
today
8:30 a.m. Audubon Society Field Trip See Event Description
read >9 a.m. Arcata Farmers' Market Arcata Plaza
read >9:30 a.m. Discovery Walk: Unknown Waterfront See Event Description
read >9:30 a.m. Manila Dunes Restoration Manila Community Center
read >10 a.m. Manila Dunes Guided Walk Manila Community Center
read >10 a.m. Library Book Sale Humboldt County Library
read >10 a.m. Dia de los Muertos and Mexican Folk Art Sale Private Eureka home
read >10 a.m. Final Arcata Farmer's Market Arcata Farmers' Market (off the plaza)
read >11 a.m. Donlin Foreman Dance Workshop Dell'Arte
read >2 p.m. Humboldt Coastal Nature Center Draft Trails Plan Walk Stamps House
read >5 p.m. Bati Zado and Show Redwood Raks World Dance Studio
read >6 p.m. The Tumbleweeds Chapala Cafe
read >6 p.m. Ali Chaudhary (jazz duo) Libation
read >6:30 p.m. Not Evil, Just Wrong Humboldt Area Foundation
read >7 p.m. Guitar Stan (country) Old Town Coffee & Chocolates
read >8 p.m. Guitar Orchestra of Barcelona Arkley Center for the Performing Arts
read >8 p.m. Stones in His Pockets Arcata Playhouse
read >8 p.m. A Christmas Carol North Coast Repertory Theater
read >8 p.m. Donna Landry Swing Dance Moose Lodge
read >8 p.m. North Coast Wind Ensemble Fulkerson Recital Hall at HSU
read >8:30 p.m. The Last Minute Men (international) Cafe Mokka
read >9 p.m. Ian McFeron Band (folk rock) Six Rivers Brewery
read >9 p.m. The Michael Paul Band WAVE @ blue lake casino
read >9 p.m. The Generatorz (classic rock) Central Station Cocktail Lounge
read >9 p.m. Taxi Bear River Casino
read >9 p.m. VJ Itchie Fingaz Pearl Lounge
read >9 p.m. Jack Ruby Presents + Blue Street + Acufunkture (DIY rock) Jambalaya
read >9 p.m. 2nd Annual Scorpio Bash The Red Fox Tavern
read >10 p.m. Music by DJ Sidelines
read >10 p.m. DJ Icy Hot Aunty Mo's Lounge
read >10 p.m. Jemimah Puddleduck (rock) Humboldt Brews
read >10 p.m. White Manna + Midday Veil + The King Salmon Duo (rock) Jambalaya
read >11 p.m. Radio Moscow (psychadelic blues) + Mosquito Bandito (one-man surf/garage) The Alibi Lounge and Restaurant
read >previous columns
Dec. 18, 2008
Top Five (+5)
Girl on the Fridge. Etgar Keret (Farrar Straus Giroux). Israeli ...
read >Dec. 11, 2008
HUMAN DARK WITH SUGAR
By Brenda Shaughnessy. Copper Canyon Press.
read >Photos
Earthrise: How We First Saw Ourselves
By Robert Poole. Yale Press.
By William Kowinski
On Christmas Eve 40 years ago, Frank Borman looked out the window and saw something no human had ever seen before. He saw the Earth rise.
At the time Borman was in a space capsule, with the first crew to orbit the Moon. They were on the dark side, in their fourth orbit of looking down at shades of gray on the lunar surface, set against the black of space. And then suddenly, the blue and white Earth dawned over the Moon's edge. Apollo 8 astronauts Borman, James Lovell and Bill Anders scrambled to take pictures through the small window with their hand-held camera. One of those photos became the iconic image dubbed "Earthrise," splashed across magazine pages and posterized on classroom and dorm room walls all over the world.
NASA hadn't given much priority to such a photo. "We had been trained to look at the Moon," said Anders. "We hadn't been trained to look at the Earth."
But later it was that first view of Earthrise that these astronauts remembered most clearly: The Earth in the context of space, the whole Earth with all the visible color and life in one fragile body.
This smart and exciting little book sets the historical context for this photo, and is especially fascinating about the almost forgotten Apollo program. Its spaceflights lasted a mere four years (1968 to 1972): 11 missions, nine voyages to the Moon and six moon landings. While Neil Armstrong's first step on the Moon in Apollo 11 is the soundbite moment, Apollo 8 was the most significant and the most awe-inspiring at the time. No manned spacecraft had ever left Earth orbit, traveled that far into space, or spun around the Moon. A number of complex technical achievements had never been tried before, requiring split-second timing: all with an on-board computer that was "tiny in comparison with modern pocket calculators." The details of this mission are astounding, and full of amazing ironies.
This book is rich in the relationship between past and contemporary imagination and the realities of these missions. Poole rightly reminds us that the Earthrise photo gave evidence and impetus to holistic thinking and the ecology movement that blossomed in that period, leading to a certain credibility for some sense of Gaia: the planet as an interdependent organism. That this was not Apollo's purpose makes it all the more powerful. This book is (Poole writes) "the story of how the mightiest shot in the Cold War turned into the twentieth century's ultimate utopian moment." He suggests how, almost invisibly to us today, this has become a lasting legacy.



















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