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My July fund-raising campaign to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black is now over. I want to thank all those who so generously donated or subscribed, especially those who have become regular supporters. I can't do this without your help. I also find it increasingly hard to express how much your support means to me. God bless you all!

 

The donations during this year's campaign were sadly less than previous years, but for this I blame myself. I am tired of begging for money, and so I put up the campaign announcement at the start of the month but had no desire to update it weekly to encourage more donations, as I have done in past years. This lack of begging likely contributed to the drop in donations.

 

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Riccardo Cocchi & Yulia Zagoruychenko – 2018 Fred Astaire Cup Latin dance competition

An evening pause: The camera soon focuses on this couple, whose performance eventually won the competition, which apparently was their tenth victory. As noted in the comments, “You don’t understand exactly how great they are until you see them in a roomful of other people dancing the same dance.”

Hat tip Judd Clark.

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

  • F

    I could never do what those dancers do.

    That being said, to me, there was something missing with their dance. They seemed more interested in making as many moves as they could, as quickly as they could.

    They were more like athletes for this dance. What was missing? The celebratory aspect of the two dancers being with each other, each enjoying the other’s presence.

  • David Eastman

    While I somewhat agree with F’s comments above, in a competition, to that music, they did what they were supposed to do.

  • Dick Eagleson

    F,

    Enjoyment is a nice bonus, but these are professional dancers and partnerships are, first and foremost, business arrangements.

  • F

    Dick Eagleson,

    I understand that, but this sort of dance seems to counter the underlying premise of couples dancing.

    Don’t get me wrong. Their physical abilities are impressive, and as I noted above, they were more like athletes performing at their peak. As a dance, however, this left much to be desired. (I will admit that I do not ordinarily watch dancing of any sort.) Compare this to the apparent joy (of dancing and of dancing together) we saw here on August 7th, with the dancers dancing to “Honky Tonk Woman”. Granted, the music and situation for that dance were different, but my situation as a viewer seeing a video suggestion on Behind the Black was the same in both cases.

    * – Whodathunkit? A debate/discussion about couples dancing on a web site about space exploration.

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