The Late Night Television Sign-Off from NASA that Provided Real Hope

NASA did much more than send people to the moon in the great era of spaceflight that they brought to us.

Both my parents worked at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in the best years of my boyhood. On off-school days my mother would bring me to work and I would have my run of the whole compound. I got to know hundreds of smiling faces, of people all working to send us into space. Then at night I got to watch Star Trek. I knew with all the certainty a boy could have that the adults could do it. - James.

 

In our lives there are but a few very inspirational and hopeful memories kept in the vaults of our minds which we would not trade for anything. We remember moments with our parents, at the beach for instance, when we were feeling hopeful, and inspired and loved all at the same time. My most precious such memory is not any moments as a child with his mother or father or his family. Mine is a music video produced by the National Air and Space Administration and made available in nineteen seventy-two to any television station who wanted it. As a boy growing up in Washington D.C., I would purposefully stay awake for the sign-off on WTTG Metromedia channel 5, which occurred at midnight every night.

The nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies were times of turmoil. It was a depressing time to be a child who is both growing and also be apprised of events in the world around you, as your mind and body grew without choice. But this music video inspired a feeling that was so strong, it convinced my consciousness every night, that there was indeed hope.  It made a claim in its message that "the adults had not screwed everything-up entirely," although everything I saw or read during the day surely indicated that they had.

Everyone held recent memory of news clips and photographs from the horrific Vietnam War. It was a painful change in the process almost every day. Assassinations of the best people we had seemed common. Unarmed demonstrations put down with violence by governments, caused me to think that change was impossible. Everyone maintained a level of fear that nuclear war would occur at any given time, at the push of a button by someone being angry, being careless, being ruthless, trying to win the war. I would look at the sunrise and think "some asshole could take it all away for everyone," and the thought would bring tears to my eyes. The civil rights battles for equality gave us all imagery of man's inhumanity toward man, treating people as animals to be herded. The rise of the proliferation of the handgun changed the way we thought about just being outside at night. We treated each other based on shallow differences. Discrimination was granted by society and it seemed very ugly as I was made more aware of it frequently.

"What's the point? If I'm going to grow up to have to face all of this? Who stands a chance in this world?" My child's mind rationally deduced.

But then I could escape hopelessness late at night by watching what was for me a lullaby of hope and peace possible. It was the channel five sign-off, featuring NASA Apollo Eleven astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin bouncing about on the moon. And the song Lonely People by the band America playing during the film clips. This showed me a reality on the other side of hopelessness and so reminded me there is hope for me, and perhaps for everyone.

Many people gather the feeling of hope from a religion, by having beliefs, but I was not a child of beliefs. My parents worked at NASA and I played there on many days when school was out, and I had my run-of-the-place in every building and had made friends with many grown-ups. And so I saw the wonders that man could frequently create and it was explained to me how we created them often. I was not a boy whose psychology could be settled with an invisible source of hope.  I had to have the physical, the touchable, the measurable, the viewable to draw on for hope when I was alone with my thoughts. And this sign-off video was abundant with hope for my little scientific mind.

If a hope is one of the reasons, you immerse in a belief system I have this suggestion if ever you feel your beliefs aren't enough. You can find hope by observing your fellow humans and their many wonderful behaviors, discoveries and inventions, insights and philosophies of real life, from reality. Hope from the physical world feels pretty good and there is no supernatural element to create even the smallest doubt in your mind. So this type of hope is as solid as it is there in front of you.

Thanks Ed Smith! Your buddy: Jamie

Thanks to all you old-timers at NASA Goddard, Greenbelt, Maryland!

June 2014: YouTube:

John ____:   "Hi - My Dad, Byron Morgan directed the NASA sign off you're talking about when he was head of documentary films at NASA in Washington DC in the 1970s.  I think he got the recommendation of the song from my sister.  An original of the sign off might exist among my Dad's things and will look for it and post it if it exists. If anyone comes across it in the meantime, please let me know! Thanks for all the warm comments.  He would appreciate them.  And thanks so much Oddity Archive for the recreation!  You certainly got the spirit of what he wanted to show.

Some of the moments I remember...when the song says "hit it!" the Lunar Landing Module takes off from the Moon.  It ends with a crane shot of a woman and man in a park and they're spinning around which I think matched spinning NASA footage? A bit of a Kubrick homage ;)"

~~~~~~

________ : "I worked for TV station WAWS in Jacksonville,Florida back in 1981. We used to run the original. Great job of recreating it. Kind of missed the ending, if I remember correctly, it went from the moon, to a sat dish and ended with a couple standing over their baby's crib, I guess kind of 2001 ish "star child " ending. I love your ending with the flag shot, thought it was just as effective.I posted this on a facebook post, someone brought up the old national anthem sing offs. Thanks for posting this, awesome job."

Additionally: A great radio story about the hey-days of early NASA: Science Friday; NASA during the civil rights era.Listen at SoundCloud:

Image from NASA, "Engineer Thomas Byrdsong checks the Apollo/Saturn 1B Ground-wind-loads model in the Transonic Dynamics Tunnel 648 at NASA Langley Research Center on March 2, 1963. Photo by NASA."

Copyright Reserved: End All Suffering / James G. Mason, June, 2014.

Change Democracy in the United States Don't Bash It

The youth are disenfranchised with American democracy. Emphasis should be on “American” democracy. Many systems using democracy around the world are very different.

Here’s bullet points that I feel should be the points of change to make American democracy fair and productive and far more participatory:

• Genuine and complete Public Campaign Financing: No elected office in our democracy should be without full public campaign financing. That means the dog catcher’s office to the city council to the mayor’s office, the judges, the sheriffs and so forth. Signatures raised manually should be the kicker to allow anyone access to public campaign money. That kicker to receive an escalation of public campaign funding should be more signatures. No elected official should have to spend 2 out of 8 hours per day calling and shaking hands with donors. No more PACs or super PACs for any candidate. Money is speech and so corrupting and that influence must end.
  
  See this online essay I wrote several years ago: http://Public-Campaign-Financing.Org It is very unnecessary to get behind a movement to repeal the Citizens United supreme court case if we only support and pass one single constitutional amendment called Public Campaign Financing. There does not need to be one word in that amendment that speaks to business or corporate influence in that funding, just simply “Only public campaign financing shall be used.”
  
  Within the new amendment for public campaign financing we can time restrict all political campaigning. That does not mean clamp down on free speech and restrict the press and any political opinion. It means the actual campaigns. It means that funds for advertising a political candidate must come from the Federal Elections Commission and locally from the Secretary of State’s office, in a time period prior to election day. 120 days prior to election day would allow the public to fully understand when it is election season and only then should our airwaves and internet be inundated with paid political propaganda.
  

• Electoral districts need to be population based only and not gerrymandered by type of people that differentiate neighborhoods by social and political divisions as we have allowed to happen in the United States. Only the Federal Elections Commission should be allowed to draw electoral districts and then only by scientific data of population centers. Those centers of populations are always developed by urban or rural needs of industry and commerce and population density.

• End the party dynamic. The parties are creations of political culture. They are clubs and have no place in our constitution. They literally are not in the articles of confederation or the bill of rights. They are creations and must be taken out of all representation. The labels Republican and Democrat should be what they really are in current language: ideological labels based upon an evolving cultural norm. Republicans used to be the liberals in American politics - for instance, but that changed as culture changed and it will likely change again. They are clubs.  
  
  That means no more primary elections and no more conventions of parties. No more whittling down the choice of candidates to two with perhaps one write-in candidate. That needs to end. An interested person should have to ask or be told by a political pundit in the news whether or not a representative or a candidate is conservative or liberal or a little bit of both (a moderate) or an independent (ambiguous swing voter) representative.  Parties were cultural evolvements to help the public categorize and should have no bearing on how we vote or when we vote. Take them out.

• Bring back civics in all educational institutions public and private. Make children understand how full representation works as if it were learning how to read and write and perform mathematics. It is fundamental and should be taught as so. We have dropped that ball. We can pick it up and become more engaged again.

• Make voting very easy not more restricted. Time for online voting and telephone voting. We are modern now. Additionally, we need to extend the time period to several days, Friday through Monday. An over the weekend ballot casting nationwide. We need the time and we need freedom to cast our votes. We have the technology. That technology can be controlled. There is no more excuse for a single day’s voting period where a human has to show up personally. In this manner, everyone has no excuse to not vote.

All Rights Reserved: End All Suffering / James Gray Mason

#voting #USAElections #Democracy #Election2016 #endallsuffering #stopallsuffering #essays #opinion #publiccampaignfinancing #publiccampaign #FEC #SOSoffice

It is Consistent to Use What We Have to Get to Where We Need to Be

“It’s hypocritical!” No, it’s consistent to use the apparent antithesis of the problem to solve the problem until we no longer need to when there is not a viable alternative to reach the desired outcome:  

Diesel fueled trucks and trains and ships must be used to transport the parts and large equipment for renewable energy solutions until a day when they do not have to. When we have long-haul transportation alternatives that are using a renewable energy sources we will not need to transport renewable energy parts using fossil fuels. Consistent with our basic immediate needs to get to where we need to be. 

Through the infrastructure and cost of our recycling efforts we see again, we have to use what we have to get to where we need to be. When electric vehicles can carry tons of weight and operate for several hours we are not only recycling but we will be positively productive. Our waste products become almost a natural resource. Eventually the use of fossil fuels, even for plastics and vehicles will be unnecessary. The costs of that infrastructure and those jobs made available using them should be a not for profit department that belongs to the people. When that day comes that positively productive behavior will cost us all far less.   

In a nation filled with gun toting citizens any police officer must carry a gun in almost any dangerous circumstance until a day when they do not have to. When there is real gun control in barbaric nations like the United States our police can carry non lethal weapons with the expectation that they will not have to fire a ballistic slug into another human being in order to live another day. Consistent with our basic immediate needs to get to where we need to be.

In a democracy a candidate can have full intent of changing a campaign financing system and also have full knowledge that he or she cannot do so unless they win the election first. If winning requires a great amount of funding in order to win a campaign to then be able to effect that change in campaigning, then that is consistent and not hypocritical. Consistent with our basic immediate needs to get to where we need to be.

Examples could fill this weblog but the point is made. We must acknowledge that our lives are filled with these apparent inconsistent behaviors. We must make use of what we have and not give-up on that goal of change toward where we need to get to.

 All Rights Reserved: End All Suffering / James Gray Mason, 2016

#essays #opinion #change #hypocracy #consistency #inconsistant #recycling #climatechange #fosillfuels #emmisions #endallsuffering #stopallsuffering #JamesGMason #sol3
All Rights Reserved: End All Suffering / James Gray Mason, 2016

Lead Poisoning is Criminal When You Could Have Prevented It

Decades of my life gone by while this issue remains, with KNOWLEDGE it was poisoning millions. What progress? What denial! Cheating. Lack of empathy:

There will be a day when elected representatives of our government are held just as accountable for their actions of negligence and of duty to us all as any one of us regular folk are. That day may be arriving as a call for the arrest of Governor Rick Snyder is now justifiably growing louder. I stand behind this outcry. Update: 6.15.2017: Charges of negligence, manslaughter, felonies on high ranking officials announced. While 20 have died from Legionnaire's disease, as a result of the contaminated water. 6.15.17 New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/06/15/us/ap-us-flint-water.html

Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan knew about the lead contaminated water pipes of Flint Michigan long before the free and liberal media of the United States jumped on the issue. He deserves to meet the law for his criminal negligence.

I stand with a great patriot of democracy and a great liberal of our time, Michael Moore and tens of thousands of parents in requesting he be arrested for criminal negligence - as any citizen would be, as you and I would be.  As any one of us would be arrested and then jailed for our negligence that resulted in great and irreparable harm to anyone. In this case, it harms more than 100,000 people.

I have been upset about this issue since in early December of 2015, the stalwart advocate of people, Rachel Maddow, chose to run a story on her national cable network MSNBC exposing the story of the poisoning of an entire municipality of Flint, in the state of Michigan, United States. It was April of 2014 when the residents of this underserved, largely minority populace first sought actions for their complaints of apparently tainted drinking water. A chemist from Virginia Technical College took it upon himself to drive to Flint and test the residents water. That hero's name is Mark Edwards. He will fix it. He deserved our thanks for his self-motivated response in insisting on going to Flint and testing the water when few in that State Government would take action.  

As a child of the 1960’s who was living in multiple homes of inexpensive build, I was very likely exposed to lead. It was in the paint of the walls in almost every home I lived in. It was in the soldered joints of all copper water pipe. It was mixed in as a solvent in many chemicals, and liquid medicinal drugs, given to me and millions of kids. It is likely I would have been a different, smarter, person had I not lived when I did. In 1982, I became a plumber’s apprentice and for 3 years the solder I was using was mostly composed of lead. For hours every day, while soldering copper water pipes, I would hold a roll of lead solder in one hand while manipulating and holding copper water pipes to be soldered with my other hand. The only and most efficient way for me to unspool the solder was to bite the lead with my teeth and them unspool the lead to have more solder to work with. I was being contaminated for low wages as a young adult. Like those kids of Flint, Michigan I was innocently naive of the danger. For these reasons, I was especially distraught over this issue when I first heard about on Rachel’s show in early December of last year.

~~~~~~

In 1978, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development had the money to advertise the dangers of lead paint in housing that was built prior to 1978, when our government through the actions of liberals, decided to warn us all. I like many other children probably put some in my mouth on more than one occasion. As infants, we reach for substances and we taste them. It is what happened to millions of us. Below is the television public awareness advertisement that allowed million of citizens the information to know how to prevent lead poisoning in the walls of our homes:

1978 (asshole) Governor Rick Snyder!

Ignorance of the LAW is not an excuse.

People go to jail for criminal negligence.

~~~~~~

The children of Flint, Michigan, who before their drinking water was knowingly contaminated by lead, had almost all the opportunities to be all that they could be before their brains were poisoned by a known contaminant that we learned more than 5 decades ago caused irreversible brain damage.  I want us all to take care of them. I want this catastrophe remembered for a long time. I want justice for all those kids who will be at a biological disadvantage for all their lives because a government representative was seeking to save money.

~~~~~

From Michael Moore’s website designated to further the cause of justice for those poisoned:

“Maybe you don't understand the science behind this. Lead, in water -- now, bear with me, this involves a science lesson and you belong to the anti-science party, the one that believes there's not a climate problem and that Adam and Eve rode on dinosaurs 6,000 years ago. Lead is toxic to the human body. There's no way to fully eliminate it once it's in your system, and children are the most damaged by it.

By taking away the city's clean drinking water in order to "cut costs," and then switching the city's water supply to Flint River water, you have allowed massively unsafe levels of pollutants and lead into the water that travels into everyone's home. Every Flint resident is trapped by this environmental nightmare which you, Governor, have created.”

“I am calling upon my fellow Michiganders -- and seekers of justice everywhere -- to petition U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, asking her to arrest you for corruption and assault (i.e., the physical assault you committed against the children of Flint when you knowingly poisoned them).”

~~~~~

Michael Moore’s website calling for Governor Snyder’s arrest for violation of the civil liberties of thousands of people:

http://michaelmoore.com/ArrestGovSnyder

World Health Organization on lead:

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs379/en/

• Lead is a cumulative toxicant that affects multiple body systems and is particularly harmful to young children.
• Childhood lead exposure is estimated to contribute to about 600 000 new cases of children developing intellectual disabilities every year.
• Lead exposure is estimated to account for 143 000 deaths per year with the highest burden in developing regions.
• About one half of the burden of disease from lead occurs in the WHO South-East Asia Region, with about one-fifth each in the WHO Western Pacific and Eastern Mediterranean Regions.
• Lead in the body is distributed to the brain, liver, kidney and bones. It is stored in the teeth and bones, where it accumulates over time. Human exposure is usually assessed through the measurement of lead in blood.
• There is no known level of lead exposure that is considered safe.
• Lead poisoning is entirely preventable.

Sources and routes of exposure

People can become exposed to lead through occupational and environmental sources. This mainly results from:

• inhalation of lead particles generated by burning materials containing lead, e.g. during smelting, informal recycling, stripping leaded paint and using leaded gasoline; and
• ingestion of lead-contaminated dust, water (from leaded pipes), food (from lead-glazed or lead-soldered containers).

How to file a complaint on behalf of the citizens of Flint with the United States Justice Department:

http://www.justice.gov/crt/how-file-complaint

Washington Post: The heroic professor who helped uncover the Flint lead water crisis​ has been asked to fix it:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2016/01/26/meet-the-heroic-professor-who-helped-uncover-the-flint-lead-water-crisis/

All Rights Reserved: End All Suffering and James G. Mason, January, 2016. http://JamesGMason.com http://EndAllSuffering.Org

#LeadPoisoning #Lead #FLintMichigan #GovRickSnyder #EPA #USDOJ #POTUS #MichaelMoore #RachelMaddow #EndAllSuffering #StopAllSuffering #JamesGMason #Opinion

Happy Valentine’s Day to All Who Are In Love

Happy Valentine’s Day to all who are in love and to all who are still grateful for having been in love.

I am 53 years old now and I am certain I have never been in love as an adult. Sure, I have pretended that I had that wonderful emotion. But it was always false. I even got married to a beautiful young woman whom I thought that I was in love with. That marriage ended 5 years later.

When I was just 11 years old I had been in love. It was a boyhood romance in which I pretended that I was a grown adult. It lasted about 4 months and was wonderful. But I became cursed by myself because of the anguish of loss after that romance ended. I remember laying in my bedroom after I learned that I had lost her due to my own boyish foolishness of kissing another girl at a party. I had realized too late that I was feeling love. I was crying for a couple of hours. But when the crying was nearly over I became angry at myself. I swore to myself I would never feel that again and so the psychological imprint of my resolve became cemented into my life, perhaps permanently.

The rock n roll band Nazereth put it well to agree with my resolve in those very youthful years:

“Love hurts. Love scars. Love wounds and mars any heart not tough or strong enough to take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain. Love is like a cloud - holds a lot of rain. Love hurts. Love hurts.”

“They’re right!” I told myself. “If this great rock n roll band says it, then it must be true! So why would anyone want that?” That childhood resolve lasted a lifetime. Is that a sad story? Maybe not.

Don’t feel sorry for me because there is a trade-off. I have been very introspective through all these years. I have not been jealous or wounded and I have not hated anyone because of love. I have not wanted to hurt anyone due to love. I have not attempted to jump off a bridge. I have not lost all my finances to a lover. I have not had a nasty divorce that entangled children in the throes and trauma of family separation. All this and more I have dodged.   

But that love in those many songs, that love that a human feels that is so strong they would do anything for the one they love has never been my own.

But I still listen intently to love songs. I still have that disappointment. But it fades very fast and I mostly feel happy for the songwriter and grateful to be able to imagine what they must have been feeling.

Of all the love songs I have heard I have decided upon one in particular that I think best defines being truly in love - that biologic bonding of two people. I don’t know if the genius musician and composer Prince wrote its lyrics but he sure did put it to music ingeniously. To me it best defines the extremity of what that feeling must be with fantastic melody and rhythm. I am sorry but I have searched the internet for a live demonstration of this performance and it is not readily available. But perhaps that is best for this post. Those of you alive in 1984 and enjoying pop music know it; The song is difficult to forget.

1984, Prince: I Would Die For You . . . the lyrics:

I'm not a woman

I'm not a man

I am something that you'll never understand

I'll never beat you

I'll never lie

And if you're evil I'll forgive you by and by

'Cause you, I would die for you, yeah

Darling if you want me to

You, I would die for you

I'm not your lover

I'm not your friend

I am something that you'll never comprehend

No need to worry

No need to cry

I'm your messiah and you're the reason why

'Cause you, I would die for you, yeah

Darling if you want me to

You, I would die for you

You're just a sinner I am told

Be your fire when you're cold

Make you happy when you're sad

Make you good when you are bad

I'm not a human

I am a dove

I'm your conscious

I am love

All I really need is to know that

You believe

Yeah, I would die for you, yeah

Darling if you want me to

You, I would die for you

Yeah, say one more time

You, I would die for you

Darling if you want me to

You, I would die for you

Two, three, four you

I would die for you

I would die for you

You, I would die for you

You, I would die for you

"Melisa and Joey" 1980. Ormond Beach, Florida. James Gray Mason.

All rights reserved: James Gray Mason / End All Suffering, Feburary 14th, 2016.

#love #valentinesday #Prince #theRevolution #music #1984 #Childreninlove #romance #endallsuffering #stopallsuffering #JamesGMason #sol3 #timetravelwish