Well put, Kathy.

Thanks,

Russ
-------Original Message-------
From: Kestrel 
Sent: 02/01/03 03:45 PM
To: bardroom2{at}tantech.com
Subject: [BR-2] again...

> 
> I was on my way to the dog show, listening to NPR, finding the talk about
the Columbia shuttle interesting, and wondering why they were doing a
story
on the Columbia, then the talk shifted to the Challenger disaster, and
what
had happened, and it wasn't until I heard "... and it appears Columbia has
suffered a similar catastrophic event..." that I knew something had gone
not
only wrong, but horribly so. And then all I could do was listen - to the
inevitable speculation of a million things that could have caused it, to
the
idea that this was another terrorist act (absurd, ppl. We don't know what
it
was, but it wasn't that), to wondering how the crew on the space station
will get home, and to the words playing in my own head of "not again"
I've always wanted to get off the planet, but knew I never would. When
Christa McAuliff did -- just an average, normal person -- I cheered that
at
last just normal average ppl had the chance, and when I saw the Challenger
blow up I saw dreams blow up with it. But as we so often do -- the
collective mass picked itself up, dusted itself off, fixed what it could
and
the shuttles flew again while everyone held their breath. And they kept on
flying while ppl slowly learned to breathe again. And now another one is
gone. Pardon me if my mourning is unreasonable considering all that's
going
on inthe world, but space is still the only environment we're not killing
each other in, and it's always given me hope knowing ppl can work together
up there, even if they're killing each other down here... so I mourn the
loss of those who were working together for all of us, and were made up of
all of us, and doing things many (if not all) wanted to do and would never
be able to.

(just fyi... my folks are fine. They're way up in the panhandle far from
any
of the debris)

> 

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