Day: August 19, 2024

I have sang the song “I’ll fly away” hundreds of times. In choirs, in duets and quartets. Solo.

“I’ll fly away, oh glory….I’ll fly away”
“When I die, hallelujah by and by”
“I’ll fly away”

I’m looking up at the heavens sometimes at night, as I did the other week looking for shooting stars, and I get strange feelings. I get carried away. I feel like if I could, I would simply float up into the air, and keep on going.

Out past the moon, out past Mars and Jupiter. Out of our solar system and into the Milky Way. Through nebula, and skirting black holes. Past dwarf stars and red giants. To gently go where no man has gone before. But I pull back for now.

I am not finished here yet. Not finished. I’ve things yet I want to do. Little ones I want to nurture and love a bit longer. I don’t for how long I’ll get to. Nobody knows, except perhaps God, and I’m certain sometimes he gives extensions for his own reasons.

Truth be told, I’m really tired this summer. I’ve been dealing with health issues of various kinds practically all season, including a bad spell this afternoon with some rogue PVC’s, and tachycardia. You’d think with all the cardio I do, I’d be fit as a fiddle, but I reckon it’s really simply maintainence I’m doing. No matter though. I’m a survivor.

Robert Frost said it best: “for I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep…..and miles to go before I sleep”.

….or in my case before I fly away.

Have a great week everyone, and when you can manage to, “go home and love your family.”

Watching the movie “First Man” yesterday about Neil Armstrong’s life, and about America putting men on the moon was a stark reminder of where we have been as a country, as opposed to where we are now.

The strength, resolve and focus that we had as a country to go to the moon…to beat the Russians in our space program, was something which inspired and united us as a people. I know there were a few detractors who protested about the money being spent on that program, and that protest was addressed in the movie.

Overall though, it was a matter of togetherness that included most Americans. Was there a black astronaut at first? A woman? No there was not. I do firmly believe however, that the overall encompassing reach of the program, on all levels…not just the men who composed the crews, led to more inclusion, faster than in other areas of our countries culture.

I know that as far as me personally, the space program was a part of my childhood, which I cannot separate from my psyche. It was an excitement, and an interest from the days of Sputnik and Telstar, all the way through the Mercury program, with pictures of Alan Shepherd and John Glenn taped to the headboard of my bed, right next to JFK’s and RFK’s. It continued through Gemini, with all its tragic deaths….finally into the Apollo program. My favorite photo of all time was from Apollo 8, the first photo of our beautiful blue marble hanging out there in space, like the last gorgeous ornament hanging lonely but divine on the tree being taken down from Christmas that year.

I think perhaps my somewhat obsessive need to photograph the moon, and watch the skies, stems from my childhood wonder with putting men into outer space.

Paula and I were more amazed than ever before about the ability of the scientific community to be able to propel what were essential well built metal “cans” into space, with high powered explosives to launch them, and not only keep the people in them alive, but eventually guide them to the moon. At one point in the film Armstrong was using a handheld geometric chart aboard Gemini 8, plotting lines to try and connect with another capsule with which they were supposed to dock. Computers were these huge and heavy refrigerator sized machines which contained barely a fraction of the computing power of even the earliest PC’s with the original version of Windows. Consider the following from Google:

“So when NASA astronauts rapidly approached the moon 50 years ago, a lot was riding on a computer with less than 80 kilobytes of memory. By today’s standards, it’s a dinosaur. The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) weighed 70 pounds. Programs were literally woven into the hardware by hand — it was called “core rope memory.”

What amazing devices of mechanical engineering were those early crafts. What focus and bravery, combined with a sublime curiosity, about pushing the boundaries and limits of mankind’s physicality and mentality to the limit of its endurance these people possessed. Amazing.

While the photos of all my childhood heroes are gone from the headboard of the bed, I still have a plate block of the Apollo 8 stamps which I bought at the West Georgia College Post Office in late May of 1969, before I headed home for the Summer to get married, and start a new kind of life. I remember well Paula and I sitting on Mom and Dad’s couch in the living room on July 20th and watching “the Eagle” land, and later hearing Neal Armstrong’s famous words. “That’s one small step for man, but one giant leap for mankind”. But was it really?

I’m not sure what it would take to break America out of its current polarization and deep divisions. Something like putting a man on Mars? I wonder if even that would do it. I wonder at times if we were even as solid of a country back then like I thought we were, or if I was simply looking at the moon through rose colored glasses?

Something to think on from Larry Bowers —

“1619-1865 is 246 years. 1865-2019 is 154 years. We have almost a century left until this country has lived as many years without legal slavery as it did with it. That doesn’t even count another 100 years exactly from 1865-1965 when the voting rights act passed. So in reality that’s 346 years.

Spain, and then Mexico…after it won independence, owned much of the Southwestern US from 1521 after the conquest of the Aztecs, until 1848, when the Treaty of Hildalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American War, which the US had instigated. The US got Texas, Southern California, most of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado in that treaty. That’s 327 years the SW United States belonged to the “Hispanics” and 171 years that the United States has owned it. All citizens of Mexico got to choose to stay in the new United States, or go back to Mexico. Most of them stayed, creating an instant cross culture between the United States and Mexico, which has persisted since then. That’s a total of 498 years that Spanish speaking people have been in this area, as opposed to only after 1848 that white Americans started to go into these areas to settle. (The Gadsden purchase of 1853 further enlarged New Mexico and Arizona)

It amazes me that in just a very few short years, history in this country has been forsaken for media make believe. The myth of white manifest destiny over the cultural patterns of this country, and the belief that somehow the stain of slavery and repression has been washed as white as snow in a few short years belies the facts which lie in the history of America, if any would take the time to read it. Perhaps it cannot be understood.

Perhaps the trend of purposeful ignorance has taken such deep root that it can never be reversed. It is a shame that we Americans of the last half of the 20th century have been either unwilling or unable to defend the hard won freedoms and openness that our Fathers fought and died for in World War II. We have given them up to Autocracy and Oligarchy with hardly a fight.”

Reminiscing…

I have always loved music. Whether it be listening to music, playing my guitar, singing, writing songs, or just humming a tune. Music makes me happy, even when it makes me sad. I cry at the first few notes of some songs. One of them I heard on a rerun of AGT tonight was “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” written by Paul Simon. He gave an autistic young man who’s on the program permission to perform it, which is unusual, as he usually keeps performances of that song pretty limited.

I heard the song first on the radio early in early 1970, before I knew Paula was pregnant with our first child. It continued on to top the charts early that year, and while I liked it very much, it bore no major significance to me until much later on in the year.

We realized we were expecting a child sometime in February that year, while still living in Carrollton. It was a bleak, gray and cold, nasty Winter. We’d moved off campus into a little rental house, but we could never get our things totally straightened out, because Paula was beset with very bad morning sickness. It was the terrible, awful kind. I was so sorry for her, but I couldn’t help. The anti nausea pills would come back up whole. It was debilitating. I know she was upset. We knew without a doubt when it had happened. Unplanned, but not unwanted. I know being so sick was a miserable thing.

To make things worse, I could not find a part time job there to make money to pay a doctor, or to save any money for the coming expenses. Winter of 1970 in Carrollton, Georgia. Without our parents to help…I guess we’d have starved. I decided to transfer to UGA in the spring, because I’d heard part time jobs might be available there. I found a part time job at Sears in the Alps road shopping center almost as soon as we hit town. We found a little house to rent, Paula’s morning sickness improved, and things were looking better. Often, as I drove the car around Athens, Georgia I’d hear Simon and Garfunkel on the radio. The DJ there still liked “Bridge” and it began to take on a meaning to me. Sailing through those troubled waters was something we were doing. Maybe we’d hit some calm. I knew nothing.

We found a doctor for Paula, and although she had a really bad kidney infection that summer, which put her in the hospital, she gave birth to our daughter Karrie Lynn, on September 2nd. She was beautiful. Dark hair…dark brown eyes. The pediatrician checked her out and give her a clean bill of health the first day. I went home with Paula’s Mom to get some rest. I was a happy guy. I’d bought a box of cigars with pink bands to hand out.

When we came back the next day, the baby was sick. The pediatrician thought at first it was some kind of congenital heart defect. Then, she thought pneumonia. My Dad and Mom had gotten there, and we were all very concerned. Paula had held her once, the day before…but they hadn’t been able to bring her back again, because she was so sick. We were trying to get her transferred to Emory on September 4th, when the Doctors came out to tell us she had died.

Now at 19 years old…a little over a month away from being 20, I had become a father…my wife had become a mother..but we had lost that beautiful brown eyed baby in just two days. I never even got to touch her. Paula had to stay in the hospital still that night, and for several more nights. We were devastated, heart broken. I barely remember the next few days, with the funeral, the grieving. Paula’s Mom and I had to come to Trion to bury Karrie Lynn by ourselves while Paula was still in Athens. As we left Athens that day for Trion I had the radio on and I remember the DJ said someone had requested “Bridge Over Troubled Waters”. I don’t know who it was…it doesn’t matter, but I knew the song was for me. I wept bitterly…driving down the highway, wondering why, why this had happened to us. I got no answer to that question that day, and haven’t any day since then. Maybe there are no answers to such questions.

Paula and I recouped…slowly. We fostered a little boy named Ronnie for several months in 1971, after moving from the little house to a duplex on Edgewood drive. We built up the courage to try and have another child, and Kirsten was born in August 1972. (Sorry Kisi….revealed your age) Then after we moved to Trion, there was Ted and then Matt. We have been blessed beyond measure with them, with our grandchildren. Our love was deepened by our loss, but the loss was never forgotten.

But, as with all things which concern the heart….the hard wounds never heal, they just scar over and are opened by the memories which trigger the hurt. I would often go to the old Trion cemetery where my daughter is buried, and spend time alone there, talking and singing. Sometimes I would sing that Simon and Garfunkel song. Sometimes just think about things. So tonight, when I heard the first few notes, I had to suck in a deep breath, and start repairing that very old scar again. It’s hard to get the words out still, even after all these years. It’s just as fresh in that moment as it was almost half a century ago.