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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

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Carl Orff – O Fortuna from Carmina Burana

An evening pause: The first half of this video is a great performance of Orff’s piece, written as the opening for Carmina Burana. The second half shows what I think is the closing scene from a staged performance, but has no sound and is unclear. Regardless, the first half is breath-taking, and includes English subtitles, which clearly places the context of this music in 1930s Germany.

Hat tip Wayne DeVette.

Genesis cover

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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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

4 comments

  • wayne

    referencing the second part of this video with no sound;
    I believe (correct me please) it’s a film transfer of a version performed on stage in California, early 1960’s, with orchestra. Might have been at UCLA and by their Theater group.
    There used to exist a stand-alone video with the actual performance video & audio, up at YouTube, but the audio portion was subject to a copyright claim and blocked.

  • eddie willers

    Vladimir Lenin turns out to be a pretty good conductor.

  • Don Hoffman

    Don’t need to hear the music of the second half… just to be reminded of the incredible music and the story behind it. “Shortly after the greatly successful premiere, Orff said the following to his publisher, Schott Music: ‘Everything I have written to date, and which you have, unfortunately, printed, can be destroyed. With Carmina Burana, my collected works begin.'”
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmina_Burana_(Orff)

    First heard the unforgettable music in the 1986 TV mini-series “Peter the Great” with Maximilian Schell and many other great stars! It led me to read the biography by Robert K. Massie, which was even better.

  • wayne

    Don-
    Good stuff!

    I’m a late comer (ca. 2000) to this; but always loved the music itself for this particular selection, then I discovered the words– and the words are amazing.
    (I often kid Edward about not understanding Italian opera stuff, [Evening Pause] but I can catch quite a bit of the Latin meaning itself in this, and it actually rhymes in Latin.)

    O Fortuna –
    Latin and English Lyrics
    https://youtu.be/O5b7tgkdFH0

    tangentially– there are some humorous full-blown orchestral performances of this, where the choir will sing the common misheard lyrics.

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