Leave me lying here

'Cause I don't wanna go.

Like an Ogre or a Parfait

The Layers:

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

Stanley Kunitz.

"You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again."

57 years ago!

More importantly, 14 years ago Sadie landed safely, just like Eagle.  

In contrast, Ericka crashed on the table a couple times after the spinal was administered, which left me cooling my heels longer than expected before I was invited into the delivery room.  The med team's demeanor suggested something was off, but nobody told me anything until after our girl had escaped that cursed Ovarian Bastille.

Anyway, my high school freshman is going to hang out with some friends today (we already started on the cake), then pizza for dinner, and a mainland adventure awaits on Wednesday.  Time marches on...

PS - Only astronaut in that video still alive is Charlie Duke.  Collins died in '21, and Stafford in '24.  Time marching on, indeed.

I get wherever I'm going, I get whatever I need

While my blood's still flowing and my heart still beats.

Hard to Be Soft, Tough to Be Tender

If I Had Known:

  If I had known

  Two years ago how drear this life should be,

  And crowd upon itself allstrangely sad,

  Mayhap another song would burst from out my lips,

  Overflowing with the happiness of future hopes;

  Mayhap another throb than that of joy.

  Have stirred my soul into its inmost depths,

                    If I had known.

  If I had known,

  Two years ago the impotence of love,

  The vainness of a kiss, how barren a caress,

  Mayhap my soul to higher things have soarn,

  Nor clung to earthly loves and tender dreams,

  But ever up aloft into the blue empyrean,

  And there to master all the world of mind,

                    If I had known.

Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson.

Fútbol en el espacio!

The lineup for the out of this World Cup 2026. pic.twitter.com/D5I8mR8w3y

— Anil Menon (@astro_anil) July 19, 2026

My silly brain immediately thought of Buck Rogers, specifically Episode 119 (Olympiad), which originally aired on February 7, 1980.  A couple years back I tried rewatching the series on a lark and...it doesn't really hold up.  I didn't even make it to this one, in fact.

But hey, they can't all be Battlestar Galactica (Lt Sheba was my fave, sorry, Col Deering).  Or The Right Stuff.

Anyway, the only World Cup final that I've ever actually watched was at a hostel in Hirtshals, Denmark, during a biking tour in '86 (at the start of my first trip to the USSR).  Met a guy with dual German and Aussie citizenship, who hated American culture (derided "Ma-drone-a") and Danish culture ("their beer is too warm"), and a Spanish dude who passed around gin in a flask (tried it, ick) and kept chanting, "Maraaadooooona, Maraaadoooona!"  I was sad West Germany lost.

In conclusion: soccer is a sport of contrasts.

PS - Just remembered that I also rewatched a bit of Knight Rider in recent years, including the episode that Anne Lockhart was in.  Oh yeah, I had a real crush on her.  I think I still do.

I'm overworked but I'm undersexed

I must be made of concrete.

Satirical Verse

Impromptu:

In vain you boast poetic names of yore,

And cite those Sapphos we admire no more:

Fate doomed the fall of every female wit;

But doomed it then, when first Ardelia writ.

Of all examples by the world confessed,

I knew Ardelia could not quote the best;

Who, like her mistress on Britannia’s throne,

Fights and subdues in quarrels not her own.

To write their praise you but in vain essay;

Even while you write, you take that praise away.

Light to the stars the sun does thus restore,

But shines himself till they are seen no more.

Alexander Pope.

Don’t Even Tell Me About It, Babe. I’ll Look Tomorrow.

Happy Gemini X launch day!  To celebrate, I embedded some crappy video, starting just before staging, and then SECO (Second Stage Engine Cut-off), which Pilot Michael Collins described in his book, Carrying the Fire:

The G level is getting noticeable now as the first-stage fuel tanks are nearly empty, but the two first-stage engines are still churning away at full thrust. “Staging” (the shutdown of the empty first stage, separation from it, and ignition of the second-stage engine) nears, as the clock approaches two and a half minutes and the G meter creeps up over 5. 

Staging is a shock. Too many things happen too swiftly for the brain to render a verdict. The eye barely has time to register catastrophe and rescue: the G load abruptly ceases, and I feel myself flying forward against restraining straps. The window is instantaneously full of reds and yellows and bright particles and whizzing pieces of debris, and then, as quickly as chaos has come, it evaporates, leaving black sky and quiet ride as the second stage hums serenely along. 

On the ground Pat watches her TV screen and thinks that the vehicle has exploded. She is right. An instant after the two stages separated, the first-stage oxidizer tank ruptured explosively, spraying debris in all directions with dramatic, if harmless, visual effect. Back in the cockpit we have no time to discuss the matter. John, up for his second time on a Titan, knows this one is different, but not me—I luxuriate in my ignorance and begin to enjoy this ride. 

We are now far above any aerodynamic disturbances, and are in fact “in space,” except that we don’t yet have the speed to keep us up here. If the engine quits now, we will ignominiously fall back down into the ocean. But the speed is coming, and the G forces herald its approach, as we build up past 5 and 6. At 7 Gs the discomfort begins, with a giant hand pushing hard against my chest, but it doesn’t last more than a few seconds, because we have arrived. 

Precisely on schedule the second-stage engine shuts down (SECO); we separate from the spent Titan and check our velocity. We are a paltry twenty miles per hour slow and we immediately correct for it by using our own thrusters to make up the difference.

Once in orbit:

John and I have our check lists out now, and we swiftly run through the routine we have practiced so many times in the simulator, converting our Gemini from a passive payload to an active, orbiting spacecraft. We must hurry, because in seven minutes we will be in total darkness and the first night is jam-packed with star sightings to use in our orbit determination (Module VI) calculations. 

The test pilot in me winces at the necessity to rush at this stage of the game: here we are with a brand-new machine airborne for the first time and we don’t even have time to make sure it is operating properly. Everything is rush—rush—rush to get ready for Module VI. 

The tourist in me is equally outraged, for outside my tiny window is the most glorious spectacle of sea and sky I have ever witnessed, and I have no time for it. I press my nose briefly against the glass, but John—half joking, half serious—allows me only a few seconds before ordering me back to work. 

Inside the cockpit I get my first manifestation of weightlessness: tiny bits of debris, washers, screws, pieces of potting compound, dirt particles—a miniature armada—are floating aimlessly about. In an hour or so they will be gone, sucked into the inlet screen of the ventilation system, but for the time being they are an amusing oddity as well as a sober reminder that this machine has been assembled by fallible hands which drop things which find their way into inaccessible and possibly dangerous crevices. 

My body doesn’t feel much different now that it is finally weightless. A slight feeling of fullness in my head, and a tendency for relaxed arms to float up in front of my face, praying-mantis style. That’s about all, confined as I am inside the tiny cockpit.

A while later, Michael would become the fourth person and third American to conduct an EVA, and the first to do so twice.  Both of his spacewalks were a bit dicey, and taught us great lessons about working up there.  

Space is hard.

PS - Found Collins' velcro-covered EVA checklist.

PPS - The mission also set an altitude record (475mi), which was broken by Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon on Gemini XI (850mi) in September.  Of course, Artemis II shattered all records by going 252,756 miles from Earth, besting the mark of 248,655 miles reached by ill-fated Apollo 13.

I know I let you tell me what to do

You were confident you knew best.

Jeux sans frontières

Passing the Frontier:

The yellow line could be seen for as long a time

As the highway desired

And if you fell asleep at the wheel

It fulgurated in the dozing soul

Like a brutal revelation

That allows you not to feel

In the dream’s snapshot

Your brain getting smashed

Against the milestone or the windshield   

 

It was an ideal line

Crowned with horizontal blue

That unwound day after day

Like a clothesline

Flags and scalps and washed-out roses

Our countries our combats our wars

Mingling lassitude with involuntary starts

A gymnastic in disorder

That sickened our hearts

Pierre Martory.