WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Only one member of the human race is missing from this 1969 photograph
byVanderleunonJuly 21, 2021
There are iconic photographs well known to most of us, and this image, taken by Michael Collins, is especially significant. It shows the lunar module Eagle, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on board and the Earth in the background. What is so unusual about this photograph is that Michael Collins is the only inhabitant of planet Earth, dead or alive or still to be born, that does not appear in it.
Putting myself in Michael Collins’ shoes, I have never felt so lonely. We really do need each other.
JessieJune 29, 2017, 5:49 PM
What happened to Mondo Bizarro?
Miss old website format 🙁
DaphneJune 29, 2017, 5:59 PM
I don’t visit much anymore and when I do, rarely leave a comment. My life is busy in other ways these days, but you still stay on my mind.
I love the new header and format, Gerard. It’s gorgeous and fresh.
Best to you and much love.
Buzz KillingtonJune 29, 2017, 6:39 PM
Ummm, what about everybody on the back half of earth?
Millie_woodsJune 29, 2017, 7:34 PM
What a lonely thought. I wonder if Michael Collins realized that at the time.
itorJune 29, 2017, 8:42 PM
Huh, no stars visible. That’s weird, since stars can be seen
even with a full moon.
Must be the full earth, or the fstop?
jrcJune 30, 2017, 6:31 AM
Seems quite a stretch to appear poetic.
NoriJune 30, 2017, 6:55 AM
The force of will to maintain his own sanity is remarkable. America still produces men of this caliber,they just are not venerated as they once were.
EskymanJune 30, 2017, 12:24 PM
I was one of the tiny, insignificant cogs in the machine which accomplished this wonder; I’ll always be proud of that.
I’ll always miss the country which could bring about such achievements. Maybe it will live again; I hope so.
gwbnycJuly 21, 2021, 5:16 AM
astute.
and remindful.
************
“Mike Collins realized”- from memory many astronauts/cosmonauts describe in few, powerful words the utter beauty of the planet and the lack of that understanding by its inhabitants. At that range the horror is hidden, and known.
Like almost everyone else I believed that we went to the moon. I don’t believe that any longer. I don’t believe anything government, industry, corporations and big pharma say about anything. The recent offered excuse of why we haven’t been back to the moon?? NASA says “We lost the technology.” Must have been in that box in the storage locker but the janitor threw it out. Here’s a collection of videos that should have any discerning intellect questioning if this moon thing ever happened. The third video down is interesting which shows set assistants helping astronauts into the capsule “on the moon.” The first video shows Buzz Aldren telling a little girl, “We never went there.” Believers will scold me for not believing. I don’t care. Take a vaxx while you’re at it. https://tinyurl.com/f49ysxx5
Fletcher ChristianJuly 21, 2021, 7:53 AM
itor: That is often said. And your explanation is right. Use an exposure long enough to be able to see the stars, and both Moon and Earth would be washed-out, overexposed blobs.
It is said it didn’t happen, disagree. That ere of men had fought hard battles for our freedoms.
Have a hard time believing The Greatest Generation, would allow such a cruel hoax upon our people.
Gotta believe their was honor amongst the men and women who once bleed lots of blood, for this still great nation for the right reasons.
Vi
ghostsniperJuly 21, 2021, 9:08 AM
Hey Dirk, Oswald killed Kennedy just a few short years prior.
Oh yeah, remember that Gulf of Tonkin thing?
Tom’s slightly less cynical than I.
Thanks for the link Tom.
You are entirely welcome, ghost. The real conspiracy theorists believe that government cares about them, the news media would never mislead or lie to them, and the pharmaceutical industry that makes multi billions from sickness wants to cure them. I’ve been lied to my entire life… everybody else heard nothing but the truth. Must be nice.
I know, I know, I simply can’t give up on these United States. It’s all I know. Agree things appear rotten to the core, I just see that our leaders are now, scum of the earth,,,,, are not the men and women who fought a World War.
Wore suits to mechanics Jobs where coveralls were then put on. Where Men not machines figured out just how to build complex stuff. Using slide rulers and trig on paper, not plug and play. Who figured shit out using their minds not a computer.
Our elders were a different breed, hard, god fearing, loyal men and women. Actually chopped wood, rather then purchase wood.
Sciences has literally dumbed the human down, made us soft. Not so, our parents our grand parents. As I write this I’m looking at a picture of my great grandfather, in BaggsWyoming , on a horse in the winter with a tie wool dinner jacket and slacks on, a lever action rifle in a scabbard, a handgun on his belt. Mean as a rattlesnake, sharp as a tack. A man of god. My great uncle with him, dressed and outfitted the same.
An oral history of the family was handed down. These were men’s men, who loved this land of opportunity. Sheep ranchers who learned to integrate with the cattle barons. “ Pierson” was the family name then their.
It’s interesting even those we know as “ The Wanderers” wrote of graft corruption in their times. This I know, we are not seeing anything new, this is simply history repeating itself. Greed and corruption are words bantered about buy those not involved in the taking, and making of history.
Being Stoic, I’m not loosing any sleep over it. It is, what it is. I’m fine with that.
I’m down with Dirk on every aspect of his comment.
james wilsonJuly 21, 2021, 1:23 PM
Dirk, 16 minutes of Spengler, Decline of the West (1922)
What you have been going on about. Cleverly matched with images added to aid our present version of sapiens, that is, those who haven’t read a book. Dense.
Also, Dirk, there was no “greatest generation”, judging by their kids. And what generation didn’t rise to the occasion, until more recently? Perhaps we judge them great only because we are so poor. The ordinary Americans that Tocqueville details from New England to Louisiana in 1831 were incomparably superior to any twentieth century model. The fix was in before the turn of the twentieth. We’ve been coasting all along since on a great heritage but this is the bottom of that hill.
Hey Dirk… go ahead and love America. And I applaud. It’s always been populated by brave, inventive and adventurous risk takers. There’s a lot to love. But these same ancestors you admire would have have been as skeptical as I when they’ve perceived something unbelievable too many times. You’ve been lied to. Realize it and then move forward with a bit more street smarts.
ghostsniperJuly 21, 2021, 2:38 PM
@Dirk, I too used to be patriotic, still am in another life. Just last night after supper my wife and I sat on the porch sippin’ tay and were talking about this very topic. We’re very much the same in this regard. I was born and partially raised in Gettysburg. Went to Sunday school at the church G Washington attended in Carlisle. Attended Cub Scouts at the Carlisle War College. My paternal grandfather is buried right next to Molly Pitcher. I come from a family with a long line of males that without question volunteered for the military. I am a twice disabled ex-army soldier that did most of my time in what was then the most dangerous place on the plant as an airborne combat engineer/medic.
By my mid 20’s the scales had started to dissolve from my eyes. My fantasy life was fading and the stark boldness of reality was become clearer constantly. To realize that almost everything I knew was exactly wrong and all the good things in life were not. I resisted this in the beginning but confusion is not my friend and I set out to clear the clouds of deception. It was like peeling a diseased onion, the more layers that came off the more rotten it was.
I realize now that the idea of america is not a patriotic gesture at all. It is a measure of self worth and the recognized value in common ground. Imaginary lines on a globe do not describe the idea of america except for a particular point in time, which no longer exists. I could be patriotic again, in the traditional sense, and I would like to be so, but for that to happen I know that a whole lot of rotten must be removed first. The sooner it starts the faster recovery can begin. Until then I bide my time and make the best of everything as well as I can. Avoid crowds.
ButchJuly 21, 2021, 3:44 PM
I miss that country more and more every day.
I’ve said it before (probably here) and I’ll say it again: We traded the stars for the Great Society. Of course, the recipents are ungrateful. We chose poorly.
I get it, I wasn’t taught how to quit!, na, I will continue to love these United States, to the end. Those men and women who modeled how to live life were giants in my eyes.
It’s never been a goal to save the country, just my family, those around me. Hell I don’t even like most of em, yet understand the necessity of surrounding ones self with skills sets we don’t have.
It is your Elected officials whom have doomed you, not this great nation. The United States is still the land of opportunity. Each of us has been afforded the opportunity to be as rich or as poor as we choose to be.
To be as educated or not as we choose. Na being born in the United States doesn’t grant us any special privlage,
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Camouflage
Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Chimes of Freedom
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”
Byzantium
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
De Breanski
VAN GOGH
Hillegas
To the Stonecutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
![That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/welcometohell-150x150.jpg "That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]")
![Allen Ginsberg: The Interview, <strong> ➡ 1972 ⬅ </strong> [Republished by unpopular demand]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/ginsbergnirvana-150x150.jpg "Allen Ginsberg: The Interview, <strong> ➡ 1972 ⬅ </strong> [Republished by unpopular demand]")
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Comments on this entry are closed.
Putting myself in Michael Collins’ shoes, I have never felt so lonely. We really do need each other.
What happened to Mondo Bizarro?
Miss old website format 🙁
I don’t visit much anymore and when I do, rarely leave a comment. My life is busy in other ways these days, but you still stay on my mind.
I love the new header and format, Gerard. It’s gorgeous and fresh.
Best to you and much love.
Ummm, what about everybody on the back half of earth?
What a lonely thought. I wonder if Michael Collins realized that at the time.
Huh, no stars visible. That’s weird, since stars can be seen
even with a full moon.
Must be the full earth, or the fstop?
Seems quite a stretch to appear poetic.
The force of will to maintain his own sanity is remarkable. America still produces men of this caliber,they just are not venerated as they once were.
I was one of the tiny, insignificant cogs in the machine which accomplished this wonder; I’ll always be proud of that.
I’ll always miss the country which could bring about such achievements. Maybe it will live again; I hope so.
astute.
and remindful.
************
“Mike Collins realized”- from memory many astronauts/cosmonauts describe in few, powerful words the utter beauty of the planet and the lack of that understanding by its inhabitants. At that range the horror is hidden, and known.
Like almost everyone else I believed that we went to the moon. I don’t believe that any longer. I don’t believe anything government, industry, corporations and big pharma say about anything. The recent offered excuse of why we haven’t been back to the moon?? NASA says “We lost the technology.” Must have been in that box in the storage locker but the janitor threw it out. Here’s a collection of videos that should have any discerning intellect questioning if this moon thing ever happened. The third video down is interesting which shows set assistants helping astronauts into the capsule “on the moon.” The first video shows Buzz Aldren telling a little girl, “We never went there.” Believers will scold me for not believing. I don’t care. Take a vaxx while you’re at it. https://tinyurl.com/f49ysxx5
itor: That is often said. And your explanation is right. Use an exposure long enough to be able to see the stars, and both Moon and Earth would be washed-out, overexposed blobs.
It is said it didn’t happen, disagree. That ere of men had fought hard battles for our freedoms.
Have a hard time believing The Greatest Generation, would allow such a cruel hoax upon our people.
Gotta believe their was honor amongst the men and women who once bleed lots of blood, for this still great nation for the right reasons.
Vi
Hey Dirk, Oswald killed Kennedy just a few short years prior.
Oh yeah, remember that Gulf of Tonkin thing?
Tom’s slightly less cynical than I.
Thanks for the link Tom.
You are entirely welcome, ghost. The real conspiracy theorists believe that government cares about them, the news media would never mislead or lie to them, and the pharmaceutical industry that makes multi billions from sickness wants to cure them. I’ve been lied to my entire life… everybody else heard nothing but the truth. Must be nice.
I know, I know, I simply can’t give up on these United States. It’s all I know. Agree things appear rotten to the core, I just see that our leaders are now, scum of the earth,,,,, are not the men and women who fought a World War.
Wore suits to mechanics Jobs where coveralls were then put on. Where Men not machines figured out just how to build complex stuff. Using slide rulers and trig on paper, not plug and play. Who figured shit out using their minds not a computer.
Our elders were a different breed, hard, god fearing, loyal men and women. Actually chopped wood, rather then purchase wood.
Sciences has literally dumbed the human down, made us soft. Not so, our parents our grand parents. As I write this I’m looking at a picture of my great grandfather, in BaggsWyoming , on a horse in the winter with a tie wool dinner jacket and slacks on, a lever action rifle in a scabbard, a handgun on his belt. Mean as a rattlesnake, sharp as a tack. A man of god. My great uncle with him, dressed and outfitted the same.
An oral history of the family was handed down. These were men’s men, who loved this land of opportunity. Sheep ranchers who learned to integrate with the cattle barons. “ Pierson” was the family name then their.
It’s interesting even those we know as “ The Wanderers” wrote of graft corruption in their times. This I know, we are not seeing anything new, this is simply history repeating itself. Greed and corruption are words bantered about buy those not involved in the taking, and making of history.
Being Stoic, I’m not loosing any sleep over it. It is, what it is. I’m fine with that.
VI
@itor
https://www.planetary.org/articles/why-are-there-no-stars
I’m down with Dirk on every aspect of his comment.
Dirk, 16 minutes of Spengler, Decline of the West (1922)
What you have been going on about. Cleverly matched with images added to aid our present version of sapiens, that is, those who haven’t read a book. Dense.
https://odysee.com/@nativistconcern:0/oswaldspenglerthepress:c?r=3z9tryPnWbnHCsX7miaF2gHZsdDgpVfN
Also, Dirk, there was no “greatest generation”, judging by their kids. And what generation didn’t rise to the occasion, until more recently? Perhaps we judge them great only because we are so poor. The ordinary Americans that Tocqueville details from New England to Louisiana in 1831 were incomparably superior to any twentieth century model. The fix was in before the turn of the twentieth. We’ve been coasting all along since on a great heritage but this is the bottom of that hill.
Hey Dirk… go ahead and love America. And I applaud. It’s always been populated by brave, inventive and adventurous risk takers. There’s a lot to love. But these same ancestors you admire would have have been as skeptical as I when they’ve perceived something unbelievable too many times. You’ve been lied to. Realize it and then move forward with a bit more street smarts.
@Dirk, I too used to be patriotic, still am in another life. Just last night after supper my wife and I sat on the porch sippin’ tay and were talking about this very topic. We’re very much the same in this regard. I was born and partially raised in Gettysburg. Went to Sunday school at the church G Washington attended in Carlisle. Attended Cub Scouts at the Carlisle War College. My paternal grandfather is buried right next to Molly Pitcher. I come from a family with a long line of males that without question volunteered for the military. I am a twice disabled ex-army soldier that did most of my time in what was then the most dangerous place on the plant as an airborne combat engineer/medic.
By my mid 20’s the scales had started to dissolve from my eyes. My fantasy life was fading and the stark boldness of reality was become clearer constantly. To realize that almost everything I knew was exactly wrong and all the good things in life were not. I resisted this in the beginning but confusion is not my friend and I set out to clear the clouds of deception. It was like peeling a diseased onion, the more layers that came off the more rotten it was.
I realize now that the idea of america is not a patriotic gesture at all. It is a measure of self worth and the recognized value in common ground. Imaginary lines on a globe do not describe the idea of america except for a particular point in time, which no longer exists. I could be patriotic again, in the traditional sense, and I would like to be so, but for that to happen I know that a whole lot of rotten must be removed first. The sooner it starts the faster recovery can begin. Until then I bide my time and make the best of everything as well as I can. Avoid crowds.
I miss that country more and more every day.
I’ve said it before (probably here) and I’ll say it again: We traded the stars for the Great Society. Of course, the recipents are ungrateful. We chose poorly.
I get it, I wasn’t taught how to quit!, na, I will continue to love these United States, to the end. Those men and women who modeled how to live life were giants in my eyes.
It’s never been a goal to save the country, just my family, those around me. Hell I don’t even like most of em, yet understand the necessity of surrounding ones self with skills sets we don’t have.
It is your Elected officials whom have doomed you, not this great nation. The United States is still the land of opportunity. Each of us has been afforded the opportunity to be as rich or as poor as we choose to be.
To be as educated or not as we choose. Na being born in the United States doesn’t grant us any special privlage,