To read this post please scroll down.

 

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.


Warren Zevon – Lawyers, Guns, and Money

An evening pause: Recorded live April 1980. This seems appropriate for today.

Hat tip Cotour.

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

7 comments

  • Love me some Warren Zevon. I have this album (Excitable Boy 1978),and I think that is one of his best songs. Had the opportunity (privilege, really), to see Mr. Zevon in a nightclub setting in the early 90’s.. Just him, a guitar, and about three dozen people. I don’t think I touched my drink the whole time. Thanks for sharing.

  • Milt

    As Bruce Springsteen observed in his induction speech for Jackson Browne https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YFyC6pnz-k , Warren Zevon represented the darker side of the California Dream, and his songs were like something channeled from Raymond Chandler or Nathanael West. Moreover, he had the voice — dear God, the man could sing — and the chops to carry it off, and nobody else “got” the lower registers of life in the Golden State quite the way that he did.

    Today, with the quality of life in California literally disintegrating before our eyes, it is hard not to see Mr. Zevon as something of a prophet, but I am not sure that he would have seen himself in quite this light. On a day when a lot of us are feeling like “desperados under the eves,” let’s just say that Warren was ahead of his time.

  • wayne

    Warren Zevon –
    “My [expletive] [expletive] Up”
    May 2000
    https://youtu.be/LbhYqV17CoQ
    3:11

    “……has to happen to the best of us, and the rich folks suffer like the rest of us,
    it’ll happen to you…”
    “….that Amazing Grace, sorta passed you by, and you wake up every day, hang your head and cry.
    Yeah, ya’ want to die, but ya’ just can’t quit,
    let me break it on down, that’s some [expletive] up [expletive.]”

  • wayne

    Milt–
    Good stuff!

    Robert Earl Keen —
    “Blow You Away”
    Bigger Piece of Sky 1993
    https://youtu.be/-fCEC52WOB4
    3:36

  • eddie willers

    Kinda funny, but if I printed the lyrics, I’d be violating our comments rules here.

    My favorite line in his canon: “….and his hair was perfect!”

  • wayne

    Col-
    very good! (i did not know that was a real thing…)

    Warren Zevon
    I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead
    Capitol Theatre (Passaic, NJ) 4/18/80
    https://youtu.be/bp1Pb-yVuv0?t=3732

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *