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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent independent analysis you don’t find elsewhere. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn’t influenced by donations by established companies or political movements. 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.

 

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Ferris Akel – Napping Raccoon

An evening pause: This is how many of us all feel at the end of a hard week. Music is the “Daydream” by the Lovin’ Spoonful.

Hat tip Ferris Akel, who filmed this on September 21, 2024.

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

12 comments

  • Ferris

    This was a lucky sighting, and very much unexpected. I hope you will all enjoy it as much as I did.

  • wayne

    Ferris–
    Checked out your YouTube channel, you have some great stuff!

    I’m on the SW Michigan coastline; we have an incredibly number of Deer and Turkey wandering around.

    Total tangent, in honor of the upcoming Holiday.
    Contrary to WKRP In Cincinnati, turkeys can fly. Industrial franken-turkeys are barely alive, but the wild versions can fly, they roost in trees.

    “Cincinnati, When the Turkeys Fell”
    Thanksgiving 1978
    https://youtu.be/4SXI-eLMq1E
    4:47

  • Ferris

    wayne,

    Thank you, very much, for the kind words! Truly appreciated!

    Have a very Happy Thanksgiving!

  • wayne

    Ferris-

    Dude, you have like’ 1,500 videos…. Amazing!
    (Your Pileated Woodpecker from 2016 is pretty cool!)

    Do you have some sort of live-stream going on tonight?

  • wayne

    Whoops,
    ->live-stream starting at Noon!

  • Rocky Racoon
    Looked for a boon
    What he found was
    a hollow tree trunk

    The tree it was said
    Let him sleep like the dead
    Unafraid
    Of his rival

  • F

    wayne,

    Thanks again! I DID have a live stream today, as you noted. I am no bird watching expert, but I have been regularly live-streaming my bird watching efforts for more than 12 years. Sharing the birds, and anything else of interest, with others in real-time is truly a joy for me.

  • pzatchok

    They are little trash pandas. Cut but pains in the can.

    When I catch them trying to get into my trash cans I shoot them in the fanny with a pellet gun. It doesn’t penetrate but it does sting so they learn to stay away.
    When they get larger that doesn’t even keep them away sometimes. They even attack.
    Out comes a live trap and a can of cat food. A 5 mile drive out of town and let them go.

    But watch they can carry rabies.

  • wayne

    Blair-
    Hilarious!

    Rocky Raccoon (Take 8)
    https://youtu.be/lRyfOY_KcPY
    4:57

  • wayne

    pzatchok–

    If this guy disappears one day, we’ll know who ate him–

    “Mobbed by Raccoons”
    James Blackwood; The Raccoon Whisperer (Nov, 2020)
    https://youtu.be/Ofp26_oc4CA

    “I am a retired RCMP Officer living in a rural setting in Nova Scotia, Canada. I spend my time enjoying nature and feeding my furry friends, the raccoons.”

  • John

    probably has rabies!

  • pzatchok

    I live next to this city park. Almost 3000 achres inside the city.
    https://www.millcreekmetroparks.org/mill-creek-park/
    I have so much nature in my area its sick. Deer from the park walk my yard.

    I love nature but sometimes it just gets to be a little much.

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