That Old Singing Moon #MusicMovesMe

It's Moonday...I mean Monday.  It's time for Music Moves Me!

Who are the members of Music Moves Me ?  We are bloggers who blog about music each Monday. If you have music to share with us, you are most welcome to join!  Just remember our simple rule:  you must include at least one You Tube or Vimeo video or your post may be subject to removal or labeling "NO MUSIC". You are welcome to write about music. too but we need that video!

So let's get started.

Each month, we have a guest co-host and guess who the guest co-host is this month?

You guessed it (I hope):  ME!

My theme for today is:  Songs mentioning the Moon, or about the Moon.  This is my way of celebrating the 51st anniversary of the July 20, 1969 moon landing.

Blue Moon is a 1961 classic by the doo-wop group The Marcels.  But what I didn't know is that this song was actually written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart in 1934.

Here's a recording of the song from December, 1934.  Since 1934, this song has been covered perhaps hundreds of times. 

Everyone's Gone to the Moon, a 1965 release by Jonathan King, was the song playing on WABC radio (which I was listening to) around 5:20 pm on November 9, 1965, just before the Great Blackout of 1965 hit the Northeast United States.  I can't help but remember the blackout when I hear this song.

I absolutely love this song: Man on the Moon - R.E.M.  I was never a huge Andy Kaufman fan, but this was one heck of a tribute.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, originally a Jimmy Webb song, has been covered several times.  I chose this version by Linda Ronstadt.  Linda's voice has been stilled by a rare condition called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy - in fact recently, a woman in my area of New York State died from this condition.   At this time there is no cure.

When many of us think of the Moon, we think of Pink Floyd's iconic album Dark Side of the Moon.  Although none of the songs on the album were named after the Moon, I will close with the ending of the album - Brain Damage/Eclipse and these words:
"There is no dark side of the moon, really.  As a matter of fact, it's all dark"


Yes, it's a lunar wrap.

Preserving Lunar History

Museums serve an important purpose - preserving history.  It does seem strange, though, to visit a museum to observe what happened during your lifetime.

Today, my spouse and I (briefly) visited a museum in Binghamton, New York called TechWorks that celebrates our region's contributions to technology. Among other things, the flight simulator for Apollo 11 was built here. Now housed by the Smithsonian, it was available for view.

It's amazing what those designers had to work with, especially as we could only guess what conditions on the moon were like.  Some were afraid the lunar module would sink into hundreds of feet thick lunar dust, for example.

So I had to ask this question:  has anyone ever been back to the Apollo 11 landing site?  The short answer is "no" although many of us alive in 1969 are going there today in memory.

What would we find if we revisited the site?  We have a good idea, and it's interesting. 

The flag planted by the late Neil Armstrong is still there, although we know it was knocked down when the lunar module took off.  It is bleached white, we speculate.

There are even pictures taken from above the site, but you can't see much.

Have you wondered how the future will view the moon landing?  Futurama, a (sometimes) wonderful satirical cartoon, wondered, too. Fry (the man on the right) is from our modern era.  He was accidentally frozen and defrosted in 3000, and the series proceeds from there with his adventures.  Here, he visits the moon landing site with a resident of 3000 AD to find...well, watch and see.

So we really need to be careful speculating, because, right now we couldn't get there ourselves even if we tried.

In July of 2011 I wrote a blog post when the United States ended its space shuttle program. I've updated it some and added some more commentary.

The United States space program ended in July 2011 or so I thought.

I was a child of the Space Race.  In October of 1957, Sputnik 1 was launched.  Ever hear of it? Or the Soviet Union?  This may be history to you if you are young enough, so a quick refresher.

The Soviet Union was a "union" of Russia and a number of other nearby countries.  Their government was "communist", committed to the destruction of the capitalist system - and our country.  Or, so we were told.  Those were scary times.  When I was a toddler, being called a Communist could be enough to cause someone to lose their job.  There were special congressional hearings.  Blacklists.

When the Soviets launched the first satellite in October of 1957, our country was thrown into a panic.  We needed to get our children educated in the sciences, and quickly, so we could get into space with our satellite before the Communists took space over.   This drive accelerated even more quickly when the Soviets put the first man into space in 1961.



To make a long story short, we made it to the moon first.  Several more missions got to the moon (the last one in 1972) and then in the 1970's we totally changed direction.  We decided to have a program with partially disposable space crafts.  We haven't been to the moon since that decision.

In the middle of all this, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.  Probably a lot of the urgency disappeared with the Soviets.  We no longer had an enemy to compete with, at least a Russian enemy.

Then we realized it was way too expensive for the government to keep up the space program.  Private industry would have to take over, and that is part of the reason for what happened today.  The entire story is complicated, and this is a very shallow telling of the tale.  But the bottom line was, we lost our ability to get our own astronauts into space with our own equipment.

For the past few years, who have we depended on to get our astronauts to the International Space Station?

The Russians.

Now, that's irony.

Today's 50th anniversary of the moon landing is an important one. It may be the last major anniversary where anyone who walked on the moon is still alive.  As of this week, only four such men are left. Since 2011, there are glimmers of hope that we will return to space .  Space X and Boeing have been trying, but their efforts seem to be plagued by delays.

President Trump wants us back on the moon by 2024. He met with the two surviving Apollo 11 astronauts yesterday (first man on the moon Neil Armstrong passed away in 2012.).

But if we ever get there, will the original site be preserved in some way?  Actually, a bill was introduced in Congress on July 16, the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11.

Let's just hope that Futurama isn't too prophetic.

Back in the Day #WordlessWednesday

While we are on the topic of the 1969 moon landing, the part of New York State I live in had a role in creating some of the technology used by NASA (such as the flight simulator the Apollo 11 astronauts trained on).  If I have time tomorrow, I will blog about that simulator.

Recently, I visited an organization called TechWorks near downtown Binghamton, New York, which is a combination museum and educational center.   Because today is a Wordless Wednesday, I will just show you some vintage computer equipment from the early 1960's.  This may have been equipment similar to that used in early space programs.

IBM 1440 computer. This ran some $90,000 (in 1962 dollars!) and up and wasn't too powerful by today's standards.

Something powered by vacumn tubes (top of item), which predate transistors and the modern technology of today.

Just imagine, humankind went to the moon using equipment not too far advanced from these items.  Now, we hold more power in the palm of our hands, but we make other choices.

The moon awaits.  Will we choose it again one day?  Wil this anniversary respark interest?

Join Esha and Natasha for #WordlessWednesday.

Nobody's Gone to the Moon (in Years)

We are beginning a countdown to the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing and walk on the moon.  We'll be awash in nostalgia for the next week.

I wrote most of the following (with some edits, additions/updating, and combining) on July 19, 2009 and July 20, 2009.  It was the 40th anniversary of the first landing on the moon.

Where was I when humankind landed on the moon? I was 16 when it happened.

I was in midtown Manhattan, with my Dad, at a space exhibit. I had followed the space program from the moment I was old enough to. I don't think I truly remember Sputnik, but I remember our country shooting dogs and monkeys into space. I remember Telstar, I remember being amazed at a trans oceanic broadcast of - The Today Show?

Then came the manned flights. In that day of no  24 hour news channels, the early flights, only several hours long, were covered in their entirety by the networks. They were big news items.

I remember following all the manned flights leading up to Apollo 11 on television. I was a great science fiction fan from around the age of 10, too, and it all tied in.

 I took lots of pictures at the exhibit.

 I stayed up to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon, along with millions of other Americans.

Why are we so fascinated by the First Moon Walk on this particular anniversary?

In 2009, I speculated that part of it was knowing that this may be the last 10-year anniversary where all three astronauts of Apollo 11 may be alive? (after all, Neil Armstrong was78). Now, in 2019, Neil has left us but Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, is still alive.  A total of four men who walked on the moon are still with us.  The youngest of them (Charles Duke) is 82  He was supposed to visit the place where I watched the Great American Eclipse in August of 2017 but we never saw him.

 Is it a sense of what may have been (why did we abandon manned space missions out to the moon and beyond?) Or is it because we have so many Internet "toys"that allow us to follow the mission, minute by minute, complete with astronaut updates on Twitter?

If only I knew where my photos were, I would scan and post them on this blog. Yes, I took black and white (of course!) photos of the TV screen at home. My Dad and I stayed up late to watch Neil Armstrong take his first steps.

However I never thought of taking pictures of us watching TV. That would have been interesting.

What if we had had the Internet then? Well we could say that about any time of history. Better in some ways that our memories are frozen in those faded photos and home movies. No matter how dated they seem to our children.

Eight months after the moon landing I would go on a trip with other high school seniors to study a total solar eclipse on the grounds of East Carolina University. (Greenville, North Carolina) I have been blessed - I have seen three total solar eclipses in my lifetime.

But who could have guessed what became of our space program?  My son (in his late 20's) and I discussed this when we saw each other on the 4th of July.

Who would have thought the last moon landing would take place in December of 1972?  Or that we would get to the point of needing to depend on the Russians (the country we were competing against in the "space race" to get into space?

I was in college when humankind last walked on the moon.  Now I am a senior citizen.

We have self driving phones and computers that fit in the palms of our hands (aka smartphones) but we can't get to the moon.

What will it take to get a manned space program (not just to the International Space Station) truly started up again?