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The time has come for my annual short Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given 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.

 

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Josh Groban – Try To Remember

An evening pause: A song that looks back at September, from the cold fading days of December.

From The Fantasticks.

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

5 comments

  • danae

    It must be nearly impossible to find a finer performance of this song on YouTube. I should know; I spent several hours last weekend viewing other presentations, and the best I could come up with was Jerry Ohrbach’s. Thanks, Bob, for sharing this one.

  • danae: Heh. As I think I’ve written to you before, great minds think alike. I was listening to one of our cds digitized from some old cassettes of mine that were recorded off the radio back in the 1980s, and heard this song again, sung magnificently by an unidentified woman. I decided I had to post it as an evening pause.

    I think it means more to me now, in my sixties, thinking back at my youth, what was and what could have been.

  • wayne

    “Try to Remember”
    Paul Shanklin
    https://youtu.be/eWQureIC1QM
    1:46

  • danae

    I like the “great minds” principle, especially when it produces delightful finds. Many beautiful songs with memorable messages came out of earlier musicals with egregiously loopy plots; Candide, Pippin, and many of Sondheim’s works have been goldmines for me.

    You have no idea how my still-playable music collection has grown since I stumbled across BTB (and thank you!) I’d need nine lives and much more ambition to digitize the old tape and vinyl hand-me-downs. Hats off to you for converting your own.

  • danae: I actually digitized our last record only two weeks ago. The project started in 2004 when we lived in Maryland but died off after three years. I picked it up again last year, and after thirteen months got all our cassettes and records on CDs. Twas a lot of fun, as it had me listening to a lot of good music I hadn’t heard in decades.

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