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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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Martha Raye – No Time At All

An evening pause: From the Broadway musical Pippin.

The words from this song mean more and more to me, with each passing year.

Here is a secret I never have told.
Maybe you’ll understand why.
I believe if I refuse to grow old
I can stay young till I die.
Now, I’ve known the fears of sixty-six years.
I’ve had troubles and tears by the score.
But the only thing I’d trade them for
Is sixty-seven more

Chorus:
Oh, it’s time to start livin’.
Time to take a little from this world we’re given.
Time to take time, cause spring will turn to fall
In just no time at all.

And believe it or not, I see this also as a fitting song for Veterans Day.

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

6 comments

  • Col Beausabre

    Good choice for Veterans Day – “Colonel Maggie” was the “Darling of the Special Forces” in Vietnam and held rank as an honorary Lt Col in the Army Reserve for her efforts to support the troops – particularly the wounded. In 1993 she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her long service to the men and women of the armed forces.

  • wayne

    Col Beausabre-
    Great stuff. I was not aware of that factoid, thank you!

    Martha Raye Medal of Freedom Ceremony
    https://youtu.be/m6Mm66TRfzU
    7:20

  • wayne

    The Best Years Of Our Lives
    Dana Andrews – airplane graveyard scene
    1946
    https://youtu.be/OpGNKO6wz10
    4:15

  • wayne

    “Audio from the Past”
    Avro Lancaster Crew radio chatter–bombing run
    https://youtu.be/MF5_hvE4WEA
    9:44

  • brightdark

    During the Vietnam War, Martha pledged to visit every Special Forces base in South Vietnam. As she was doing so, she heard a whisper of a rumor that there was another base out there that wasn’t on any map. After a log of begging Martha got flown to the base, which was on top of mountain in the middle of Laos, for a brief visit. To her dying day she never said a thing about it.

  • Col Beausabre

    From the description, that can only be LS-85. Its Combat Skyspot Team aka “wager Control” was a major thorn in the side of the North Vietnamese, which is why it was overrun (with heavy Allied casualties) in 1968

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lima_Site_85

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