Spaceman

Posted on July 16, 2021 by smellincoffee

Spaceman: An Astronaut’s Unlikely Journey
© 2016 Mike Massimino
336 pages

All his life, Mike Massimino wanted to be an astronaut. He was six when he saw Neil Armstrong’s famous small step, and he wanted to be out there with the men of Apollo and those who followed.    But the way to the stars, then as now, isn’t a straight line:  unlike, say, becoming a lawyer, there’s no flagged path, with obvious intermediate goals to aim for.  “Mass” was unlikely to ever be an astronaut, anyway – he was a working-class kid from Long Island who had had barely left his neighborhood.  He couldn’t even see that well – so how did he not only find his way into the astronaut corps, but distinguish himself to the point that he was chosen to work on the Hubble Space Telescope – twice?    Spaceman is a memoir of dogged persistence in the face of adversity and mistakes, followed by moving reflections on his time in space, and the meaning space exploration has for the human spirit.    It is far and away the best of the post-Apollo astronaut memoirs,   will be remembered as one of my favorite astronaut books, period, and is a must-read for any space enthusiast, or those who want to be reminded of the fruits of discipline, determination, and sheer  stubbornness.  

“Mass” in his early years is a Joe Average:   liked by everyone, but not particularly distinguished in any other way.    Although he wanted to be an astronaut, it wasn’t a likely possibility – and so he pursued studies as an industrial engineer, but never forgetting his original desire.  He thought perhaps working as a contractor supplying NASA with equipment might be an ideal marriage of the attainable and the dream,   and from there he stumbled his way closer to space — falling often, but always picking himself up and moving forward.  Massinimo inspires the reader throughout the book – in the beginning, through his constant work to recover  from mistakes (enrolling in the wrong program,  failing tests),  soldiering through with help from mentors and frequent viewings of The Right Stuff, —  and in the second half, through his work as a bonafide astronaut. 

Mass offers a detailed ridealong through his application and training process as he rose from Astronaut Candidate to Mission Specialist. All this is of enormous interest to a space junkie, of course, but Mass makes it clear that what he values most about NASA is its sense of camaraderie, the intensity with which astronauts support one another.  The same spirit of brotherhood that was displayed when the Mercury 7 supported John Glenn  when higher-ups threatened to remove him from the roster after he refused to compel his wife to speak with Johnson, was still strong during Mass’s  time with NASA. It was never more clearly shown than in 2003, when Columbia broke apart in the atmosphere while returning to Earth. The destruction of Columbia  especially moved Massimino, because that flight could have been his, as his flight was swapped with 109’s given the higher priority of the job.     

Massimino has a gift for communicating the itch that drives the adventurer, the explorer on – the itch that has led humans to glory and death for millennia, driving us to  launch ourselves into the winds, to  struggle up mountains actively attempting to kill us, and even  to launch ourselves into the void of space.  He sees the astronaut life as a unique blend of scientific and physical exploration — Galileo meets Shackleton. When Massimeno saw the Earth for the first time – seeing it from the distance of the Hubble, and so able to see the full globe in all its splendor —  he was struck with reverent awe.  It’s one thing to be told the Earth is a planet, a fragile bit of dirt hurtling through space,  and quite another to see it.  The dreadful weight of its beauty has a profound effect on Massimino,  and through him we experience pure, overwhelming wonder.  Reading this, I couldn’t help but think of the magisterial A Man on the Moon, by Andrew Chaikan, long my favorite astronaut book and still the king of Apollo memoirs; it’s just that moving.

I can’t imagine Space Camp getting better than this, but next up is Scott Kelly’s Endurance, followed by a little classic SF, and more.

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Wisdom Wednesday: The choice is yours

Posted on July 14, 2021 by smellincoffee

As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation—or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind’s wings should have grown.

(Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It? )

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Space Camp!

Posted on July 13, 2021 by smellincoffee

It’s been ages since I went on a proper astronaut spree (Deke!, 2016), and lately I’ve been feeling the itch. With the Moon landing anniversary right around the corner (literally — it’s a week from today), why not have some fun and make fun week out of it? So….buckle up! What’s in the works? Early SF about the first men on the moon (you’ll never guess what it’s called), a history of the Mercury 7,(who had the right stuff), a modern astronaut memoir, annnnd maybe a few other things.

Previous “Space Camp” Reading


Deke! US Manned Space Flight from Mercury to the Shuttle, Deke Slayton (Mercury-Apollo and onwards)
Two Sides of the Moon, Alexei Leonov and David Scott (Mercury/Sputnik – forward)
Men from Earth, Buzz Aldrin and Malcolm McConnell. (Mercury through to the early Shuttle years.)
A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts, Andrew Chaikin. THE Apollo history.
Moon Shot: The Inside Story, Alan Shephard and Deke Slayton (Mercury – Apollo)
Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, Jim Lovell (Apollo)
We Could Not Fail: The First African-Americans in the Space Program, Richard Paul and Steven Moss (Civilian/Support – Mercury onwards)
The Ordinary Spaceman, Clayton Anderson (Shuttle-ISS years)
Sky Walking: An Astronaut’s Memoir, Tom Jones. (Shuttle-ISS years)
Riding Rockets, Mike Mullane (Shuttle-ISS)

(“Space Camp” is borrowing its name from the Marshall Space Center’s juvenile and adult education and training programs of the same name…)

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The Virtue of Selfishness

Posted on July 8, 2021 by smellincoffee

The Virtue of Selfishness
© 1964 Ayn Rand
174 pages

“It is philosophy that sets men’s goals and determines their course; it is only philosophy that can save them now. Today, the world is facing a choice: if civilization is to survive, it is the altruist morality that men have to reject.

How many books and movies have moved audiences by portraying a character who, struggling with persistent unhappiness, is pushed by their despair through to the realization that they’ve been living their life for another’s dream? That they married the man their parents wanted them to marry, even if they didn’t love him — that they became lawyers or doctors because their mom wanted them to, instead of pursuing their own dreams? The essential lesson there, the importance of honoring our inner being — our Self — is one we remind ourselves of frequently. It is in that vein that The Virtue of Selfishness puts forth a case for living in the honest pursuit of rational self-interest.

Like many readers, my initial reaction to Rand’s philosophy of ‘selfishness’ was one of surprise and contempt; based on the connotation the word carries in most cultures. My interest in Man vs State stories led me to her fiction, however, and somewhere amid the argument between Roark and Keating I found myself admitting that I’d misjudged her. Her ideas were far more substantial than expected; so too this title, which serves as a general introduction to Objectivism as a whole. She begins by establishing the importance of philosophy — particularly, epistemology and ethics, or how we come to find out what is true, and how we use it to guide our actions. Ethics, she argues, is not an artifact of human civilization, a code of behavior to keep unruly bipeds in crowded conditions from destroying one another, but the very genesis of progress. Reason is the great tool given to man by nature, our answer to the whale’s size and the tiger’s claws; without its consistent use to suss out the Truth and then act according to its dictates (ethics), we would amount to nothing but less hairy and more angsty apes.

An individual can think, conclude, and act. ‘Society’, being an abstract concept, a name for a collection of individuals, cannot. Rand therefore bases her worldview on the smallest concrete subject possible: the Individual. The Virtue of Selfishness is not a rationalizing defense for bad behavior, but rather defends the integrity of the self and reason against impulse, collectivism, and the ‘altruistic mentality ‘ — the latter being the habit of regarding one’s own existence as meaningless except when engaged in self-suppression on behalf of the tribe or even strangers. Other people do not justify your existence, Rand writes; there is no lasting meaning in identification with tribes, no reliability in following their whims. Joy is achieved through an individual’s dogged pursuit of excellence, through their successes in triumphing over challenges and their own impulses through clear thinking and hard work.

From here, Rand surveys the health of the Individual in the mid-20th century and finds it in very poor health indeed, nearly as oppressed by traditionalism, authority, and irrationality then as it was in previous dark ages. As belief in the old gods faded, the new god of the State and its collective lifeblood, The Nation, took the stage — and the new gods were far more potent than the old, coopting the tools of progress to serve instead the cause of decay. The Universities, too, having once been beacons of light allowing for the conquest of darkness, had fallen prey to postmodern confusion — and turned against the individual, especially the free exchange of economic energy between people that allowed the west to eclipse its own productivity decade after decade.

There is a savage and hard beauty in Rand’s writing, like the lines of a battleship. Far from catering to the worst of the human spirit, self-indulgence, Rand calls the Self forth to battle, summoning the best in us. Her Virtue demands the best from us — sharp thinking, hard work, constant self-evaluation. Her worldview is admirably integrated; the more I read her nonfiction, the more I realize it’s all of a piece. Even as I argued with her in my head (attempting to reconcile individualism and evolutionary psychology, as well as debating the role of the ego in well-being), I can’t help but admire her strength and consistency. She is shocking, but throws a cold and clear light on the world and I find that perspective illuminating despite its shadows.

Current plan: to continue reading Rand’s nonfiction, and then offer a response to her worldview including my reservations. Philosophy: Who Needs It will be next, followed by The Romantic Manifesto.

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The Eagle’s Claw

Posted on July 8, 2021 by smellincoffee

© 2021 Jeff Shaara
352 pages

Lastly, The Eagle’s Claw, a novel of historical fiction about the Battle of Midway.   Midway was one of the battles of WW2, the turning point of the Pacific War that, six months following Pearl Harbor, announced to Dai Nippon that its days in the sun were numbered.  The Japanese planned to seize the Midway Atoll, both as a staging area for a later invasion of Hawaii, and as an opportunity to draw the US carrier fleet into open, so that it might be destroyed and complete the work begun at Pearl.  Unfortunately for Yamamato,  US cryptographers had were reading enough Japanese transmissions to know that something was being planned – allowing US forces to position themselves to ambush the ambushers.  In The Eagle’s Claw,  Jeff Shaara takes us through the weeks before Midway and then through the battle itself, using his and his father’s signature style to put us into the minds of various American and Japanese officers and men, from the code-cracking dungeon to  the dogfights high above the Pacific.  Although the novel rightly lauds Joseph Rochefort’s crypto team for their role in allowing the US Navy to deliver proper vengeance for Pearl Harbor (the Empire lost four of their carriers),   Shaara does not omit the factor of glorious luck – of  dive bombers arriving over the Japanese carrier fleet just as the Japanese were loading ordinance for a second bombing run on the Atoll, and their fighters running on fumes.  Shaara also includes a little scene with John Ford, who had arrived on the Atoll on orders from the OSS.    Definitely of interest to WW2 fiction readers.

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Life, liberty, and the pursuit of literature

Posted on July 7, 2021 by smellincoffee

My reading in the last week celebrated or at least observed the memory of, the American Revolution, though the books I picked this year proved to be a mildly disappointing lot.

First up was The Return of George Washington, an entry from my Mount Doom Pile, It promised to be a rare biography of the big G, one focusing on his years as an ordinary citizen — neither General Washington nor President Washington, Father of his Country. Four of those six year years, however, were consumed by the debate within the States over the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, and the conventions that were called to remedy its faults — the chiefest of which Washington presided over. This is more a history of the Constitutional Convention as seen over the shoulder of ‘the indispensable man’ — a perfectly enjoyable history thereof, except that I read a few accounts of the same thing last year during my quarantine and found the revisit unexpected and repetitive. Those approaching the subject fresh would no doubt enjoy it far more than I did.

Following up was Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, a historically-inspired stream of consciousness narrative ostensibly grounded in the life of the Maquis de Lafayette, a young Frenchman who came to the States to defend the cause of Liberty against the king. It’s been nearly ten years since I read Vowell; her style mixes historical narrative, travel musings, snotty comments , and abundant political kvetching. Over the years my response to Vowell has range from amusement to annoyance, usually in the same volume; I found this one far more tedious than the rest, in part because I was genuinely interested in the Maquis and wanted to focus on him rather than say, Vowell’s opinions regarding the faux-government shutdowns that marked Obama’s last years in office. Her training in art rather than history is more on display than usual, with several breezy write-offs that had me cocking an eye and pondering if I shouldn’t just move on.

Lastly, and ending on a …well, I can’t say a high note because it’s a depressing-if-well-written novel. Ending on a strong note, let’s say, Stars on the Sea is a novella included in the Roads to Liberty anthology; originally written in the 1930s by a professor of history, it brings to the table superb detail and arresting exposition, as well as a tragic main character. Desire Harmony is a young Quaker woman who loses her family and home when the Brits burn her hometown, and in the process she’s revealed to have a British boyfriend, who knocked her up and then had the graceless luck to get shot. Disgraced, she drifts south to shift for herself, encountering disaster after disaster; meanwhile, her brother Tim joins the fledgling US Navy. The ending was unexpected and…not entirely chipper.

In the coming week, I may do a little more in this vein; The First Conspiracy, about an attempt to knock off Washington (!) , is in my TBR stack, and I’d like to read another of Mason’s books to see if it’s comparable. I’ve also finally found D-Day Girls, so perhaps I’ll finish it..

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Wisdom Wednesday: Memento mori

Posted on July 7, 2021 by smellincoffee
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Top Ten Tuesday: A Reader’s Manifesto

Posted on July 6, 2021 by smellincoffee

Today’s top ten Tuesday is more of an invitation to reflect —  Jana asks us why we like to read. 

For me, that answer begins with my parents – not only were my siblings and I feted with books growing up, but our parents read to us when we were younger, and we had a family practice of sitting around reading together – my dad with his Louis Lamour, my mom and her Christian romances, my  sisters with Sweet Valley High and Fear Street, and me with…seemingly everything. I even raided my family’s collection,   save for my mom’s Danielle Steele.    

Reading was my chief entertainment:  my parents dropped television from our home in the early eighties, before I was born, and so I grew up either running around the woods,  playing outside, or reading.  I didn’t experience the rival distraction of video games until I received a GameBoy  around fifth grade,  so my childhood was marked by weekly visits to the library and piles of books read. 

In eighth grade my parents bought a computer, and it would slowly grow to dominate my time as I discovered the joys of Encarta Encyclopedia,  the internet, and PC games.  Even so, though, I remained a reader,  though mostly of histories and Star Trek novels.  I couldn’t watch Star Trek (at least until after we had a television during the last seasons of Deep Space Nine),  but I devoured its novels – and scripts, because  I bought two CDs that had all of the scripts for DS9 and TNG on them, as well as the preview trailers for each episode that aired. My Trek experience was uniquely literary: I sometimes ‘remember’ scenes from episodes that never happened, because I saw them only in my head. 

In the early 2000s, I finished high school and community college, and worked in a factory to save money for college.  My appetite for learning only grew after school, and I fed it with podcasts (then the hot new thing)  and piles of books. History, science, economics, philosophy — whatever I could find. In 2007 I started posting about what I was reading on MySpace  — a habit which has grown into ReadingFreely.  If I offer anything I’d like to think it’s the chaotic variety in the end of year pile!

Reading continued to be a crucial part of my life even once I resumed my formal education, and afterward:  I’ve been  out of academia for eleven years, with no plans on returning given the risible  disparity between tuition and value-for-money in the humanities, and were it not for the constant stimulation  and companionship of books (for the right kind invite an author into one’s head for a debate of sorts), I’d  go nuts.  Books, for me, are vital to not only learning about the world, but engaging  with it; they continue to feed my growth as a person. 

When  I die, my epitaph will say: “BUT I WASN’T DONE READING!” 

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HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY

Posted on July 4, 2021 by smellincoffee

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June 2021: Midyear

Posted on July 1, 2021 by smellincoffee

Halfway through the year,  my literary ambitions are doing moderately well. I’m on track to reach the usual 150, my science survey is keeping pace with the year, and reaching 20 classics before the year is out is still a plausible goal.   I’m mostly behaving myself as far as book purchases go, though Mount Doom is still disappointingly substantial.   July will bring American lit, my usual celebration of telling the king and Parliament to bugger off, and hopefully a return to science. I had the Best of Intentions in June, of course..

Favorites, So Far:

The Old Man and the Boy, Robert Ruark

Beyond Tenebrae: Christian Humanism in the Twilight of the West, Brad Birzer

The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy’s Vanishing Explorers, Emily Levesque

We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China’s Surveillance State, Kai Strittmatter

Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir

Challenge Progress 


 
Science Survey: 

Holding steady at 6/12 categories filled.
 
Classics Club Strikes Back: 


We now stand at 8/50 .
Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger 
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck 

Expect more American classics in July. 
 
Climbing Mount Doom 


Two (very different) entries: Return of the Primitive, Ayn Rand; Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile, Joseph Pearce.  

Southern Lit/History: 
My Little Town, David Tipmore.   This was written by a personal friend, so I can’t pretend to any objectivity; it’s a reflection of a Yankee transplant to “Lovelady”, a small town in the Blackbelt, as he observes and attempts to participate in the distinct culture of a small town in the Deep South. Anyone who knows the area will recognize Lovelady as Marion, though some bits of Selma leaked in. (The hotel from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was the Hotel Albert*, and it was certainly not in Marion, harrumph harrumph.)

The Unreviewed: 

My Little Town, David Tipmore. Previously mentioned.

The Man In the High Castle, Phillip K. Dick.    I could’ve sworn I said something about this one…I read it, inspired by the Prime series, and found it less compelling and far more strange. It’s certainly artful,  integrating a lot of research into Japanese grammar and German bureaucracy alike.  

Men on Strike: Why Men are Boycotting Marriage, Children, and the American Dream, Helen Smith. Review to come; a work on why men are increasingly not to marry or pursue higher education.

Everything I Want to Do is Illegal, Joel Salatin. Full comments most likely to come this weekend..

New Acquisitions: 


Alienated America:  Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse,  Timothy Carney (Bookbubs deal) 
The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Farm Fields, and the Dinner Table, Tracie McMillian. This one has been on my to-read list since it was released, and reading Salatin earlier reminded me of it.

[*] I have an unfinished history of the Albert I’ll post one day, whenever I can cajole a local family into letting me peek at their family papers that might shed light on its destruction. I’m obsessed with this building to the point of dreaming about it!

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