American Digest

1910: It wasn’t the last summer but it was one of the last summers when America was at peace with the world and at peace with itself. The Civil War was a 45-year-old memory. The first of the World Wars that would scar the century to come was not even the shadow of a premonition. Lenin was an exile in Europe with no power and Mao was a student in Hunan. Hitler was living in a homeless shelter in Vienna selling paintings to tourists. Stalin was either being sent to or escaping from Siberia. Churchill was the Home Secretary in England and planning the first bit of social engineering, the National Insurance Act. Taft was President and his plan was “try to accomplish just as much [as Teddy Roosevelt] without any noise.”

Both the automobile and the electric light were ubiquitous. Air conditioning was still a wild fantasy, but the swamp cooler had begun to come online in 1904 so it wasn’t completely out of the question for the very rich.

Halley’s Comet had just passed by taking Mark Twain with it. Somewhere in Macedonia Mother Teresa had just been born. If men looked up they could have seen, had they been in the right place at the right time, other men in flight. If any had been in Sheepshead Bay outside of New York City on the 20th they would have heard the first gunshots ever fired from an airplane. Individual lives might have their small tragedies but there was no perceptible or imaginable catastrophe in the cards dealt Americans that summer. It was August and everywhere Americans paused to refresh themselves.

Presented for your contemplation: One wave breaking over a group of Americans who have waded into the Atlantic on the Jersey shore sometime around noon on a hot day in August in 1910.

The wave would have swelled up and started out far over the eastern horizon near the edge of the Gulf Stream. It would have rolled with strict impunity in the midst of thousands of others like it, all bound towards the shore. The photographer would have gotten up early and hauled his cumbersome equipment towards the shore. The bathers would have arrived in the late morning if they were not already staying near the shore.

Once there they changed into swimming apparel known more for modesty than comfort. From the light it was around noon and would have been hot. Seeking to be cooler they waded in. Some stayed near the shore. Others waded further out the steadily deepening water.

On some kind of elevated platform above the sand, the photographer put the 8×10 glass plate into the camera and ducked under the black hood for final adjustments. Then he stood up and called out and called out and called out and finally got the attention of some. Most ignored him.

The wave rolled in from somewhere over the horizon, rising up and down, maybe cresting here and there, until it swelled one last time and, just as the photographer happened to release the shutter, jumped up in that one moment and splashed and spattered the unwary people posed and unposed in the cool salt water just off the beach on the Jersey shore.That was the moment, less than a second, in the midst of that summer now more than a century gone. All, each and every one, of those nearly 300 souls are now gone as well, even the children held on the shoulders or standing in the shallows, all gone — all perhaps, maybe, save one now almost silent centenarian.

Well, what of it? That’s the way of the world and the way of the waves of the world and our lives. What we have is this moment snatched out of time on the Jersey shore one afternoon in August before the last century went smash. Who is there? What were they like? It can’t be known, but it can be seen and what can be seen, at least in this one moment, is that these people had what anyone would recognize as that thing we call happiness. Let’s see what we can see of it.

We can see the chaos ruining the photographer’s carefully composed moment with a splash soaking those nearest and plastering down the hair of a man who was probably balder than he would like to be

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U.S. astronaut Buzz Aldrin salutes the American flag on the surface of the Moon after he and fellow astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first men to land on the Moon during the Apollo 11 space mission on July 20, 1969.

The moon marked out the edge of heaven.
On this, our scriptures all agreed.
The moon was fixed, it could not fall.
The moon would fill our final needs.

The songs we’d learned were of the moon,
A fitting subject, known to all,
But the songs we sang were of the Earth,
And those that lived before the Fall.

These songs of forests flowing round
The Earth’s four corners warmed the frost
That killed our gardens, coming early,
To remind us all of what we’d lost.

“Why wander yearning for the moon?”
We’d ask of stones and ancient trees.
Their silence sang back in the night,
Of lands where all free choices freeze.

“Tranquillity”, they promised us,
“Is the highest peak you will attain.
Tranquillity, where your bones will rest
Forever in the airless rains.”

Our numbers grew, as did our tongues,
Beside brown rivers, on ancient plains.
We made more gods, we built up walls,
We fashioned towers of dirt and rain.

Within those walls we planted fruit
And flowers bordering roofless rooms,
Wherein we sang the centuries down,
Observing all the phases of the moon.

In time our towers turned to steel,
And their foundations into fire.
The rooms we made were sealed as stone,
And in those rooms we rose much higher.

The moon grew monstrous as we ascended;
In our window it grew larger than the world.
We lowered our ladder gingerly,
Stepped down, a bit of cloth unfurled.

We named the place Tranquillity.
A fitting gesture, all agreed.
We photographed ourselves on site,
Tossed away some junk we did not need,

And left, returning to that place
Where we’d begun beside the plains,
Boasting our footprints would endure
Forever in the airless rains.

Sometimes at night, we still look up
And see the moonrise scrape the sky.
It is the same, yet not the same,
And we know why, yes, we know why.

Ted swam to safety, but Mary Jo wasn’t as fortunate, as she died in the car*. Kennedy immediately left the scene and did not contact the authorities until after the car and Kopechne’s body were discovered the following day by fishermen.

He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was sentenced to two months in jail, suspended (he served no jail time at all). In 1970, a further inquiry into the matter was conducted (confidentially at the demand of Kennedy’s lawyers), and the judge determined that Kennedy’s “negligent driving appears to have contributed to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne” and could have ordered Kennedy’s arrest, but chose not to do so for unspecified reasons. Chappaquiddick Incident

A comment 3 years ago on YouTube by one Drew Singer:

I believed for many years that we did not land on the moon and that is was all just an elaborate hoax. I got in a million arguments with people about how we did not go and I was so certain and wouldn’t listen to anyone or believe otherwise. I believed I was the open-minded one and that everyone else was closed-minded. I would be so flabbergasted that the rest of the world couldn’t see how obvious it was that we didn’t go to the moon. I would get so frustrated with the people who were “asleep”. There was seemingly so much evidence that we never landed a man on the moon.

One day out of the blue, sparked by something that made me think. (I don’t remember what that was) What if I was the closed-minded one? What if I was the one who was wrong. I came to the realization that I was looking only for evidence that we had not gone and I was completely ignoring the evidence that we clearly did land a man on the moon.

I was so blinded by my ignorant search for proof that we did not go that I couldn’t see anything that suggested otherwise. How foolish and ignorant it was of me to believe that it was out of the realm of possibility that we could not safely land a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth.

And as with all who argue that we did not go, what the hell did I know? What do those people know when we have these brilliant minds telling us that we went and that it is possible? People who know what they are talking about. They are far more intelligent and educated in the sciences that put a man on the moon.

I had no leg to stand on. I was a fool. And how disrespectful I was to the great people, the wonderfully brilliant minds that all got together for a moment in history as one nation, with one common goal in mind and did something that many thought was impossible. So seemingly impossible that many still can’t, and won’t believe it today.

I really hate to break it to you though, NEIL ARMSTRONG AND BUZZ ALDRIN went to the moon. Do the research. The proof, the undeniable evidence is there. But if you won’t open your mind enough to see both sides of the argument, you will continue to be blind to the truth. Once you realize it, it will become humorous to you that you ever believed otherwise. Take it from me, as someone who, like yourselves, could not and would not be convinced otherwise.

Malley: Was the moon landing faked?

Armstrong:People love conspiracy theories. They’re very attractive, but they were never a concern to me — because I know that one day somebody’s going to fly back up there and pick up that camera I left there.

A detailed account of every second of the Apollo 11 descent and landing. The video combines data from the onboard computer for altitude and pitch angle, 16mm film that was shot throughout the descent at 6 frames per second. The audio recording is from two sources. The air/ground transmissions are on the left stereo channel and the mission control flight director loop is on the right channel.

It also answers the eternal question, “What is the hardest substance in the known universe?” with “Armstrong and Aldrin’s balls.”

A group portrait of NASA’s Apollo 11 astronauts posing with their families around a model of the moon in March 1969. Pictured are: (at top, from left) the astronaut Michael Collins; his children, Mike, Kate, and Ann; and his wife, Pat; (at left) the astronaut Buzz Aldrin; his wife, Joan; and his children, Mike, Jan, and Andy; and (at right) the astronaut Neil Armstrong; his wife, Jan; and his sons, Ricky and Mark. Apollo 11 Preparation

Michael and Pat Collins and their children enjoying a relaxing pancake breakfast in March 1969

“The moon landing was fake! In this video, I teach you how the moon landing was faked and why it was fake with 13 clear cut reasons. The moon landing hoax isn’t just a conspiracy, it’s true!”

[Hint: This is satire. Cleve and subtle but satire all the same.]

Apollo Engineers Discuss What It Took to Land on the Moon

After everyone else had finished speaking at the Caltech gathering, Neil Armstrong calmly rose and went to a chalkboard. He drew four bell-type curves, spaced slightly apart, and labeled them: Leadership, Threat, Economy, and Talent. And he said to the room, “My thought is, when you get all these lined up, you can’t stop something really big from happening.” Indeed, the early 1960s had it all: a bold (and in some ways, desperate) president; the threat of the Soviet Union; flush federal coffers; and an unprecedented number of college-educated youngsters. When the curves aligned, Armstrong suggested that an Apollo could rise. According to Gerry Griffin, engineer, flight director and eventual director of the Johnson Space Center, everyone in the room was nodding in agreement, as if to say “Of course, that’s it.”

The analysis of rarely aligned curves can help explain why we haven’t yet sent humans back into the cosmos. But four peaks fail to fully capture the miracle: 400,000 souls uniting in peacetime on a project so ambitious as to appear ludicrous. As humanity makes ample noise about restarting these journeys to other worlds, it’s worth looking under Apollo’s hood and asking the surviving engineers how they did it. Based on scores of recent interviews, their most frequent and fervent responses follow.

Earth, moon and the Apollo 11 lunar module, Eagle, in lunar orbit after return from the moon and before rendezvous with the command and service module Columbia. Mars is visible as the red dot on the right-hand side of Earth. It is often said that Michael Collins, who took this photo from the command module, is the only human in the world not in this picture.

Start watching this brilliant series right now and then go on to parts 2 and 3 with more to come.Fullscreen and sound up unless you have a smart TV with the YouTube app installed. In that case, kick back for this incredibly well-made and deeply felt documentary.

“We were able to go to the moon in the sixties because our dads were the kind of men who would let their kids smash rolls of gunpowder with a claw hammer.”

Trump Steals Reagan’s 84 Reelection Playbook.  Special kicker at the end.

I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’?” Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’?”

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

Muslim Love Today:

Karma and the Death of the 8th Richest Man Who Ever Lived – In the end, Muammar Gaddafi was dragged out of a culvert by an angry mob, violently abused, and likely executed with his own weapon, a gaudy abomination of one of the finest combat pistols ever conceived. The two timeless lessons to be learned are that socialism never, ever works and that being a tyrannical despot seldom offers a decent retirement plan. [click to continue…]

SHOT: MOTUS A.D.: The Broad Squad Expiration Date

Presumptuously speaking for the United States of America the 4 women of color (although only 2 of them technically are), 2 Muslims (one head-wrapped, 1 not), 1 social media star from Westchester by way of Queens and one angry black Bostonian used the presser to audition for the future presidential sweepstake. Their credentials? They all harbor a degree of anti-Semitism, a hatred for America as it was founded and a fascination with socialism/communism. Aside from that the only thing they have in common is the fact that they all have big mouths. And that’s all it takes to be a star in Democrat politics these days since we’ve leveled the playing field.

CHASER: Trump Points Out The Obvious. Everybody Apparently Loses Their Damned Minds by Thomas Kendall | According To Hoyt

By all means, languish not in this intolerable Hellhole, ladies. The rolling sands of Mogadishu await. Well, await one of you at any rate. But AOC and Tlaib can take the long way round, assuming they survive landing in Mogadishu. Call it girl’s night out (of the country). If you aren’t just here to try to crawl to the top, institute radical redistributionist schemes, and then mysteriously have a lot of the wealth redistributed to you in the process of it being passed around “fairly”, the places your families ran from are available. Send us a post-card. You may need to institute a functioning postal system first, but damn it, I believe in you. If those countries won’t do, there are also dozens of countries where people have already crawled to the top, instituted radical redistributionist schemes, and mysteriously had a lot of that wealth redistributed to themselves, and… I can’t help noticing… they are also mainly shitholes. There would be a lesson there for you three, but I’m not sure I can break it down into the requisite monosyllabic words. I’d have to maybe find a way to express half a syllable in AOC’s case, which explains a lot about her, really.

Man those are really some repulsive snapper-mouths.

“Ever make mistakes in Life??.. Let’s make them birds.. yeah they’re birds now.”

During the course of his television career, Bob Ross painted more than 1000 paintings. But you never see them for sale. You can buy Bob Ross paint sets and even a waffle maker that makes waffles that look like Bob Ross — “Pour in the batter, lower the lid, and before you know it, there’s Bob Ross ready for butter and syrup.” — but good luck buying one of his actual paintings. In this charming little video from the NY Times, we learn where all of Bob Ross’s paintings are, meet the paintings’ custodians, and discover why the art isn’t for sale. — Via the otherwise execrable Kottke

[This one goes out to my brother Jeff who uses Bob Ross TV programs when he has trouble falling asleep.]

PS: In three days the video above has been seen more than 3 million times. Even though he’s been dead for decades, Bob Ross still is more popular than CNN and MSNBC. Not bad for a Mountain and Tree Man.

On top of every other “challange” in my “YEAR THAT JUST WILL NOT END!” today I have to move from my current apartment into another. Posting will be slim to none because…. chaos! …and the boxes are not yet packed… and the cat is freaking out… and the movers are at the door and……  “Old man River he just keeps rolling along.”

Instapundit|THE REAL AMERICA: “Once again, the press and media are emphasizing division. But I took the weekend semi-off for a family reunion in the mountains, and driving back I came on an awful multiple-fatality accident just after it happened. (Fortunately, by the time I dug my trauma kit out and got to the scene, there was an actual paramedic on hand, just another passerby, but with a lot of skills, a great kit, and a couple of buddies who seemed to know what they were doing. Not that it mattered in the end, as the accident –a high-speed median-crossing headon –” left no survivors. But at least there was someone more experienced and better trained than me to try.) But loads of people ran to help. There were a half-dozen members of the Thunderguards Atlanta chapter (a black outlaw motorcycle gang), young women, middle-aged guys, etc. All doing their best to help and to comfort the victims. When the cops showed up they asked people to move the big debris off the road –” there was a lot of it, big stuff like brake assemblies and wheels –” which I thought was to open up the road but was actually so a helicopter could land right next to the vehicles. Everyone pitched in, and a couple of people even produced brooms from somewhere and swept the road after the big stuff was moved.

“We were stuck there for over two hours before traffic moved, and everyone was friendly, helpful and offering each other water and other assistance. From the tenor of the news coverage most days, youâ’d never know that this America even exists.”

Because the first reason to get a new car is always SAFETY! Right?

The future ain’t the same as it used to be from Chris Labrooy .

Two from  Power Tie @ YouTube:

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Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.” — Keats

How ‘Impression, Sunrise’ by Claude Monet Sparked Impressionism Having left such an important legacy, you may be wondering what could have set such a monumental movement in motion. Unlike most genres, which develop over time, Impressionism is believed to have to started in the 1870s with a single work: Impression, Sunrise, a light and airy landscape painting by none other than Claude Monet.

The Washington Monument Is Transforming Into a Full-Scale Saturn V Rocket for the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing

The Quest to Revive the Bay Area’s Fabled Doggie Diners FOR NEARLY 40 YEARS, NOTHING in the San Francisco Bay Area meant “lunchtime” like the grinning, hulking, 10-foot-tall canine faces that urged passersby to pull over and grab a bite. These were the mascots for the Doggie Diner, a locally iconic chain that boasted more than 20 locations between 1948 and 1986. Today, not a single Doggie Diner remains open, and only one of the giant heads remains in place: on San Francisco’s Sloat Boulevard, near the city’s zoo. San Francisco declared the head a historic landmark in 2005. [click to continue…]

Re that overwhelmingly apocalyptic solo by David Gilmor:

“It was a fantastic moment, I can tell, to be standing up on there, and Roger’s just finished singing his thing, and I’m standing there, waiting. I’m in pitch darkness and no one knows I’m there yet. And Roger’s down and he finishes his line, I start mine and the big back spots and everything go on and the audience, they’re all looking straight ahead and down, and suddenly there’s all this light up there and they all sort of—their heads all lift up and there’s this thing up there and the sound’s coming out and everything. Every night there’s this sort of “[gasp!]” from about 15,000 people. And that’s quite something, let me tell you.”

Gripping Video Shows U.S. Coast Guard Stopping A Vessel Carrying Cocaine: Smugglers often will open a valve and purposefully sink their vessels to avoid seizure, dispersing evidence of suspected crimes into the ocean. Law enforcement often has just one or two minutes to evaluate whether a vessel they boarded is heading to the ocean floor.

Guardsmen, trained in boarding ships, wore helmet cameras recording the moment they ran down the vessel. “Stop your boat! Now!” one roars in Spanish as waves crash against the hull. “That’s going to be hard to get on,” he says. The boarders wore holstered pistols and night-vision goggles to prepare to peer inside the dark hull. The Coast Guard retrieved 17,000 pounds of cocaine worth an estimated $232 million from the sub.

At 10 a.m. on Oct. 22, 1964, a bomb was detonated in Mississippi. The five-kiloton bomb went off 2,7000ft below Lamar County in the natural Tatum Salt Dome, a huge, dense salt ‘sea’ about 1,000 feet below ground level. The bomb contained around one-third of the destructive power of the bomb that obliterated Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Locals were encouraged to leave their homes in the area. Adults were paid $10 a day and children $5 to stay safe.