Quote of the Month
The Blue Marble Turns 50
Three weeks ago, marked the 50-year anniversary of the spectacular photo taken from space of planet Earth, by the Apollo 17 astronauts en route to the moon. (It would be the last such trip, as Apollo missions 18-20 were scrubbed for budgetary reasons).
It was the first snapshot ever taken of the whole round Earth. Up to that point, views of our planet had been fragmented, and never seen in its entirety. Though the Flat Earth Society continues to exist to this day.
It was instantly dubbed "The Blue Marble” for the obvious reason, that it resembled an aggie that we might have played with as a kid (if we are now of a certain age. Do kids still play with marbles?).
Perhaps the most lyrical reaction to this sight, comes from the horse’s mouth; the man who might have taken the picture, Eugene Cernan. (It was never confirmed as to which of the three astronauts on that flight actually did). Cernan was the 11th of the twelve men who have walked on the moon.
You have to love, “No strings holding it up.” Something a kid might say. Not a highly sophisticated science-oriented astronaut. The wonders of the universe can do that to you.
The significance of this photograph, when first taken and now in its so called afterlife, were addressed in a few articles I Googled. Each seemingly offering a different take on its initial and lasting impact. Stated one: “The image quickly became a symbol of harmony and unity. Instead of offering proof of America's supremacy, the photograph fostered a sense of global interconnectedness.”
Another, with which I hold—based on personal remembrance of that time— stated conversely that, “The Blue Marble didn't resonate immediately. The image wasn't splashed across the front page of newspapers around the globe, partly because it faced stiff competition from other news stories. at the time. American involvement in the Vietnam War was drawing to a close and US President Richard Nixon had launched an intense bombing campaign in an attempt to end the conflict.”
In its afterlife, the Blue Marble connection to the environment has come to be prominent. “... a symbol of the early environmental movement. It is impossible to examine Blue Marble and separate it from the urgency of today's climate crisis."
The photo became Earth Day events’ banner image and part of the green movement's iconography. I haven’t been to such an event since the first one in 1970 when they closed down Fifth Avenue to traffic, turning it into a pedestrian mall. So I have not witnessed such displays.
Initially, it hit at something deeper and more visceral than ecology. Something more internal than external. And again, you turn to Cernan to put it into words, as he remembers looking back at Earth.
That sentiment has not been actualized of course. Though while we can’t all “get up there,” some might have felt as much, given their repeated exposure to the Blue Marble image. Or at least according to The Atlantic, that dubbed it “...an iconic image we have all seen hundreds of times, possibly thousands, and probably the most widely reproduced photograph in history. To which I might reply, really?
Until this anniversary, I don’t remember the last time I saw it. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen it on display in public, or honored in any expansive way. Yes, there have been commemorative stamps for planet Earth. But stamps come and go (no pun intended). And really, there are postage stamps in honor of everything. Even Pluto.
It hasn’t been in view in prominent places. Unless you call prominent places T-shirts, coffee mugs and mouse pads. And even those are only regularly available online. If I had my druthers (and what are druthers? And no one ever seems to have them), I’d run it up a flag pole and see who salutes!
On an international scale, I’d begin at the U.N. In place of a flag with a logo that looks as if it has Earth in the crosshairs (insert irony here), I’d opt for this. Over that.
And it would be visible at all international conferences, events. Olympic games, World Cup and the like. I'd keep the olive branches for the world stage, as the message is bigger than just one of ecology. Peace, anyone?
Domestically, I’d fly the Blue Marble flag from every school, public and government building. Such as is done now in Arcata California after the residents in that small city voted "Yes" on the measure in the recent election. Of course, not without controversy as many feel it should not fly above the American flag. (What isn't controversial? Mustard?). On an ironic note, Arcata, in Northern California, was among the cities hit with a massive earthquake most recently. Which will cause the locals to sit on this flagpole issue for a while.
Would such flag waving produce the slightest ripple in change of heart? Here or abroad? Or am I, born again to the marvel of this marble, speaking with the naivety, albeit persistence, of a Jehovah’s Witness? (And of course where would I get my druthers?).
At the very least, beyond admiring its stunning beauty, the very sight of it is Humbling. A reminder that each of us is but a single entity out of eight billion on a spinning orb. The wonder that we don't fall off. Or maybe metaphorically, we have? And that this crazy world's problems do amount to a whole lot more than a hill of beans (sorry, Bogey)? This is not a movie. It's real. And in full color. With all the nuance and grave uncertainty that that implies. In the meantime, it is something to behold.
Word of the Month
suzerain su·zer·ain /ˈso͞ozərən,ˈso͞ozəˌrān/ su·ze·rain
1. : a superior feudal lord to whom fealty is due : OVERLORD
2: a dominant state controlling the foreign relations of a vassal state but allowing it sovereign authority in its internal affairs
3: chieftain, big cheese, big wheel
(SUZARAIN: a strategy adventure video game. Released in 2020).
Etymology
French, from Middle French souserain, from sus up (from Latin sursum, from sub- up + versum -ward, from neuter of versus, past participle of vertere to turn) + -erain (as in soverain sovereign)
First known use
In 1807, in the meaning of the first definition
Used in a sentence
I wrote for Jerry Levin for a decade, my longest stint with any of my several suzerains.*
*As taken directly from Cross Bronx A Writing Life. See Book of the Month to follow.
Book of the Month
"Cross Bronx is Peter Quinn's one-of-a-kind account of his adventures as ad man, archivist, teacher, Wall Street messenger, court officer, political speechwriter, corporate scribe, and award-winning novelist.
From 1979 to 1985 Quinn worked as chief speechwriter for New York Governors Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo, helping craft Cuomo's landmark speech at the 1984 Democratic Convention and his address on religion and politics at Notre Dame University. Quinn then joined Time Inc. as chief speechwriter and retired as corporate editorial director for Time Warner. As eyewitness and participant, he survived elections, mega-mergers, and urban ruin. In Cross Bronx he provides his insider's view of high-powered politics and high-stakes corporate intrigue."
He has noted that, "With Cross Bronx, I've already heard from more readers than any other book... since my first novel came out 25 years ago." Which was Banished Children of Eve, A Novel of Civil War New York; a 1995 American Book Award winner.
A Personal Take
I love the writing style. The turn of a phrase...the succinctness...the wit, all in service of what Quinn writes about. Some of which I can relate to growing up in New York City and being a die-hard New Yorker. (Though I never sat on Babe Ruth’s lap as did Quinn. Not even Frankie Crosetti's. [Google him if you must]).
A real page turner. Will he get the girl? Where will his activism and commitments to his strong Irish heritage take him? Will he succeed in the face of the unreasonable demands of some suzerains he has had to answer to?
Upon completion, it sent me immediately to the net to buy a copy of that aforementioned "Banished Children of Eve..."
finito
Featuring...
muse-letter \’myüz-‘le-tər noun
1: a personal message, inspired by a muse of one's own creation, addressed to a person or organization, in the course of which, the sender becomes absorbed in thought, especially turning something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively.
2: a letter from a poet, or one who envisions oneself as such, in which he or she “muses” on that which is perceived to be news, or newsworthy, usually in some ironic or absurd way.
pre November 2018
Parts of the site under reconstruction
Through Time Descending
That light doth so transform a man’s whole bent
— Dante, Paradiso
:10
The Long Acre days of livery trades
When a single gas lamp lit the square
Died of a pen stroke in proclamation
An April day under pastoral skies.
Soon a beast below the street
Would arrive on the sparks of friction—
A scream of wheels—
"Forty-Second Street/Times Square." 1904.
Fireworks celebrated that first new year—
We were not yet so savvy as to drop the ball—
And we gathered in numbers that could rival
The likes of a Billy Sunday revival.
The Heatherbloom Petticoat Girl
would soon show us
A sign of things to come
What with her dress whipping up
In the eye of a neon storm.
A primal nerve touched,
We arrived in a rush
At the Ziegfeld Follies door.
The zeitgeist now being that
more is more!
:09
How the nights arrived in all their brilliance
On the incandescence of a million bulbs.
How the rooftops came alive with cabarets
and Castles in the air—
Irene and Vernon taught America to dance.
“Moon in June” were fresh words in romance.
And we could hear the music rising
in the tinkling of ivories
From down below on Tin Pan Alley—
Which turned Israel Beilin
into Irving Berlin—
Beckoning us all to come on along
To Alexander’s Ragtime Band.
It played the day “Beansie” Rosenthal was
gunned down.
It played the day Martin Beck built a Palace
It played the day came the First World War.
Cohan, while giving regards to Broadway,
Shot an arrow through the heart with his clarion call:
Send the word, send the word, over there.
And off went the “Doughboys”
in their pie-tin hats.
The Eighteenth Amendment stayed behind.
The rhapsody in booze born of Prohibition
Played in the speakeasies off
the “Great White Way.”
The ball descended
The Twenties roared.
:08
Of Broadway nights and a thousand plays
That moved in sprightly step across the stage,
Their plots long dead and buried
Though their song sheets remain
The work of young lions on their game.
Gershwin, Porter, Kern, Rodgers
and Hart.
Boxy black cars—
Sporting spares on their backs—
Pulled up at the curb before
the bubbling arch
Of the Warner Theater on opening night.
The Jazz Singer was all the talk of the town.
In the beginning was the word
From the almighty Jolson to God’s ear.
Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You ain’t heard nothing yet!
Arnold Rothstein, the reputed mastermind
Behind the Black Sox Scandal,
While leaving Lindy’s
on Election Day
Got shot up like a Roman candle.
He died soon after without singing a word.
By night, a new band of bulbs
Curling around Times Tower
Spelled Herbert Hoover with votes to spare.
Some in the crush threw fedoras in the air.
But every hat on every head
Would remain in place the following year.
The news that Tuesday, dark and drear.
:07
Say don’t you remember they called me Al,
It was Al all the time.
But amidst the Great Depression
Billy Minsky brought burlesque
Up to “The Main Stem” and respectability.
Pretty girls—once like a melody
Were now out of work
To the tune of a dime a dozen.
So they shed their feathers and the business flourished.
I wasn’t naked. I was completely covered
By a blue spot light.
Death by disobedience
Came to Prohibition
Smoking out hoods in pinstriped suits
From back rooms into a sky on the rocks.
Winchell might have called this...
The end of an error.
:06
The ball fell atop a cauldron coming
to a full boil.
A war even bigger than
The war to end all wars.
The crowd at the Tower was one of heavy heart
In the aftershock of “The Jap Attack.”
Colbert and Milland starred in Skylark down the block.
Harry James and his band, the stage show to follow.
Just another Sunday of war and Hollywood
and music.
Just another Sunday at the center of the earth
With our feet to the fire, bent on catching
our breath.
In the aftermath, to soothe our nerves
The Camel sign blew perfect smoke rings
Like silent shots across the bow.
It puffed away for well over two decades
'Til the Surgeon General marched into town.
Bobby Soxers in saddle shoes
Stormed the Paramount to have at Sinatra
In the days before Elvis in his Blue Suede Shoes.
On V-J Day a sailor taking liberties
Bends a nurse at the waist
forty-five degrees
Kissing her as full on the mouth as you please,
As she yields to this advance
in shock and awe.
The ball drops on
The Death of a Salesman…
:05
…and rises on a musical fable
Of Guys and Dolls
Of Runyan’s Times Square.
On the brink of The Beats no less.
Who when they got bored with
their poetry and polemics
Went up to the Pokerino and Playland arcades.
Kerouac and Ginsberg in an existential struggle
To get the balls to go their way.
Afterwards at the Automat,
Apple pie in amber light—
A few nickels in the slot—
Abracadabra!
A slice of America was yours.
James Dean with cigarette, coat and collar
alone in mid century
Haunting Times Square; Times Square haunting him.
The street shellacked with rain plays back his image;
A poster in the making of an icon crossing over.
:04
The lads from Liverpool
Landed in our living room.
They came by way of Broadway
Through a broadcast studio live.
The Paleolithic Age of Ed Sullivan.
Seventy-three million turned on their sets
As if to witness a miracle unfolding.
A second coming? Life found on Mars?
“Get a haircut,” the alpha male barks.
They would end up that fall
Down the block at the Paramount
Where Martin and Lewis
Once brought down the house.
But the ball in its descent begins to spiral
Enter stage left: the Peep Show King.
Who set about to retrofit
Those kinescope machines.
He aimed to show the unwashed masses
What was decreed to have been obscene.
They swallowed daily—60,000 quarters
These newly transformed kinky slots.
The Midnight Cowboy rode into town.
The Battery was up. The Bronx was down.
:03
The peep shows got bolder,
as did those
Acquainted with the night.
A Taxi Driver cruising “The Deuce”—
Or “Forty Deuce” as the pimps preferred—
Could see illicit trade on every corner.
Could see strings of white-hot movie marquees
Steaming with smut and salacious promise
While the men in blue stood by with both hands tied.
Though in this thicket of times so uncertain
The TKTS booth appeared
as if a mirage
To offer a ticket for the price of a song.
For the show must go on. And it did.
And Sardi’s continued to feed us
before and after.
A sanctuary where the plain folk
and celebrity
Might intertwine.
:02
The ballyhoo made a comeback on Broadway
On the heels of a Buzz Berkleyesque
42nd Street revival.
The rat-a-tat rhythms of our past aspirations—
The razzamatazz that cut across generations—
Renewed the sense that theater itself
Had a life embedded in the stone.
Yet, let us sound a low moan
On a tarnished trumpet
For those temples of stagecraft
Sacrificed to the wrecking ball.
From the Casino and the Knickerbocker in 1930
On through to the Mark Hellinger in 1989.
A dozen in all if you're keeping score.
Remember thou art dust;
And to dust thou shall return.
Though the good news now
Was that the ball was finally falling
On the mission of Redemption.
Though some sought to limit
The scope of redefinition.
A Ferris Wheel on Forty-second Street?
Never! Cried Koch in despair.
Kiss today goodbye,
A Chorus Line chimed in.
:01
Good Morning America and Global Village!
The media giants have opened up shop.
Where people gather at the window
To have a look at the goings on inside
To have the inside,
in turn
Look back out at them.
Welcome to a new crossroads
Born of that timeless imperative:
"Something must be done."
And something has.
A new arc in the parabola
of possibilities.
The good money has driven out the bad.
The sleazy dragon has been slain.
The Lion King is the new beast in town.
On a re-creation of the Serengeti
at the Disney restored.
New Amsterdam Theater.
New hands resounding in old applause.
Room has been made
For the ball to come to rest
Atop an extended family tree.
A metaphor made flesh
Each New Year’s Eve
With a clustering spirit
From in and out of town
Stopping in mid-stream
For the sheer joy of looking up...
the
ball all
aglow in
a slow
free
fall.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
muse-letter \’myüz-‘le-tər noun
1: a personal message, inspired by a muse of one's own creation, addressed to a person or organization, in the course of which, the sender becomes absorbed in thought, especially turning something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively.
2: a letter from a poet, or one who envisions oneself as such, in which he or she “muses” on that which is perceived to be news, or newsworthy, usually in some ironic or absurd way.
pre November 2018
Parts of the site under reconstruction
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