GUTS AND GLORY -- THE SEAGULL

First woman in space ready for 'one-way flight to Mars'

By blade  From france 24
Created 07/06/2013 - 15:27


Russia's Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to go to space, said on Friday she was ready to score another coup and fly to Mars, even if it would be just a one-way trip.

"Mars is my favourite planet," the 76-year old told a news conference in Zvyozdny Gorodok (Star City) outside Moscow, home to a cosmonaut training centre.

Tereshkova, who became a national heroine at the tender age of 26 when she made a solo space flight in 1963, said she had been part of the group who studied the possibility of going to the Red Planet.

"But we know the human limits. And for us this remains a dream. Most likely the first flight will be one way. 

But I am ready," she said.

Under the call sign Chaika (Seagull), Tereshkova during her three-day mission circled the Earth 48 times, her flight becoming a major propaganda coup for the Soviet Union.


On June 16, Russia will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Tereshkova's historic flight.


In 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to go to space.

Louis and Bebe Barron -- Forbidden Planet Music (Link)


Note:  As the title says, you can’t fault Valentina Tereshkova for lack of guts and, through her actions and (mostly) inspiring biography, she’s already earned eternal glory.  Researching photos of her life, there’s a touching one of the Major-General (her Russian Air Force rank) pinning a medal on U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong after his 1969 moon landing.  I’d prefer to (and will) forget the Soviet p.r. stooge shots of her with the lamentable Angela Davis.  She’s quite a woman and it’s my surmise that she is as eager as I am to uncover the truth about the Martian lizard pictured above, who graced the world press last week.  The fact that this didn’t make a bigger splash tells you everything to know about the future of the news/journalism business.  Do you think it’s true, by the way, that someone, somewhere, is detecting and monitoring my each and every keystroke?  If so, the lizard and I say “good morning to you -- breakfast will be served shortly  -- watch out for the ailing dog who tends to get underfoot.”

Imperfect

      A few years ago at a business reception  in Manhattan (felicitously called a “salon”) organized by an old friend, I ran into a girl from my college class who had clearly gone nuts.  You could feel this entering the room, even before setting eyes on her.  I sensed a  low, throbbing, dissonant hum, growing ever more persistent.  It reminded me of  the intense electronic music in the movie Forbidden Planet  painfully gathering and swelling until Anne Francis and Leslie Nielsen finally fled the Krell's graveyard world.

     She still looked good.   Always a pretty girl, now become a very minor celebrity,  she had maintained her schooldays Pre-Raphaelite visual persona, but her face and eyes told that either the “meds” weren’t working or that she was completely beyond their reach.  When I spoke to her, the “no one home” sign was sadly unmistakable.

     I told Caroline about this later that evening and wrote about it the next day to another friend, describing the feeling I had seeing the crazy girl as  "dislocation.”  


          In other words, I had no idea where my old friend was, what she was feeling or why, and seeing her pushed me off my grid into terra incognita.

         It's often that way when you meet people who seem to be there, but aren’t really, i.e., people lacking empathy and emotional coordinates.  Based on the things I’ve learned in school and experienced, I think human nature has remained pretty much the same throughout history (this is why great poetry, visual art, music of the past, and historic philosophy and religious teachings can still “reach” us), but now there are many more trap doors and worm-holes leading to private mirrored prisons  than there were when I was growing up.   People seem intent on constructing their own black holes.

        I feel this every time I view Facebook, where friends have transmuted into “friends” and all things seem simulated, not real.  I see it reflected in our remote-control  international drone wars prosecuted by dessicated entities I see in 3-D tv shadows and  fought by soldier-technicians schooled, skilled and desensitized on "shooter" video games.  


       This morning I feel it acutely in the fervid interest and pleasure I see some of my own contemporaries taking in the weekend's annual “White House Correspondents Dinner,” an event that so clearly demonstrates the “productizing” and trivializing of news and reinforcing of status quo thinking and values, it prompts feelings of loss and tragedy.  Only a serf satisfied in his servitude could feel anything but disgust and shame.  (Who was it that said  "politics is show business for ugly people?")

   To gain some peace, perspective and relief, I contrast all this with Hugh MacDiarmid’s 1939 poem, Perfect, which I learned a short time ago:



     ..On the Western Seaboard of South Uist
     ......Los muertos abren los ojos a los que viven


I found a pigeon's skull on the machair,
All the bones pure white and dry, and chalky,
But perfect,
Without a crack or a flaw anywhere.
At the back, rising out of the beak,
Were domes like bubbles of thin bone,
Almost transparent, where the brains had been
That fixed the tilt of the wings.


 

     I hope you liked that.  I thought it was amazing when I  read it.  Its mysterious origins and the poet's biography are both fascinating and worth investigating.   Oh -- Jane and I saw  The Raven yesterday.  You can skip it.   This was a movie that really needed Nicholas Cage to succeed.