39 Years Ago Today

Most people know about Apollo 11, the first moon landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. I remember the Apollo space era as a young boy and remember Apollo 11, as well as the drama of Apollo 13. But preceding these missions was Apollo 8, which may have been even a bigger milestone.

After years of testing the limits of space within earth’s orbit, Apollo 8 was the first manned spaceship to actually travel to the moon and inject itself into lunar orbit. With the moon 250,000 miles away, such a mission took an immense amount of planning. Getting to the vicinity of the moon was relatively simple, but getting the spacecraft into lunar orbit, and more importantly to get back out, was a marvel of ingenuity and planning. In reality, the spaceship was programmed to do much of this work.

Thirty-nine years ago today, the crew of Apollo 8 (Borman, Lovell, and Anders) successfully injected themselves into lunar orbit. For perhaps the biggest television audience ever, the crew reported their observations (orbiting only 60 miles from the surface of the moon). The crew had a special Christmas message for that audience:

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth; and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of the God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good.
And God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day,a nd the darkness He called Night.
And the evening and the morning were the first day . . .
And God called the firmament Heaven.
And the evening and the morning were the second day.
And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called He seas.
And God saw that it was good.

Interestingly, the crew of Apollo 8 learned more about the earth by visiting the moon. The most magnificent image was when the Earth rose from the horizon of the gray, dark moon (pictured at the top). And that is how 1968 went on Christmas Eve. One person sent their congratulations to the homeward bound astronauts, saying “Thank you Apollo 8. You saved 1968." After a turbulent year of assassinations, riots, and war, the astronauts of Apollo 8 were named Time Magazine's Men of Year.

I hope everyone will appreciate and cherish this 2007 Christmas season.

Sorry, I took an extra week of "recovery"; thus, the lateness of this post.

One of the nice things about being both a professor and a student is that after each semester you can start anew again. We get to clean the decks and prepare to start a new semester. Not all jobs are that way.

Coming out of college in the early 1980s I worked as an accountant for a grain company. In that job we had to "run the books" monthly, creating and reconciling a number of statements, including the profit and loss. While this process would clean out many issues, many others remained for the next month. Rarely, was there a time of starting anew, as legacy problems impacted new months and new projects. Now every year the auditors showed up and evenutally there would be decisions made on write-offs that did leave some feeling of starting somewhat fresh.

But not like teaching. I will be spending the next few weeks reflecting on what was done this past semester and since I will likely teach these courses again, starting fresh with new students and some ideas on how to improve.

And for the next several weeks, I will have more time to explore ideas and readings related to management, business, history, etc. I will try in my posts over this time period to share the more interesting parts of this study with you.

The Dark Side of the Moon

Last weekend Grace Irwin and our Executive Fellows staff hosted a reception for our Exec Fellows students with a special guest (pictured to the right with Grace and her son).

Just a quick update now that November is past -- my two daughters participating in NanoWrimo met their goals: Rachel logged 15, 559 words and Taylor logged approximately 65,000. My other daughter penned an essay on chocolate, claiming its calming, healthy effects. Yeah right (but she did have some nice support).

And finally, final assignments are due tonight in one class and due Thursday in another. So starting around Thursday I will be hunkering down to some serious grading and must come up for air by the following Tuesday. As the Apollo astronauts would say, at that time I will be returning from the dark side of the moon, ready to make my next blog entry.