I'm ready for the shuffle, ready for the deal

But when he sings that line, why does Bono shoot craps?

The Bees Just Need to Stay Outside

The honey-bees are gumming
On their little wings, and humming
That the summer, which is coming,
Will be fun.
For the spring is really springing;
You can see a skylark singing,
And the blue-bells, which are ringing,
Can be heard.
~A.A.Milne pic.twitter.com/EjmI0E1pnR

— A.A.Milne (@A_AMilne) May 16, 2026

The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long

There's a major civil rights protest taking place in Selma, Alabama, right now in response to the SCOTUS decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act and the ongoing attack on Black Americans’ political power

(video: defiancedispatch/IG) pic.twitter.com/tk7fmq3U8i

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) May 16, 2026

It might bend toward justice, but it can just as easily snap back if we don't actively keep bending. 'twas ever thus...

We Pray for One Last Landing on the Globe That Gave Us Birth

May 16, 1963, 23:24:02 UTC, South-east of Midway Island, Pacific Ocean:

Glenn gave a ten-second countdown to retrofire. Cooper kept the spacecraft aligned at a 34° pitchdown angle and manually fired the retrorockets on "Mark!".

Cooper had drawn lines on the window to stay aligned with constellations as he flew the craft. He later said he used his wristwatch to time the burn and his eyes to maintain attitude.

The crew of USS Kearsarge spells out "MERCURY 9" on the flight deck while underway to the recovery area.

Fifteen minutes later Faith 7 landed just four miles (6 km) from the prime recovery ship, the carrier USS Kearsarge. This was the most accurate landing to date, despite the lack of automatic controls. Faith 7 landed 70 nautical miles (130 km) southeast of Midway Island, in the Pacific Ocean. This would be near  WikiMiniAtlas27°30′N 176°15′W.

Splashdown was at 34 hours 19 minutes 49 seconds after liftoff. The spacecraft tipped over in the water momentarily, then righted itself. Helicopters dropped rescue swimmers and relayed Cooper's request of an Air Force officer for permission to be hoisted aboard the Navy's carrier. Permission was granted. Forty minutes later the explosive hatch blew open on the deck of Kearsarge. Cooper stepped out of Faith 7 to a warm greeting.

Fast forward to the final launch of Endeavor on this date, 48 years later:

STS-134 was planned to be the final regularly scheduled mission of the NASA Space Shuttle Program, but with the passing in 2011 of an appropriations bill authorizing the conversion of STS-335 to STS-135, this was no longer the case. It was also originally scheduled to coincide with Expedition 26 before delays in the Space Shuttle launch schedule pushed it past that Expedition. If STS-134 had launched during Expedition 26, then Mark Kelly and Expedition 26 commander Scott Kelly would have become the first siblings (and twins) to fly in space at the same time.

Shuttle Commander Mark Kelly's wife, U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords, flew to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida to view the first launch attempt, her first trip since moving from Tucson to Houston for rehabilitation after being seriously wounded in the January 2011 Tucson shooting. On May 16, Giffords was again at KSC for the launch, which was "one of the most anticipated in years," according to The New York Times.

Looks like a fun crew.  A bit about their mission patch:

The design of the STS-134 crew patch highlights research on the International Space Station (ISS) focusing on the fundamental physics of the universe. On this mission, the crew of Space Shuttle Endeavour will install the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) experiment - a cosmic particle detector. By studying sub-atomic particles in the background cosmic radiation, and searching for anti-matter and dark-matter, it will help scientists better understand the evolution and properties of our universe. 

The shape of the patch is inspired by the international atomic symbol, and represents the atom with orbiting electrons around the nucleus. The burst near the center refers to the big-bang theory and the origin of the universe. The Space Shuttle Endeavour and ISS fly together into the sunrise over the limb of Earth, representing the dawn of a new age, understanding the nature of the universe.

All good programs come to an end, with the hopes of new beginnings...

How keen the storied hunter's eye prevails upon the land

To seek the unsuspecting and the weak.

tormented mind tormenting

["My own heart let me more have pity on"]:

My own heart let me more have pity on; let

Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,

Charitable; not live this tormented mind

With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

 

I cast for comfort I can no more get

By groping round my comfortless, than blind

Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find

Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

 

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise

You, jaded, lét be; call off thoughts awhile

Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size

 

At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile

'S not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather—as skies

Betweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.

Gerard Manley Hopkins.

I exploit you, still you love me

I tell you one and one makes three.

PS - Never been a major concert goer, but I've seen these guys twice.  At Bowdoin, and Lollapalooza '91.  The only other band I've seen twice is Blues Traveler.  Yes, I've only seen Yes once.  Crazy.

I Can’t Hold You Down If You Want to Fly

To the Skylark:

Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!

Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?

Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye

Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?

Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,

Those quivering wings composed, that music still!

Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;

A privacy of glorious light is thine;

Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood

Of harmony, with instinct more divine;

Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!

William Wordsworth.

Skylab

Happy Skylab Launch Day to all who celebrate!  Weird to remember that it happened, as did all the Apollo missions, with Vietnam as backdrop.  Anyway, 53 years ago today:

Skylab was launched on May 14, 1973, by the modified Saturn V. The launch is sometimes referred to as Skylab 1. Severe damage was sustained during launch and deployment, including the loss of the station's micrometeoroid shield/sun shade and one of its main solar panels. Debris from the lost micrometeoroid shield became tangled in the remaining solar panel, preventing its full deployment and thus leaving the station with a huge power deficit.

Immediately following Skylab's launch, Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center was deactivated, and construction proceeded to modify it for the Space Shuttle program, originally targeting a maiden launch in March 1979. The crewed missions to Skylab would occur using a Saturn IB rocket from Launch Pad 39B.

Skylab 2, the first crewed mission, was supposed to launch the following day, but the damage caused delays:

The Skylab station suffered significant damage on its May 14 launch: its micrometeorite shield and one of its primary solar arrays had torn loose during launch, and the remaining primary solar array was jammed. Without the shield which was designed to also provide thermal protection, Skylab baked in the Sun, and rising temperatures inside the workshop released toxic materials into the station's atmosphere and endangered on-board film and food. 

The first crew was supposed to launch on May 15, but instead had to train practicing repair techniques as they were developed by the engineers. Ground controllers purged the atmosphere with pure nitrogen four times, before refilling it with the nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere for the crew. The secret National Reconnaissance Office used a KH-8 Gambit 3 to photograph the damaged station.

On May 25, Skylab 2 lifted from LC-39B, the first Saturn IB launch in almost five years and only the second-ever launch from Pad 39B. 

Pete Conrad, who was CDR on Apollo 12, commanded the mission.  Here's some of his perspective from Chaikin's A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts:

When Pete Conrad looks back on his spaceflight career, the high point isn’t his lunar landing: it is the rescue of the Skylab space station in 1973. The station’s outer shield, which protected it against heat and micrometeorites, was torn off during launch, taking one of its power-producing solar panels with it. Getting power to Skylab depended on freeing the remaining wing, which was lashed down by debris. 

Conrad’s crew, who had been preparing for a month-long mission aboard Skylab, was now faced with carrying out a demanding repair. Arriving at the stricken station, they sweltered in desertlike heat for days until they could erect a makeshift sunshield. Two weeks into the flight, Conrad and his crewmate Joe Kerwin made a space walk and, with some difficulty, freed the stuck solar wing. Today, Conrad looks back with a healthy appreciation of the risks he took. 

“My life was a lot further out on the line . . . on Skylab than it was on the moon,” Conrad says. “That taxed me personally, put everything that I had spent my whole life . . . learning how to do, on the line . . . . Going to the moon was basically a nice, routine flight after the lightning. We didn’t have any trouble after that. On Skylab we didn’t know whether we [would leave] or stay for fourteen days.” In 1978, Congress recognized the success by awarding Conrad the newly created Space Medal of Honor. 

“Everybody thinks I got the Space Medal of Honor because I went to the moon. I say, ‘No, it was for Skylab.’ They say, ‘Oh, Skylab. Yes. What was Skylab?’ ” It’s the moon that people want to hear about, and like all his colleagues, when Conrad is introduced as one of the twenty-four men who went there, the question he is almost always asked is, What was it like? And he gives the neat, two-second answer he developed long ago: “Super! Really enjoyed it.”

Pete really enjoyed the space shower, too, I guess.

I will never forget when Skylab came crashing down.  I was visiting my grandparents in North Carolina, breathlessly waiting for the teevee news to announce when it actually hit the planet, hoping it didn't land on us (narrator: it didn't, Chicken Little).  And now we've had continuous occupation of ISS for 25 years.  

Progress is not linear, but we do often learn...

#throwbackthursday

Hard to believe how not gray my beard was at one time.  (2014)

In the fields, the bodies burning

As the war machine keeps turning.

五月雨

"May rain falls
as if falling into
a sleep" Shiki Masaoka

(images: Hasui Kawase / Hisako Kajiwara) pic.twitter.com/LvCQqi69ZJ

— Kazuko M. (@EstherHawdon) May 13, 2026

End of passion play, crumbling away

You know I will almost always follow a Tull track with Metallica (or vice versa).

Where’s the Dreams That I’ve Been After?

This World is not Conclusion:

This World is not Conclusion.

A Species stands beyond - 

Invisible, as Music -

But positive, as Sound -

It beckons, and it baffles - 

Philosophy, dont know - 

And through a Riddle, at the last - 

Sagacity, must go -

To guess it, puzzles scholars -

To gain it, Men have borne

Contempt of Generations

And Crucifixion, shown -

Faith slips - and laughs, and rallies - 

Blushes, if any see - 

Plucks at a twig of Evidence - 

And asks a Vane, the way - 

Much Gesture, from the Pulpit -

Strong Hallelujahs roll - 

Narcotics cannot still the Tooth

That nibbles at the soul -

Emily Dickinson.