AWP Bound:

I'm off to AWP this week. If blogging is light over the next 5 days, that is why.

Space Shuttle Challenger: 22 years ago today

Today is the anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster.  On January 28, 1986, NASA's 25th space mission lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In the crew of seven astronauts, 4 were women and minorities and for the first time, one, a New Hampshire school teacher named Christa McAuliffe, was to be the first civilian in space.

73 seconds after takeoff, the craft exploded over the Atlantic Ocean. There were no survivors.

That evening, President Reagan was to give the State of the Union Address. He instead went on television from the Oval Office and spoke of the tragedy.

There's a coincidence today. On this day three hundred and ninety years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete. The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God." (full text)

Two years ago, on this day, I wrote this essay. It was a great honor to me that it was published a few days in the newspaper that had given me my first job, the Baltimore Sun.

It was 20 years ago this week that my generation, the Xers of slacking, hip-hop and dot com foolery stopped being children. Many of us, including myself, were in junior high, others still played in sandboxes on that freezing clear morning in January of 1986. But just as my parents had seen the promise of their generation “born in this century, tempered by war” cut down by gunfire in Dallas, my own had seen the hopes of President Kennedy’s “new frontier” extinguished in a horrific plume of flame off the coast of Florida .

The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster served the first memory of national mourning for those of us born too late for Vietnam and Kent State, too young to remember President Nixon’s resignation. I wasn’t sent home from school early, as my mother was in November of 1963 but did spend that day, as she did, in front of the television with my family. Later at school and for weeks afterward, any discussion of the Challenger began with the same question: “When were you when you heard?”

We use that question not only find comfort in collective grief but to pinpoint a generation’s understanding of itself. “Where were you when” makes us both witnesses to history and characters in a chapter of its passing. It forces us to accept our own story as part of a larger national tale, where children raised on the space-bound dreams of Star Wars can see a real life launch go horribly wrong and where a school teacher, just like ours, can touch the sky with her whole community watching and never come home.

Looking back, Crista McAuliffe and her crewmates were a window into the social concerns of our future. Over half the Challenger crew were women and minorities, paving the way for our national dialogue on diversity. McAuliffe’s presence, a civilian representative on a government mission hinted at later struggles over what levels of participation and accountability citizens would expect in national affairs. Most of all, the destruction of the Challenger rang a symbolic death knell on the fundamentalism of the Cold War into which we had been born. It showed that even our nation's largest achievements could be undone by something as mundane as an “O-Ring” and that we, like the Soviets, like everyone, were both human and flawed.

It’s possible to accept that generational divides are both the invention of marketers and useful tools in distinguishing the disciples of Lil’ Jon from those of John Lennon. They also stave off our own feelings of irrelevancy as we become the adults mystified about "kids these days".

At their best, generation do the same work as maturity: To help us feel part of a history larger than our own.

It would be years before America would mourn collectively again, years before Oaklahoma City and the death of John Kennedy Jr, before Columbine and September 11. By then, my peers were in their 20s and 30s, ending school, starting careers and families. I remember where I was on each of those days, just as I remember the Space Shuttle Challenger and 7th grade Spanish period. Our teacher, well known around school for not speaking English during class, tried to explain what had happened, making imaginary plumes of flame with her hands, drawing a fireball on the chalkboard, hoping the barrier of language would lessen the impact. But when she broke down and told us, it was too late. We had grown up anyway.

Gleanings: Kennedy and Obama, Media and Minorities, Stegner and Smokler

A little light reading...

• Senator Ted Kennedy endorses Barack Obama. This race gets more interesting by the day.

• Which got me thinking. Who are the longest serving members of the Senate? Wikipedia has the whole list.

• NY Times: Social Entrepreneurs are all the rage at this year's World Economic Forum in Davos  (via GreenBiz.com).

• Dying to read this story in the new Atlantic Monthly about digital music and its future (via Waxy.org).

• Philadelphia Inquirer: A profile and new biography of Wallace Stegner, whom I've always wanted to learn more about.

• New America Media: A fascinating take on "The New Media" and its evolution in minority communities.

• Hackzine profiles a way to grab music from the stupid little flash players on MySpace.

• It's now possible to listen to music on-demand at Last.fm.

The Year in Documentaries...

I love me some documentary films but often miss the best ones because I'd forget my last name if my friends didn't address me by it. So above is a wonderful video from my best friend David Dylan Thomas talking about the year in docs and what you shouldn't miss.

Dave and I don't always agree on movies (he has a weird Owen Wilson thing that I equate to eating rice pudding for a solid month) but our non-fiction tastes are as parallel as railroad tracks. As such, I'm gonna make a whole list from this little video.

Explaining Carbon Offsets:

As much as I'm all about living green, I can't say for sure that I understand "carbon offsets." So I was thrilled when I read on the Terra Pass blog about an NPR piece that explains it all.

I haven't listened to it yet, but it's exactly what I've been looking for to sort this stuff out.

Thought of the Day: "Passion"

"Passion will drive you crazy but really is there any other way to live?"

--Howard Hughes

The Madness of SXSW 2008.

As if I'm not getting gray hair already keeping track of my conference friends comings and goings on SXSW Baby! and the rumors about which bands are playing at Done Waiting, I just got tipped off about the fresh-out-of-the-oven Ning SXSW social network which had feeds for party announcements, a blog and a forum with about 8 kajillion topics. Plus my friends put together a PB Wiki every year to see who wants to go to what both to trade information and so you can always have a wingman when attending something new.

SIgh. I know it would make me miserable but I have half a mind to show up in Austin in March having planned nothing but massages and lots of long dinners with friends.

One Sentence Movie Reviews: "Music and Lyrics"

Music and Lyrics (2007): "Has-beens are much more endearing that hot topics."

My Cat is Internet Famous:

So this is Faygo, my cat. Rannie Turnigan came over a few months ago, shot some photos of me and one or two of my furry roommate. Last week he featured this one on his site.

Cariwyl insists that Faygo is more wolf than feline and has even gone as far as to call her "Wolf Cat." The proof is now on film. After Faygo lays out in a sunbeam this morning, she will avoid silver bullets and commune spiritually with Jack London.

Thought of the Day: "Tightrope or Feather Bed?"

"Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope."

--Edith Wharton (via The Writer's Almanac)