" Sandra’s seen a leprechaun,
Eddie touched a troll,
Laurie danced with witches once,
Charlie found some goblins gold.
Donald heard a mermaid sing,
Susy spied an elf,
But all the magic I have known
I've had to make myself."
Shel Silverstein
Where the Sidewalk Ends
" Long summer day
Patterns on the ocean sand
our idle footprints "
Shiki
><}}(°>
> < } } ( ° >
Thanks for visiting today!
If you haven't seen it, please visit yesterday's post - I'm sorta proud of it.Warmly,Cloudia
Come along with me on a little nostalgia trip. OK?
This is my childhood.
I well remember the warmth,
the hum,
the orange glow.
These vacuum tubes made our sophisticated technology work:
Radio, Television, even a Computer or two!
There were still plenty of black & white movies, and propeller airplanes, but there was TECHNICOLOR now, and Jet Aircraft!
The First Computer in the World!
This is the ENIAC computer right in my hometown, at the University of Pennsylvania in West Philadelphia.
(My Mom is a West Philadelphia High School graduate!) Twenty thousand vacuum tubes. . . CUTTING EDGE!
My Grandparents had a Television like this one.
Do You Recognize This?
Then you are most
likely over 50.
The local TV station(s)
(there was one, maybe 3,
if you lived in a major
metropolitan area)
did something
called 'sign off.'
They played the national anthem,
then broadcast a Test Pattern
(like the one here)
ALL NIGHT.
Or they just turned the station
OFF leaving a hum and static.
Remember Static?
Some folks called it 'snow.'
It was relaxing like watching falling snow.
Ours was modern.
I just thought it was TV,
but now they say it was a Golden Age.
We were the Greatest Country in the World!
Men like my Dad, and my classmates' Dads,
and the milkman
and the cop on the beat,
had Made The World Safe For Democracy.
The future looked GREAT!
Then some scary things happened:
Laika, Soviet Space Dog
Mutt-nik & Sputnik
Then the first human in space,
Yuri Gagarin.
The Communist Soviets Had the High Ground!
We MUST DOSOMETHING!
Telstar 1 was launched on top of a Thor-Delta rocket on July 10, 1962.
It successfully relayed through space the first television pictures, telephone calls, fax images and provided the first live transatlantic television feed.
I was watching that first live transatlanticbroadcast.
TELSTAR
But it wasn't enough.
So John Glenn was the first American to orbit Earth
aboard his Mercury Capsule,
Friendship7
in 1962.
It was VERY special having a television wheeled into the classroom.
We all watched at school!
Gosh I remember that shape!
I had the pencil sharpener!
Those recoveries by aircraft carrier-based helicopters
out of the sea near our New 50th State,
Hawaii,
were almost as exciting!
Then "we" walked on the moon in 1969!
"For All Humankind"
And in 1981,
we saw this sight for the first time:
The World Was Amazed
at the Glide-to-Landing.
The Future Had Arrived!
You could drive your family
around in your OWN Space Shuttle!
But it was not all good.
Ellison Shoji Onizuka,
Kona, Hawaii " Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
Ilan Ramon
And danced the skies
on laughter-silvered wings;
Christa McAuliffe
Sunward I've climbed,
and joined the tumbling mirth
Columbia Crew 2003
" Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
The Aloha Initiative is a local, non-profit organization that has invited some of the Japanese people most affected by the March natural disasters
to come to Hawaii.
It's been a tough four months for them
since the tsunami, earthquake, and nuclear emergency.
"I'm still very scared, but I have to be strong,"
says a Fukushima student named Tadano.
Tadano and about 30 other grade school and high school students are staying with host families on Maui - to rest, relax, and recuperate.
"100 percent of the students were affected in one way or the other, by the tsunami. Some of them have lost friends or family, also in the earthquake or the nuclear power accident." Said group leader Yumiko Nishimoto
Two weeks ago, the first wave of Japanese - mostly families – arrived through the Initiative and are staying with families on Oahu and Maui for up to three months. Only a very few of them had ever met their host families before arriving here in the islands.
