Yikes--a couple mega-typos there for sure, Louis; if my single-eye
vision gets even worse (and I suspect it shall, perhaps soon), I'll act
on my pledge to cease posting (even though right now it sure seems to
you and other readers that I've ALREADY ceased proofreading).
Yes, I too figured Wiki would have that total-humans-in-space tally, but
I couldn't find it, despite more than a couple attempts. (And those
were before my left eye went south on me in November, so I can't
attribute it to my seriously substandard sight these days.)
But whatever the accurate tally as of 2025 is--whether lower or higher
than 1,000--they're rare people indeed. So how precious few the total
is has always been in my mind whenever I've met an astronaut (and even
interviewed a few) from time to time, realizing how truly rare their
experience is among the 8 billion or so of us humans on this planet.
And of course it's ALSO a testament to how highly trained they are; me,
I woulda washed out in the first week of one of those "space camps"
young folks sometimes attend, had I ever tried to spend a summer at one.
I feel privileged to have been born in 1954, for I was just old enough
to remember Sputnik (was a week shy of age 3 on Friday, October 4, 1957)
and how EVERYONE was talking about "science" (whatever that meant to a
2-year-old) all weekend after the news broke the next day on Saturday.
(And NO, I DIDN'T watch the premier of "Leave It to Beaver" that same
Friday night...but I caught young Jerry Mathers and company a few weeks
later, and yep, quickly a regular viewer.)
And then, as a 6-year-old when Gagaran and Shepard launched, I was old
enough to understand what it meant that we were now all in a truly new
era, The Space Age. Thus all our astronauts are true American
heroes...though the TikTok crowd these day of course are more impressed
with so-called "influencers", I'm sure.
Yeah, I knew the first shuttle test flight in 1981 with moonwalker John
Young and Bob Crippen aboard was also on April 12th--and clearly recall
their Sunday launch and their glorious return on Tuesday the 14th like
both were yesterday--but I didn't want to overload the posting, so I
left that uncited. (Probably just as well, as with my failing eyesight
I might have accidentally typed that as April 12, 1781*.)
Oh, I thanks for not suggesting my 1861-not-1865 typo was evidence that
I quite idiotically thought the Civil War started the month it actually
ENDED...though we've both seen general-knowledge polling data that
suggests far too many young persons these days sometimes can't even
answer which CENTURY it took place in, much less even which decade.
(But they sure can tell which lookalike Kardashian is which, can't
they?)
Speaking of the Civil War (and taking note of your Andrew Jackson
animus), I'm guessing you've no problem with tearing down all the
Confederate statues? Or am I selling you short on that issue, Louis?
Indeed, I've spoken with people occasionally who even want to see the
"Confederate White House" in Richmond demolished; you onboard with that
idea? Me, I'm a preservationist to the core, and don't want to see the
Nazi death camps bulldozed, the Mansion Family murders house razed, or
ANY monuments to the past razed.
Well, Hitler and Saddam statues even I make a rare exception for
there--but otherwise, even sites of murderous mayhem I think should be
preserved for historical purposes. (For instance, I'm glad I was able
in 1999 to see in person the Milwaukee apartment building where Jeffrey
Dahmer did his horrific thing before locals demolished it.)
And yeah, I suppose my preservationist bias is at least in part a
function of the fact that I come from a family whose modest wealth came
from my father's residential construction company. Indeed, on visits to
hometown St. Louis, I spend more time driving past those homes where I
witnessed** my father's crew laying the brickwork for than I do at my
father's Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery grave. (Because those
homes ABOVE the ground are still being lived in to this day--and thus
are his legacy more than his bones six feet under are.)
So what do you say, Louis--was the Confederacy such a historical stain
that Jefferson Davis's home in Richmond should fall like Richmond did,
or do you see just a smidgen of legitimacy in the so-called Lost Cause?
By that I mean that many Southerners sincerely thought the war was about
sovereignty and thus principle...at least before that legendary White
House executive action dated January 1, 1863 (even though as all history
students know it ONLY applied to those already-severed states which
Lincoln had zero control over, and thusly was inapplicable to
slaveholding states like Maryland and Missouri).
And no, I'm NOT biased on account of having now retired to a former
Confederate state; while I have lived in three of those 11 states at one
point or another (Texas, South Carolina quite briefly, and now Florida),
MOST of my life and career have been spent in the Midwest North, the
East and the far West. Rather, I'm just a fellow who tries to
understand the thinking of those with whom I politically disagree.
Now that I know you are looking forward to looking at the
quite-dour-appearing Harriet Tubman (rather than the stately-appearing
Andrew Jackson) on the $20 bill, I'm anxious to hear what you think
should be done (if anything) with the Confederate White House, and for
that matter too, Richmond's Museum of the Confederacy.
BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
=================
* Which I'm guessing you well know was a month before William Hershell
discovered Uranus and about seven months before the British surrender at
Yorktown.
** Worked as a laborer for Stibal Bricklaying the summer before Boston
University in 1973--and yeah, if I wasn't the boss's son, I would have
been surely fired the first week...as little ol' tenderfoot me sure
ain't cut out for construction-site toil.