Judy Garland – Somewhere Over The Rainbow
An evening pause: The words are still worth living by.
Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue.
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg once told a delightful story about writing this song. They said they labored weeks to come up with that first, now immortal line. They wanted to convey the idea of reaching the end of the rainbow but just couldn’t find the right word — they had gotten stuck “on the other side of the rainbow” and then “at the end of the rainbow.” Finally, they realized that “over” fit both the bill and the song’s meter, and the rest, as they say, is history. It’s a wonderful lesson on how even the simplest form of genius sometimes requires you to struggle endless to reach it.