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Readers!

 

The time has come for my annual short pre-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. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.

 

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.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.

 

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Making barrels

An evening pause: I especially find the mixture of human labor and machinery here fascinating.

And what better to watch as we enter the holiday season then the making of wine barrels?

Hat tip Phill Oltmann.

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

  • wayne

    related–
    The Bourbon Barrel –
    “Kelvin Cooperage”
    Louisville Kentucky
    https://youtu.be/fF38BxIqxL0
    3:53

  • Col Beausabre

    Anyone named “Cooper”, here’s what one of your ancestors did for a living.

  • Cchris

    Beware altercations with a cooper…. they have a Hell of a right

  • Chris

    Wayne
    On another note a local, very small distiller: McLaughlin Distillery (namesake of your cooper and namesake of mine) coopers his own barrels from white oak in upstate New York. He uses smaller barrels that require less aging since the liquid is able to meet with the barrel surface more readily. He does all his coopering by hand in a very small shop (est 20’x40’). The process seems to be the same but with hand tools.
    Both are good videos and show interesting approaches to the fabrication problem

    Thanks for posting

  • wayne

    Chris-
    Good stuff.

    Federal law requires that all (US) whiskey be aged in newly made (Oak, if I’m recalling correctly) barrels. (there’s an interesting if not convoluted history behind all this.)

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