Moon Walk and other thoughts for Friday
Posted on December 7, 2007
Filed Under kids, parenting, holiday fun, pets, Friday round-up |
Because it is Friday I feel free to share the dancing midget. The clip coincides nicely with O’s recent question. A few days ago he asked, “What’s the moonwalk, Mommy?” I began to talk about Neil Armstrong and early NASA.
“You mean they went all the way to the moon just to dance,” he asked, incredulous but convinced that our government is just that frivolous with the nation’s tax dollars. There was a time when those two words, ‘moon’ and ‘walk’ would have conjured MJ and the glove and the Pepsi commercial with the flaming hair, but now, well into my thirties, lunar references make me think Apollo spacecraft.
And while my mind trips from moon walk to space craft, it then jerks spastically from space craft to monkeys. I think NASA and see primates strapped to crude rockets and fired into the void. Animal sacrifice, flying monkeys -an idea inspired by the L. Frank Baum? While the Wizard of Oz was written in 1900, the first monkey-launch was in 1948. Nearly half a century devoted to the idea of sending Albert, a Rhesus monkey into space. Albert I died in flight. Suffocation. His namesakes, Alberts II through V, were also unlucky. Suffocation, force of impact and fiery explosions. All Alberts lost.
And then the geniuses at NASA, ruling out the possibility that bad science was the source of the problem, retired the name ‘Albert’. And finally, in 1959, Able and Miss Baker returned to earth safely. Mission accomplished. Able has been ‘preserved’ and is on display at the Smithsonian. A mummified hero of primate proportions.
While my brain is firing at random, let’s talk Christmas ornaments. The holiday is sort of a loose affair in this household. Egg nog and stockings -sure. Well wrapped presents - certainly. Jesus -kind of. Shrine to space monkeys - you bet. There is a whole section of the Frasier Fir dedicated to our friends the astronaut monkeys. At least four of them (pictured here) dangle daintily from the drooping branches. I feel just a little bit better about animal testing of all kinds, now that we honor the Alberts and the Ables and the Miss Bakers of the world on Christmas.
But the hunt is on. The dog senses the sacred status of those felt friends and is now pacing the perimeter of the tree hoping for an opportunity to relieve us of one of those monkeys. She’ll settle for a butterfly or drummer boy but it’s the monkeys she’s really after. She has been there since 6:30 this morning. Salivating. Devising a plan. Watching those monkeys hanging like temptation from mid-tree, which might as well be space.
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3 Responses to “Moon Walk and other thoughts for Friday”
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of course i just had to watch it.
how is your tree holding up?
hi, you.
Well, you’re definitely ahead of me! I have no tree up and just a smathering of decorations. No kids this year, so I’m just trying to maintain enough of a level of Christmas spirit to get the packages mailed!
Lovely tree, monkeys and all. Watch the dog or place the monkeys very very high.