Sunday, December 18, 2011

Slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God

Cleaning out the TiVo led me to a special on the 25th anniversary of the Challenger Disaster.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I was watching it in Miss Freeman’s fourth grade classroom, curled up with Una, her Fidelco Guide Dog In Training. (She fostered the puppies so they could get socialized.)  I’ll never forget the feel of the dog’s tongue as she licked the tears away. I became obsessed with it and I still have that scrapbook. It’s wicked thick, but it’s got articles from papers all over New England and from news magazines. It’s pretty comprehensive, actually. I even read the Rogers Commission report on the internet, and pieces of that were printed out and included.

Yeah. Obsessed is probably not a strong enough word… Kind of like my “interest” in the Salem Village (now Danvers) Witch Trials. (IT WAS NEVER ACTUALLY SALEM - except for their part in the political bullshit which triggered the ‘affliction’ in the girls. “Witch City” my ass.)

Anyhoo, so I turned on this special and suddenly realized it wasn’t CNN or anything national. Nope, it was from good ol’ WMUR, Channel 9, New Hampshire.

Nothing like watching basically an hour long memorial service to Christa McAuliffe, a teacher at Concord (NH) Nigh School.

I cried through the entire fucking thing, and then for an hour afterwards.

After all this time, after Columbia, after 9-11, after everything else I’ve lived through, the staying power of this one tragedy is astonishing.

Maybe it’s better that way…