does looking at this image cause you some disorientation ? In fact, this most famous of photographs is shown here the way it was meant to be seen, or more accurately the way it was actually shot, Bill Anders (Apollo 8) was not thinking about the horizon (which pretty much orients our visual field), he was just a space explorer taking a photo as one celestial body comes into view from right to left (from the capsule orbiting another body). Amazing how that screws us up but yet is a great reminder on how much we take for granted in our daily experience (how limited we are to this sphere and maybe we should think outside of things sometimes, being stuck to the ground with gravity). More remarkable, to me, is also the Apollo missions themselves. Imagine, during the course of just a few years, continued space launches to reach the moon (and walk on it) with the technology of 50 years ago. There were no cell phones, no flat screens, no home PCs, no GPS, no finger spinners… OK, that last one seems inconsequential, I admit, but just chew on that whole for a minute… in the space of three years 12 people walked on another world, hard to even get my head around let alone yours. Just something to think about in the coming year, shoot for the moon they say…

(a nice outline of the entire Apollo project) and since I am being nerdy, here is a loaded poem, I will unpack it at some later date, lots of footnotes to date and take… can you catch them all? (hint: the one link I supplied in the name)

dear Miranda,
but just a glimpse
a fading pass
for you hide and dance
forever show the same face
within a tempest born
the scars of stars upon your form
all about craters worn
from drunken horde, magicians wand
father Prospero’s hand, Stephano’s yard
Trinculo’s joke read out on your garb
your scarps take breath
Verona Rupes
in all the moons of this
solar system our bed
your light touch would save
twelve minute fall
and might I discover
the patterns
the sulci
in which your lines are read,
may we see you again
not just a glimpse
but a visit then.