Man on the Moon

Today is the 40th anniversary of what remains the greatest single technological feat that mankind has ever achieved. It was forty years ago today that American astronaut Neil Armstrong took that first step on to the surface of the moon, and uttered the iconic words: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind!"

Armstrong had become the first human being to ever set foot on another world outside of the earth.

On July 20th, 1969, the crew of Apollo 11 orbited the moon, after having left behind their home planet Earth just four days earlier. They were on the verge of the most spectacular achievement in man's history. Since our creation, man has looked up at the glowing disc in the night sky and dreamed.

At first those dreams involved the nature and the meaning of the object. Then the moon became an object of study, particularly as to it's relationship to Earth. Finally, it had become a destination.

Now, here were three Americans: Neil Armstrong, Ed 'Buzz' Aldrin, and Michael Collins, actually flying above that moon and preparing to land on it. Collins would draw the role of staying behind in order to pilot the command module 'Columbia', while Armstrong and Aldrin would actually descend in the 'Eagle' landing module to the moon's surface. They had the full resources of NASA, the National Aeronauticas and Space Administration, behind them, but they were very much on their own in so many ways.

The process to reach that point had been ongoing for decades. It began with the creation of rockets, and moved onward as those rockets were made larger and more powerful, capable of traveling further and further. Finally, man developed the technologies and the courage to enter outer space, that vast area outside of the protective atmosphere of the only planet we had ever known intimately.

President John F. Kennedy, slain by an assassin's bullet almost six years earlier, had set the ball in motion when on May 25th, 1961 he uttered the great challenge: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." Six months later, I was born.

Television & the Presidency as a Time Machine

I was sitting at home this past Saturday night, just flicking around the dial, when a newly produced special report on the Fox News Channel titled "Television & the Presidency" caught my eye.

Being a bit of a history buff, especially American history, it was right up my alley: a historical perspective on the role that television has played in Presidential politics.

As I settled in the program moved quickly through Jimmy Carter's lame Presidency in the late 1970's. Those Carter years were fresh in my own experience, since I turned 15 years old right after his election.

Carter was basically the President of my high school years, and it wasn't pretty. The man was supposed to be some kind of genius. At least that was how the press sold him. But he just couldn't seem to solve any of the big problems that came along, from the gas crisis to unemployment to ballooning interest rates to the emergence of radical islam.

Every time a problem raised it's head, Carter talked and talked and got nothing done to solve it. At least that was my perspective as a teenager, but what did I know? And besides, it didn't matter, I didn't have a vote...yet.

In the fall of 1979, among the many other changes happening in my life, I turned 18 years old and had finally reached the age where I could register to vote. My family was historically a Democratic one, and the Party seemed to easily fit the liberal ideals that most appropriately espoused my own philosophy at the time, so I registered Democrat.

47

Happy Birthday to me! Well, to me and everyone else celebrating today. I share this birthday with baseball's J.D. Drew, football's Mark Gastineau and Joey Galloway, comedians Richard Dawson and Dick Smothers, musician Joe Walsh, and a trio of gorgeous actresses: Bo Derek, Sean Young and Veronica Hamel. This was also Bobby Kennedy's birthday. I woke up a little over an hour ago after a pretty good night sleeping, and my 47th birthday started out about as good as I could ever hope. My wife Debbie Veasey was already awake and nearly ready to leave for work, but before she left she greeted me with a big smile, a hug and kiss, and a sincere "Happy birthday, honey!" And she had a birthday card for me too. One of those with a real nice message and signed off with her love. It really doesn't get any better than that. Now here I sit alone at my dining room table just like many other mornings. A fresh, hot cup of Wawa coffee beside me, loaded up with their irish cream, which I understand that they are discontinuing. Wawa is one of life's pleasures, the local chain store for food, cigarettes, newspapers, and other essentials of American daily living. Here at the Veasey Ranch, we buy bags of their coffee so that we enjoy the brew not just on the run, but right here at home. The irish coffee creamer product that Wawa produces at their dairy is my personal favorite add-in. It's creamy and tasty, and along with a couple of packets of Equal, helps make the perfect pick-me-up beverage in my world. I hope the rumors turn out false about the irish cream. Don't you just hate it when some store discontinues some product that you have enjoyed for a long time? So it is with me and birthday cakes. As a boy growing up in South Philly, my local corner bakery shop was a little place called Hier's Bakery at 3rd & Wolf Streets. You could live and die right there at that intersection, which was just around the corner from our little house at 2321 S. American Street. The four corners at the intersection of south 3rd Street and Wolf Street featured Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on the southeast, the Murphy-Ruffenach funeral home on the northeast, a doctor's office on the northwest, and Hier's on the southwest. Those institutions are still on those same corners today, though the actual doctor practice has changed, the funeral home gone through a merger, and the bakery ownership has also changed a number of times. When it was Hier's back in those 'Wonder Years' days for me of the late 1960's and early 1970's, they always featured a cake that became my birthday cake every year. The cake was layered with a chocolate layer on top of a yellow cake layer. Running between the two cakes was a delicious, thin strip of white cream. Surrounding the whole creation was the most incredible, full, sweet, dark-colored chocolate icing. And then at the top was another layer of that same white icing that ran through the middle. I would always take a slice and eat the yellow layer first, making sure that my fork took the thin vanilla icing layer with it. This was only the opening act though. Then I would move on to the upper chocolatey world. There was something about the interplay between this particular chocolate cake, chocolate edge icing, and white top icing that exploded in your mouth. I can taste it still this morning, even though I have not had a piece of that cake in about 25 years. At some point during the 1980's, whomever owned the old Hier's business sold out. I did go in a couple of times and inquired about the cake, but the new owners didn't seem to know what I was talking about. I never saw my birthday cake again. My guess is that the recipe is likely laying around somewhere, maybe in some drawer at the home of a former bakery owner. Maybe the recipe has been passed along, and the cake is being made today in some bakery out there that I have no idea even exists. It is one of those little things in life that was a regular feature of my childhood that is now gone. It is something that was here, is gone seemingly forever, and that I do miss. To find it again one day would be a miracle akin to a Christian explorer locating the Holy Grail itself. Well, okay maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but you get the idea. I hope that little slice of heaven from my childhood is not repeating itself here in my middle-aged adult life with the Wawa irish cream. But one thing that I have learned over these 47 years that I celebrate the anniversary of today is that things change. But as to those things large and small that we have come to welcome and enjoy in our lives, the little things that make life just a wee bit more enjoyable, they will stay with us forever, at least in our memories. I thank God for that childhood birthday cake. I thank God for Wawa irish cream. I thank God for the woman that I woke up to this morning. And I thank God for these past 47 years. Happy birthday to me!