Time Passes Slowly

Sometimes it seems that time races by and we barely get a chance to savor the events of our life. Sometimes it seems like time slows down to a crawl and we spend a great deal of our lives suspended in one place.  These are like two opposing dimensions and lately I've had one foot in each one.

Today marks four years since Joie died and I am re-experiencing some of that sense of loss like it is new all over again. This is my end-of-July-blues. Science tells us that prolonged grief brings about chemical changes in our brains so that what seems natural to a grieving person is not perceived the same way by everyone else. It is a continuing struggle to come out of the state of grief and I think that it must take a conscious effort to do so. I'm working on it but I still have a way to go. But I have come a long way and I am pretty happy with my life right now. I surprised myself by declaring that a few weeks ago during a conversation I was having. I have been able to climb pretty far but time passes slowly and sometimes it is like a slow-motion movie.

Joie and I were together about 33 years, more or less and I reflected recently on her ability to indulge my various quirks and interests while still standing her own ground and her own persona. I've mentioned before that she went through nine lives but she always brought some of that forward so it was common for her to have multiple points of focus or to be in some state of transition.  Some friends once observed that she seemed to almost submerge herself once we were married and moved to Jefferson City. That isn't true at all but it is an interesting observation that resulted from the physical distance and the reduced contact that we had with some of our old friends once we moved.

I indulged myself on this sad anniversary to pull together some pictures taken over our time together. Some of these are my favorites.



American Gothic 1975 - Colby Kansas...on our way to Wyoming and our backpacking trip. For a girl that never camped or went into the wild she did great. Her family and friends were stunned that she would do this but she worked hard to get ready and carried a 40-pound pack through the Bog Horns.




Young professionals -- the photographer made me sit on a telephone book because the man was supposed to be taller than the woman and we were exactly the same height. That's why she is grinning.

New mom -- Jill had been born just a few weeks before this was taken. Joie was a great mom but there were some trying times, too, and I had a traveling job for some of those early years.

Up all night -- Project Graduation 2002. We were volunteers for graduation night when Jill graduated from high school. We were getting punchy by dawn. Joie's dad came from St. Louis for the graduation but didn't feel good enough to attend so she was a little concerned. We all had breakfast with him later and he was fine.

Perseverance -- She broke her hip in 2004. She made herself well enough to go to Italy in June on a cane and we went all over Rome and Perugia and Florence.  Later in the year, just before Christmas, she broke her other hip and struggled back from that as well.

Family Reunion -- We came from small families except for the Ackermanns and she always enjoyed Ackermann reunions...even though she sometimes had to figure out who was who in her mom's relatives. Her mom died when she was 14 and she tried hard to stay connected. Jill and I still go to Ackermann reunions.

"Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained" 

-- Marie Curie 

And yet, they persist

I've heard it said that the US Congress is the least patriotic body in America. After the last few weeks I have come to fully believe it. The most recent performance...which is still going on at this time...has to do with raising the debt ceiling. This is a routine administrative function that makes it possible for the country to pay it's bills. The crisis is entirely the fault of Republican Tea Party freshmen representatives. That is not to say that the problem with the national debt is entirely their fault...there have been decades of foolishness leading up to this point. The US is addicted to low taxes and high spending so we end up borrowing money to buy or build things we want (or somebody wants) and to subsidize farmers or other businesses and support a growing poverty class and enormous military class stationed in almost 200 countries around the world. The thing is...we have already spent the money that we borrowed... so we owe somebody a shitload of money... plus, we still want all that stuff.

The current road to default sits squarely on the shoulders of George W. Bush and the ridiculous tax cut that he and his friends managed to pass...plus the cost of fighting his two wars simultaneously (one being absolutely unnecessary)...plus a financial and regulatory free-for-all and housing crash that led to the Great Recession.

Do you recall the crash of the Soviet Union? They failed because they no longer had the resources or the national will to keep their country together. We smugly observed that this was the inevitable failure of the communist system and the relentless pressure of Our Hero, Ronald Reagan.

I fully believe that we are looking into the same chasm...we are on the downhill slope and have been there a while. Will we slide past the wreckage of the old Soviet Union as we topple into the abyss? Lack of discipline in our government and commercial affairs has brought us to the brink. Now, instead of trying to fix the problem, we have a bunch of congressional "patriots" trying to push us over...and seemingly gleeful about it. These guys are doing what Al Qaida could not do. In some other countries...mostly third world countries but not always...this is where the military would step in and tell everyone in Washington to go home (by the way, is anyone watching for that?).

It is now past the eleventh hour in this crisis...it's more like 11:59... and they still can't recognize that the system will fail unless there is a fundamental change. Instead, they persist at playing political games and blaming tactics. We are way beyond the point for gamesmanship. We have to raise money to run the government -- Surprise!! It takes real money -- our money, not somebody else's money. People who really benefited from the Bush tax cuts -- the wealthy folks who pay little or no taxes -- need to cough up some cash and pay their share. In the meantime, I hope some adult can gain control of the discussion, slap down the Tea Party folks if need be, and get this crisis settled so we can work on the real solution.

The Ultimate in Outsourcing - Space Travel

Well, it has finally come down to this. Today, July 8, 2011, was the final launch of a United States flagged manned space vehicle. After thirty years the Space Shuttle program  - or at least the launching part of the program - has come to an end with the launch of Atlantis. I suspect that we will continue to dabble in space exploration but I wonder what it will be like without a recognized manned space program. I'm 62 and space exploration has been part of my life for almost all of my life. We had an old Crosley radio that had a shortwave band of some sort and I remember searching for the Sputnik radio beeps. I was home from school the day that our Vanguard rocket blew up on the launchpad. I remember the first Astronauts being selected and most of us wanted to be Astronauts. My brother did a really cool science fair project on rockets and actually got to meet a few of the space scientists. Some of us were almost able to overlook the fact that Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, was Russian...at least until Alan Shepard was launched on his 15-minute suborbital flight three weeks later in May 1961.


Both of these space pioneers have passed away...Gagarin in a plane crash in 1968 and Shepard died of leukemia in 1998.  Sadly, Gagarin didn't live to see the first moon landing in 1969. Shepard went on to land on the moon during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971 where he made golfing history by driving a few golf balls into deep space.

We were all captivated by the Gemini missions when we had two Astronauts flying together in a tiny capsule (How did they pee? especially after drinking all that Tang...we all wondered). Then we were consumed with the Apollo program when we were all getting ready to go to the moon.

The first actual Apollo crew was killed in a launchpad fire in 1967. These were guys we all knew because they were involved in earlier missions and it came as a shock. Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee were going to be the first guys to actually pilot a lunar mission spacecraft and we were all looking forward to the launch date. Ed White was the first man to "walk in space".

It seemed then that the Apollo program and the moon landings were the high water mark of the space program. There were other things going on. Skylab was an early space station - an orbiting laboratory that flew from the early 1970s until sort of a momentous and fiery return to earth over western Australia in 1979.

The Space Shuttle program was a new twist on space exploration because it was a reusable vehicle. It took off strapped to a rocket but landed like a plane on an air strip and then could be used over and over. The first manned shuttle flight took place in April, 1981 and they have continued all the way up to 2011. There were some spectacular disasters along the way but the shuttle proved to be the successful work horse of the space program. Before long we almost lost track of whether there were people in orbit and we no longer could remember their names. The International Space Station was constructed and the shuttles were used to ferry astronauts from several nations and their supplies to and from the space station.

Now Atlantis, a Space Shuttle that entered service in 1985 as the 21st shuttle mission, is completing the last shuttle mission. This one is number 135 for the shuttles and is the 166th NASA manned space flight. There are no other manned NASA flights scheduled or planned. This is the end of an era and I'll be sad to see it go.

We have a bunch of Astronauts but no planned missions. Some will be "let go" while some will remain and will probably fly on trips to the International Space Station aboard Russian shuttles at a cost of $60 million per seat. How long the Russian shuttles will fly is a good question. There are a couple private American companies that want to provide space flights to NASA or other astronauts but they haven't been able to demonstrate the ability to launch and return anything let alone a manned vehicle.

I think that this will be a loss for the United States if we end up relying on rented seats on a Russian space bus. Manned spaceflight is risky and expensive but it was a wonderful part of my early life. I can remember that the whole nation collectively held it's breath as the Saturn rockets...all 360 feet of them...rose off the launchpad and hurled the Astronauts into space. We waited for those few minutes until we heard the first voices from space and then everyone smiled.

We could use a few reasons to smile these days and also a good reason to believe, once again, that we are one nation indivisible. Kids could certainly use some heroes and role models other than the NBA stars or the pop culture instant celebs. Astronauts got into the spotlight of our collective attention by hard work and bravery and risk taking. I think I'd also like to see some of our young American heroes not dressed in camo and carrying guns in foreign countries. Kids need to aspire to greatness...to make the very best out of what they have and I regret that they won't have much of a space program to give them inspiration.

The last few Space Shuttles will be sanitized and retired to eventually end up in various museums.

I wish we could take just one Space Shuttle and send it out into deep space as a memorial to what we once could imagine and accomplish as a nation -- and the inspiration that the space program gave to a generation of kids.

...Almost Family

Fourth of July weekend was busy. We had the Ackermann family reunion on Saturday and then later, on the 4th, we had sort of a reunion when Gene came in to town from California for a few days. Although this was my second tripo St. Louis over the weekend, it was an enjoyable day.

Jeanne, Gene & Cam

Bonnie & George

Sheryl & Raymond

 Ken & Gene

Jeanne & Gene