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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.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


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 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

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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