QUARANTINE BLOG # 542

September 23, 2021

One of the unfulfilled items on my bucket list is to ride a rocket into outer space.  Real outer space.  Not the Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson kind.  

From May 5, 1961, when Alan Shepard piloted Freedom 7 for America’s first manned space mission until STS-51-C, the first secret shuttle mission on January 24, 1985, (NASA did not provide pre-launch commentary to the public until nine minutes before liftoff) I listened to the launch live on the radio or watched it live on TV.  I think that certifies me as a space nerd.

I watched the launch and splash down of SpaceX’s Inspiration4.  Responding to questions on Twitter about the all-civilian flight of the Crew Dragon, Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, said he plans to upgrade the toilets for the next space-tourist flight.  Musk said, “We had some challenges with it this flight.”

I have no idea what the facilities were like on Crew Dragon, but I know that NASA has always had issues with human waste collection and disposal.  When Alan Shepard made his Freedom 7 flight, there were no provisions made since from launch to landing was to take 15 minutes.  The yummies up on carpet corridor failed to take into their planning (non-planning?) possible delays before launch, so Shepard peed in his spacesuit cotton undergarment.  For launches which followed there was a latex cuff attached to a plastic tube, valve, clamp and a collection bag – and sometimes the whole thing leaked.  The system “progressed” to bags taped to the astronauts butts.  Skylab, America’s first space station had a hole in the wall, hooked to a fan, and a baggie.

I could tell you more, but with Jared Isaacman putting up a minimum of $200 million for himself and is three crew mates, the fact that there were potty “challenges” is downright funny.

Russian-built waste and hygiene department on the International Space Station

👉  As promised, the story of Georgia’s state bird.  The brown thrasher became Georgia’s state bird in 1935 by a proclamation of the governor. 

Bill Kirby writes that on May 6, 1928, a meeting of state garden clubs planned to ask the Legislature to designate the brown thrasher as Georgia state bird.  There had been some support for the more colorful red-headed woodpecker as Georgia’s top bird, but many tree owners objected.

Forty-two years later in 1970 a new crop of lawmakers wanted to make the bobwhite quail Georgia’s official bird.  The attorney general researched the matter and found that the Legislature had never officially voted on the brown thrasher.  A compromise was reached.  After all, as state Rep. Dewey Rush, of Glennville, pointed out, “Nobody wants to eat the state bird.”

The brown thrasher was officially designated the state bird while the bobwhite quail officially became the state game bird.

👉  Georgia has made many things “official:”  fruit (peach), prepared food (grits), mammal (white-tailed deer), fish (large mouth bass), tree (live oak), vegetable (Vidalia sweet onion), butterfly (tiger swallowtail), and fossil (shark tooth).  Georgia’s official state insect is the honeybee. Although in the 1970s, Rep. Marvin Sorrells tried to make it the Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket.

👉  Georgia also has an official amphibian, the green tree frog.  In the fall of 2002 teachers of an elementary class at Armuchee Middle School near Rome, realized that Georgia did not have an official amphibian, and reasoned they had a chance to teach the kids how a bill up on Capitol Hill becomes a law. 

The class drew up the bill and it was presented to the Legislature in the winter of 2003, but what seemed to be a harmless piece of legislation kept getting bogged down.  There was concern that unleashing the tree-frog legislation would stir up the fight to bring back the 1956 state flag, the one that featured a Confederate battle flag.

The kids argued that they had chosen their nominee for a reason: “The green tree frog has porous skin and can’t live in a heavily polluted environment.  We hoped this would draw people’s attention to pollution.”

Finally on May 9, 2005, the green tree frog had a place among Georgia’s state symbols.  By then the kids were in the sixth grade and learned a lot more than the teachers thought they would about how state government works.

👉  The civic lesson will end for today with the Georgia official song, “Georgia on My Mind.”

It is commonly believed that Hoagy Carmichael wrote the song about his sister, Georgia.  But Carmichael wrote that saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer told him he should write a song about the state of Georgia, and jokingly volunteered the first two words, “Georgia, Georgia...” which Carmichael ended up using while working on the song with his roommate, Stuart Gorrell, who wrote the lyrics.

Bremen, Indiana, Gorrell’s home town had a teen hop (dance) club that picked “Georgia On My Mind” as their theme song.  He wrote to the local newspaper thanking them for the honor:

“‘Georgia On My Mind’ was composed more than a quarter of a century ago on a cold and stormy evening in 1930 in New York City.  Hoagy Carmichael and I, in a third floor apartment overlooking 52nd street, with cold feet and warm hearts, looked out the window and, not liking what we saw, turned our thoughts to the pleasant southland.  Thus was born a hauntingly sweet song.  My mother ... once asked a very penetrating question about the song ... ‘What is Georgia?  A girl – or state?’  What do you think?”

In 1979, the State of Georgia designated Ray Charles' version the official state song.

One more version of the song.  “Jimmy The C” is a 1977 animated short, nominated for an Academy Award for Animated Short Film.  The three-minute film features a clay-animated Jimmy Carter singing “Georgia On My Mind.”  He is accompanied by a choir of Mr. Peanut lookalikes.  Ray Charles’ rendition of the song is used on the soundtrack.

👉  Today’s close is from Praying with the Psalms, by Eugene H. Peterson.

“Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me!” (Psalm 35:1).

Sensitive Christians have times when they feel that the world is in a vast conspiracy to trip them up – to divert them from the pursuit of God and the way of faith.  At such times nothing less than God himself is adequate for deliverance.

Prayer: Dear God, when I feel that the world is against me and others are, either by their indifference or hostility, impediments in my way, grant that I may not sink into the quicksand of self-pity, but rather call out vigorously to you to be my Savior, in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

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