In the 1950s, most family homes had their evening story hour. In our house, it usually took the form of the patio cocktail hour, where I heard more outlandish tales than most children heard from Dr. Seuss. This will give you an idea. It’s an excerpt from my book Rocket Lessons (forthcoming from an as-yet-to-be-named publisher – see my literary agent Laurie Abkemeier): **** Life had acquired new complications. My parents were fighting with each…
The legacy of rockets in southern California continues in many ways, not the least of which is the pollution of the Western landscape. For the effects of rocket fuel stored and used in 1950s rockets on today’s families who drink water from the Colorado River (pretty much all of us in California, read this CNN article about how the chemical perchlorate pollutes much of the lower Colorado River — the main water source for 20…
It should be a verb: to memoir. We all do it in one way or another, but those of us who try to make art of it are particularly vulnerable to the above distinction between truth and fact. Which is which, and does it matter? Memoir books are famous for having in their few decades of faddishness completely worn out the word “fact” to a degree that its dull metal shows under the thin silver…
WELCOME TO THE LAUNCH PAD. DAY ONE. When the rocket is moved on the mobile transporter from its vertical hangar to the launch pad, the second so-called Wet Dress Rehearsal begins – the countdown timeline. Super-cold liquid oxygen will be loaded into the first and second stages, and the liquid hydrogen propellant will be loaded for the rocket’s inaugural flight. Everything was nearly ready when the problem happened. A valve setting had been changed following…