Hair & The Moon

Today is Monday and we are house-bound like everyone else we know. Bless those who have important public safety, medical, and food-chain jobs who are out there caring for the sick and holding up the economy for the rest of us.

My daughter-in-law, Maggie, a public school counselor, is at our kitchen computer doing a lesson on planets for our 5-year-old grandson and his same age cousin. I overheard her explaining about the solar system and the moon before they went on the back deck and took their planetary positions to rotate around her. She was Mother Sun of course. Here they are as astronauts heading to the moon.

That eavesdropping sent me to find an old essay I wrote in 2001, before blogging was a thing. I wrote it one evening after I had been at a school conference at which a retired astronaut spoke to the general session. Not a lot has changed in 19 years to out-date my thoughts, so please take a peek at my before-blogging blog:

Today I was in a room and listened to a man who had walked on the moon. The Moon. In 1969, the Broadway play Hair hit the news. 

While I was at UT, the library had a recording of the original Broadway performance where some little gal longingly says, “Look at the moon, look at the moon, look at the moon, look at the moon, look at the moon, look at the moon…Look at the Moon.” It stuck in my head. Look at the moon. And today, today, I was in a room with a guy who that very year walked on the Moon. He-walked-on-the-Moon.

The Moon, that white sliver, the pearly disk in the night sky that has grown and shrunk and been the focus of…what? Religions? Mythology? Pagan rituals? It grows and shrinks on a schedule. It disappears for a few short minutes on a more mystical schedule. It is untouchable. Unreachable. It is the…Moon. And I was in a big room with an old man who 32 years ago threw his silver Astronaut medal as far as he could on the Moon. On the Moon, ya’ll. On the Moon. Her threw his little pin across yards of grit On the Moon.

How many people were alive on planet Earth in 1969? How many billion? How many billions have lived on Earth in the tens of thousands of years before 1969? How many people have walked on the Moon? Damn few. Twelve. Of tens of billions. And I was in the room with one of them. I could have walked up after his speech and shaken his hand. A hand that had picked up rocks from the surface of the Moon. Go outside, bend over, pick up a rock and think about picking up one on the Moon. Is it a big “So What?” Maybe.

Nah. It’s not a little thing, what we did, our country, the only one in history to do so, and to be in a room with one of the luckiest of the lucky people who made the trip, well, I was flattered. Many kids ask themselves if God is closer from the Moon? Alan Bean inferred not. His memory was that the Earth was so beautiful and so different from any other planet we can detect, God just has to be closer right here on Terra Nova. He said he stood on the Moon, and looked up at Earth with its blue, white and green colors, and just wanted to go home. And since then he only says thanks for what we have that the Moon and other planets do not: Weather, traffic, other people, shopping centers, and on and on.

So, today I was in a room with a man who had walked on the Moon. So what if 400,000 other people put him there. He went. And I felt privileged beyond reason. Just count the billions of people alive and dead who never had the chance to be where I was today.

Today I was in a room with a man who walked on the Moon.

The Alamo and Birdbrain

Here it is March 6, Remember the Alamo Day in Texas, and I’m writing my first blog post for 2020. In 1960, the year John Wayne’s Alamo movie hit the silver screen, I was in the sixth grade. Jumping ahead a year, in Texas, seventh graders take a year of Texas history. My Texas history teacher was one of only two women I’ve ever known of whose name was ‘Lady Bird.’ Lady Bird Taylor was my Texas history teacher, and Lady Bird Johnson was the wife of Texan Lyndon Johnson, then vice-president of the USA. My conclusion was that ‘Lady Bird’ must be one of those deeply Texan names, sort of like ‘Betty Lou,’ which was my mother’s name.

I remember quite clearly that Lady Bird, my teacher, cried in class in honor of the fallen heroes the day we studied the Alamo. And she fussed about the use of profanity (damn) in the movie, angry that Hollywood dared desecrate our Texas shrine with such language. For her sake, I hope Lady Bird Taylor passed on before she went to movies in the decades to follow. Safe to say she would have been rudely jolted by the language and nudity that the films of the late 60's and 70's brought to us..

Back to the Alamo, I’m a big fan of movie poster art, so enjoy this one of the Duke as Davy Crockett.

Otherwise, on this Remember the Alamo day, I received the proof copy of Birdbrain, my newest novel. I had just come in from the gym this morning when the padded envelope arrived on our doorstep, so pardon my Luckenbach, Texas t-shirt and rumpled hair. I get excited about opening the package hiding the paperback proof of a new novel. The proof is not a baby, and I’ve already seen images of the cover and the interior formatting, but there’s nothing like holding the actual first copy in my grubby hands and gloating over the fact that I made this little blue paper rectangle. Well, me and Amazon made it. (That should be Amazon and I made it, but in my 13-year-old narrator writing voice, ‘me’ goes before ‘them.’)

I wrote about Birdbrain in my last post of 2019, so please read the post under this one. Birdbrain is short, only half the length of my adult novels. It’s written in the voice of a 13-year-old boy—me--way back in years from 1958 to 1963. No sex, no teasing about sex, few big words we writers like to toss around.  I admit it has been fun and challenging to write a story for kids, in the voice of a kid who thinks he’s not a kid at 13.

My family does visit the Alamo during a summer vacation in Birdbrain. I'd didn't have to stretch my reaction to being awe-struck, not so much by the site, but by the huge toy soldier diorama of the battle that was on display in the souvenir store.

I’ll put up another blog post when I’m done proofreading and editing Birdbrain. My circle of critiquers are still hacking at it chapter by chapter, all of them trying to read it like they are kids again themselves, but still catching the adult nuances of writing good fiction and pointing out to me what needs fixing.

Meanwhile, the trees are busting out in green all over little Lockhart. Grandson Jackson starts his second try at playing youth soccer tomorrow. His first season last spring was less than stellar, but he did pick some pretty flowers while the others were chasing the ball. 😊 We’re hoping tomorrow he’ll be less focused on nature and more focused on sport. We’ll see.  Have a great March.