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Readers!

 

My annual Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind the Black is now over. Though it sagged in the middle, the final week was an amazing barn-burner. My readers responded in an astonishing manner, so that 2024 now looks like it will turn out to be the best year for me financially since I started this webpage in 2010.

 

Thank you to all! I am always at a loss to express my gratitude for this support. No one is required to pay anything to read my work. And yet so many of you are still willing to do so. Thank you again!

 

If you didn't donate or subscribe but like my work, please consider doing so. This support by my readers allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:

 

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Martina McBride – Blessed

An evening pause: For Thanksgiving.

I have been blessed
With so much more than I deserve
To be here with the ones that love me
To love them so much it hurts
I have been blessed, oh yeah
I have been blessed, oh yeah, yeah

Hat tip Dan Morris.

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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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

10 comments

  • wayne

    “A Day of Thanksgiving” (1951)
    Centron Films, Lawrence Kansas
    https://archive.org/details/DayofTha1951

    “An American family unable to afford a Thanksgiving turkey reviews the things for which they feel thankful….”

    Approximate retail price for turkey in 1951 = $0.49/lb. which equates to $5.21/lb. in today’s money.

  • wayne

    “A Day of Thanksgiving” (1951)
    Centron Films, Lawrence Kansas
    https://archive.org/details/DayofTha1951

    “An American family unable to afford a Thanksgiving turkey reviews the things for which they feel thankful….”

    Approximate retail price for turkey in 1951 = $0.49/lb. which equates to $5.21/lb. in today’s money.

  • wayne

    –sorry ’bout that double-post–need to replace my mouse.

  • “Approximate retail price for turkey in 1951 = $0.49/lb”

    Wow. The cheapest turkey I could find (online) is $1.39/lb, or $0.13/lb in 1951 dollars. I can understand why Turkey has traditionally been a Big Deal: it was expensive. Now, what does a Goose go for on Christmas Day. . . ?

  • wayne

    Blair-
    –yeah, a medium sized turkey would have cost him the equivalent of $50, out of his 1951 paycheck.

    Goose, great question– I’m seeing $7-9/lb for “commercial domestic goose, whole-medium 10lb average” but that appears to be highly regional compared to turkey, which is fairly ubiquitous. [Publix supermarkets has them at select locations.]
    Our regional huge-box grocery chain had delivery delays, but eventually offered store-brand ‘generic’ at $0.33/bl & $1.29/lb. but you could drop $7+/lb for The free-range organic brand-name….
    Whole domestic (frozen) Duck was in plentiful supply at $6.99/lb.

  • Localfluff

    I’m not American, I’ve never eaten a turkey, the naming of which bird is a misunderstanding. In the town where I live we have a company, Aimpoint, that manufactures parallax free sights for rifles used to hit their throats. As it was explained to me that turkeys are hunted. If one hits the almost empty birdy bodies they just run away before they die. It has something to do with a laser dot in the optics, I can’t figure out how it works. But I ate fried Baltic Herring today (I think it’s called in English, the naming of them is confused in Sweden too). One simply use nets or hooks to catch them. Although dynamite would probably also work.

    I saw this talk that is a resumé of the Mars rovers with nice imagery explained by a guy who’s involved with those vehicles far away:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY2cq_3wC1w

  • Alton

    Virginia at Kroger’s:

    Whole frozen duck $ 2.49/lb

    About $15 a ?️ bird.

  • wayne

    serendipitously— had a flock of Turkey walk (trot?) down my road this afternoon, I stopped counting at 30.

    Localfluff–
    If I’m recalling correctly, Turkeys are only native to North America and parts of Mexico, and they were an early contender for our National Bird.

    This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von Number 367
    Turkey Farmer Robert Hupman
    https://youtu.be/NTBY15cxUQI
    1:29:08

    Alton–
    thanks for that, good price.
    Have you ever had a Turduckin? (chicken stuffed inside a duck, stuffed inside a turkey)

  • wayne

    “Theo Von’s Owl Moment”
    Joe Rogan Experience 1225
    https://youtu.be/GAwITnMtJfM
    1:50

  • Alton

    Wayne:.
    No never had a turkducken but always wanted to try one;
    But several times I have travelled home on a Friday by Washington DC, many times I would stop at Chinatown, there was a small shop that cooked several dozen ducks each weekend, many for parties in the Capital.
    They were delicious doubled!!

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