Forty years ago today, as a student at Dhaka University in Bangladesh (then Pakistan), I remember staying up all night with friends in our hostel, glued to the radio for news of the moon-walking voyagers. Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin had fired our collective imagination as they took tentative steps on the moon while Michael Collins kept vigil in the orbit above. That first small step had opened the door to infinite possibilities. We were exhilarated, our sense of wonder kindled as it has rarely been since.
The daring Apollo 11 astronauts, soaring on the ingenuity of thousands of engineers, made us see the earth as she was: a fragile, small, lonely planet in the vastness of space, in need of the nurturing care of every one of its inhabitants. For a brief, shining moment, we even thought that’s how it was going to be.
On Monday, October 27, 1969, we thronged main street in front of Hotel Intercontinental (now Sheraton) in Dhaka for a glimpse of our heroes. The Apollo 11 astronauts were visiting the city as part of their world-wide goodwill tour. And suddenly there they were, riding in a motorcade, all eyes focused on … Neil Armstrong. Being the first certainly had its privileges, even if the toast of the world had missed an “a” in his unforgettable sentence.
There is talk now of reviving that ’69 spirit of adventure by shooting for Mars, a more hospitable target than the moon. But even if the money is there, is there the national will? “Man must understand his universe,” said Neil Armstrong, “in order to understand his destiny.” The question for us to resolve now as a nations is: What must be our destiny?
Showing posts with label moon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moon. Show all posts
Monday, July 20, 2009
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Stretching the Earth's Resilience
Day temperatures reached the 70s in San Jose, California, in mid-January. This is supposed to be winter, with the parched land needing copious amount of rain, and although the balmy weather feels wonderful, the third consecutive drought looms for the state. We have had about 50% of the rain normal for this time of the year. (4.06 inches so far; normal is 7.89 inches). Sierra Nevada, the 400-mile-long mountain range made famous by John Muir’s “Range of Light” reverential musings, has a snowpack only 60% deep compared to what it should be. California’s January sunshine may be redolent of paradise but I cannot shake off thoughts of snakes lurking in the garden.
Today it is in the high 60s as I write. City officials are warning of water rationing. The hills and valleys of the San Francisco Bay Area are green but already brown patches are showing. They suggest the sorrow of teenage brides withering under harsh reality without ever blooming. Patches of yellow mustard show up here and there but where have the orange poppies gone?
Is the unusually high January temperatures a sign of global warming? The Midwest is reeling under record snowfall. It’s bitterly cold in the east coast. Rain is incessant in the Pacific Northwest. What can explain this anomaly, this wild fluctuations in weather conditions that get more pronounced every year? Something is happening to our planet. We are probably stretching its resilience to the breaking point.
I wake up about an hour before dawn. Until last year, I used to hear the cooing of a dove in the ash tree in my front yard toward the end of February. That was my sweetest reminder that spring had arrived before vernal equinox in March. But this year I heard the dove on January 29. I began hearing its mournful music regularly every morning thereafter. Spring isn’t silent as Rachel Carson feared it would be, but certainly it arrives early, early, early!
The night sky removes the sadness I feel at the increasingly ephemeral nature of winter and spring. On the same day that the dove began to coo for the first time this season, I saw in the evening a most stirring sight: Venus shining gloriously above a three-day old moon. The following night the two celestial bodies traded their positions. The night after, the moon separated even further from the evening star as it gained weight and steadily climbed the sky. The sight of stars blooming in the garden of the sky all night long is profoundly moving. The anxiety of mortgage payments, unfulfilled dreams, even intimations of a fragile earth, fade away, replaced by a joy that comes from knowing that I am not alone but is woven into the fabric of this vast, mysterious universe.
Today it is in the high 60s as I write. City officials are warning of water rationing. The hills and valleys of the San Francisco Bay Area are green but already brown patches are showing. They suggest the sorrow of teenage brides withering under harsh reality without ever blooming. Patches of yellow mustard show up here and there but where have the orange poppies gone?
Is the unusually high January temperatures a sign of global warming? The Midwest is reeling under record snowfall. It’s bitterly cold in the east coast. Rain is incessant in the Pacific Northwest. What can explain this anomaly, this wild fluctuations in weather conditions that get more pronounced every year? Something is happening to our planet. We are probably stretching its resilience to the breaking point.
I wake up about an hour before dawn. Until last year, I used to hear the cooing of a dove in the ash tree in my front yard toward the end of February. That was my sweetest reminder that spring had arrived before vernal equinox in March. But this year I heard the dove on January 29. I began hearing its mournful music regularly every morning thereafter. Spring isn’t silent as Rachel Carson feared it would be, but certainly it arrives early, early, early!
The night sky removes the sadness I feel at the increasingly ephemeral nature of winter and spring. On the same day that the dove began to coo for the first time this season, I saw in the evening a most stirring sight: Venus shining gloriously above a three-day old moon. The following night the two celestial bodies traded their positions. The night after, the moon separated even further from the evening star as it gained weight and steadily climbed the sky. The sight of stars blooming in the garden of the sky all night long is profoundly moving. The anxiety of mortgage payments, unfulfilled dreams, even intimations of a fragile earth, fade away, replaced by a joy that comes from knowing that I am not alone but is woven into the fabric of this vast, mysterious universe.
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