouldn't have a Neil Armstrong for that dream. The upshot would be, however, in making that dream a reality, we would all be Neil Armstrong.
(Cross posted at The Firebird Suite where I blog about music, parenting, politics and not loving Phoenix)