(There goes the neighborhood)
(John Amato: I thought it would be fun to hear actual news reports of the Moon Walk from 1969. Gordon's collection of historical events is truly amazing. Promoted from Newstalgia)
I suppose if you aren't aware we're sitting in the middle of the 40th anniversary of our landing on the Moon, you are probably living in an isolation tank, or unconscious - or both.
So anything I have to add to this mix might be construed as redundant.
That said, it's difficult not to sift through some 80 hours of sound recordings from the day and not get a little choked up, remembering all the anticipation and nail biting that went on.
You have to remember that, prior to this day in 1969, everyone's concept of the moon was this large ball in the sky that people wrote songs about. Funny, they don't write those songs any more. The romance of the great unknown has been popped, as it were. Romance got a big footprint on it.
Only a year earlier the best it became was an orbit around the moon with Apollo 8, with still the wistful romance very much in place.
From July 20th on, the world and our place in the universe changed, The Great Mysterious had been broken and there was no turning back.
Today there is talk of going to Mars - and it's very possible, but as there was in 1969, an apprehension. We don't know for sure if it will happen or if it will be successful or what the Astronauts will find once they get there.
The fears we have about Mars today are the same as they were in consideration of the Moon then.
The Unknown will never change and neither will our curiosity about it.
It's one of the upshots of being human. We forget that a lot.
The sounds I've included are excerpts from the Moon landing, via NASA, ABC News and CBS News. The breathless exhilaration was the common denominator with all of them. Of course, there is Walter Cronkite towards the end of the clip. And then there is the Moonwalk.
All good fun for your average day in 1969.
