Man, talk about deja vu. Watching this (twice) brought back some really great memories of my childhood, when the kids often got out of school to watch NASA launches and sometimes splashdowns. We knew we were seeing something truly special and momentous, even at our age, and the excitement was infectious. At Poindexter Elementary in Jackson, Mississippi, it was the fourth graders who got the best deal, as their teacher (sweet, dedicated Miss Lewis) lived directly across the street from the school, so they got to walk across the street and spread out on cushions on the floor of her living room in front of the black and white TV. My year with Miss Lewis was monumental in another way unrelated to, but inextricably bound up with the USAs fledgling space program--we were sitting in class one November Friday when a woman from the office came to the classroom door and said something to our teacher, and when she got back to her desk she was sobbing quietly. She told us that something very bad had happened to the President in the city of Dallas, Texas. And in the following week we spent as much time in front of her living room television set as we did in the classroom. There was more to make that year momentous, and I wrote about some of it here, then deleted it. But watching this felt good. It was a way to return to something that made me proud. Something that was so amazing my eyes and heart couldnt behold it all.
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 12:33:02 +0000
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