What Happened to Space?

Do remember being a kid and wanting to be an astronaut?  I don’t hear that anymore.  None of my kids want to be astronauts.  None of their friends ever talk about it.  But I did, and so did all of my friends.  I have been wondering where the cut off was, when it stopped being the great adventure.

My first thought was it broke evenly along the generational line.  For my generation and our parents, space was exciting and still very new.  We knew the names of ships and their crews.  I suspect Topps even had collector cards for the various leagues.  Now it’s old hat, like sailing around the world in a small boat.  Not something many people do, but enough we don’t think anything about it when somebody does.

Then I wondered if the demise of the shuttle program and privatization of the industry led to decreased interest.  I was in second grade when the first shuttle lifted off and we stopped classes and gathered to watch the first two scrubbed launch attempts.  Everyone was disappointed the actual launch was in the middle of the night.  But we watched the landings and other launches.  And I watched the reentry and landing of the last shuttle flight on the TV in my office, felt the weight of history.  Thinking about it now still gives me chills.

My kids didn’t really care.  It meant nothing to them.  They never had toy space ships or a Boeing 747 with a spring launch system for the red plastic shuttle on its back.

I could blame video games but I’d rather blame Facebook.  Neither one is the likely culprit.  It isn’t a lackadaisical attitude by my kids either, they want to do big things.  They want adventure and meaning.  But my oldest wants to explore the dark depths of caves rather than space, my second to rescue people stranded on ships in the oceans rather than orbiting planets.

With the success of books and movies like The Martian I believe there is still a yearning for the great unknown beyond our atmosphere.  Just not in the next generation, not the way it was.  My daughter thought The Martian was great for the same reason she liked The Green Zone (Matt Damon).

Electricity.  That’s what it is.  If we turned off the power, looked up at a night sky unpolluted by city lights, someone in the next generation would say, “I wonder what’s there?”  And people would go.

Ore-Ida Then

I grew up with Ore-Ida French fries.  Now my kids are.  Still yummy, now in even more varieties.  Curly, tots, extra thin, waffle.  Maybe they were always there and I was kept in the dark?  Doesn’t matter.  The important thing, for this post, is that I didn’t make them back then – you know, when TV was black and white and Hi-Fi was a big deal.

Maybe I did make them but didn’t bother with the directions? I actually rarely read directions in my youth.  I always thought there wasn’t time.  Us “old folks” like to wax rhapsodic about the simple life of the good old days and maybe that simplicity is why I didn’t need to worry about such minor details as instructions.  More likely, as I’ve aged, I’ve become a bit more compulsive about things.  Things like reading directions.  Twice.  Every time.  Even when I’m making something I know by heart.  Like pancakes – ¾ c milk, 1 egg, 1/8 vegetable oil mixed; add 1 c flour, less than 1/3 c sugar, 1 Ts baking powder, few shakes from the salt shaker, healthy sprinkle of cinnamon.  Mix with wire whisk.  Place on hot grill until ready to flip.  Flip.  Cook until you remember there are pancakes on the griddle.

I digress.  This is about Ore-Ida.

If you have a bag these tasty treats in the freezer, I encourage you to get it out and read the directions.  Then come back and tell me if I’m crazy.

There are directions for cooking ½ bag.  There are directions for cooking ¾ of the bag.  That’s it.  There are no directions for cooking the entire bag.  No directions for cooking ¼ of the bag.  I’m a smart guy, I can figure out that I should double everything to cook the whole bag but what do I do with the ¼ left over after cooking 3/4?  (Did you react in horror?  I’m not actually crazy.  I know that I’m not supposed to double the ½ bag cooking time for the whole bag…)

But what am I supposed to do for the missing ¼?  Is that considered advanced?  The sort of thing only experienced Ore-Ida re-heaters would ever attempt?  Is it some sort of marketing scheme aimed at tricking engineers into buying 2 bags? (So when they cook ¾ of one, they have to cook ¾ of a second so there will be ½ left.)

Does anybody know?

Does anybody care?

Love for Justice

It's happened.  For real this time.  Love for Justice has entered the world.  I know this because instead of holding a "proof," I am now holding proof.  My author copies.


My blog has always been sort of not quite the usual author's blog and I plan to continue it as such.  Writing is challenging business and there are a million reasons why nobody should ever pick up the proverbial pen and start.  But we do anyway and I hope that my story, as well as my stories, are able to inpsire and encourage others to take on the challenge, to follow the dream, and press on toward the mark.  So R&A will stay as it always has rather than turn into the commericial site of an elusive best selling author.  (Please help make me a best selling author...)


I have to be completely honest, which is hard for a fiction writer who grew up hearing influential adults confide that they, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story."  I did not think I would ever see a novel of mine published.


I had no idea how much work was going to be inovlved.  I'm not saying I wouldn't have written it anyway, but holy cow.  The revisions take a long time and they are hard.  And you're never actually done until you say, "Okay, that's it, it's good enough."  (Every book out there is published to that standard.)


It took nearly as long to get from finished draft to publication and that's because I have a great publisher who loved my book from the beginning.  If I'd had to struggle to find a pulisher and/or agent, it might still be in limbo.  There is a lot of work to get from "The End" to "Now on Amazaon."


The good news is that I'm still not done.  Now that's its available, I have to promote it and that's something I don't know anything about.  Because I never thought I'd get here.