Produced
by Ron Howard, Tom Hanks, and others.
Today
is the 45th
anniversary, to the day of the week, of one of the most vivid
memories of my childhood, and – although few really recognize it as
such, given how little fanfare it receives each year – one of the
most important events of the 20th
century, even of human history: When Neil Armstrong stepped off the
landing pad of the Apollo
11
Lunar Module Eagle
and planted his boot on the ground of another world, the Earth's
moon, mankind left his infancy and became a toddler in the
perspective of the universe. It's tragic that we barely followed up
on that event and, realistically, do not look like we will be taking any further steps any time soon, possibly not even within my lifetime. I hope I'm
wrong. I am grateful, however, that I did witness that event with my
own eyes, late in the evening of Sunday, 20 July 1969. [LINK]
For
my own celebration of this year's “Moon Landing Day,” I finally
started watching earlier in the week the HBO miniseries From
the Earth to the Moon.
In 1998, of course, as a recently minted Ph.D. struggling to secure
a tenure-track university position while cobbling together teaching
assignments at several different institutions in and around Baton
Rouge, I did not have HBO. I still don't, but I picked the DVD set
up a couple of years ago. I was actually under the misimpression
that From
the Earth to the Moon
was another product of collaboration between Tom Hanks and Steven
Spielberg, done after
Band
of Brothers
and The
Pacific.
It's obviously not, but it matters not. It is of similarly
outstanding quality, telling the story in a docudrama format, varying
the storytelling style and perspective in an interesting fashion from
episode to episode. I am particularly impressed by the special
effects, although I guess if I think about it by the late 1990s CGI
had indeed advanced very far. Honestly, they look entirely modern,
2010s-era quality, to me. My son says I don't have a very discerning eye, though.
Actually,
since I typically limit myself to an hour of “summer series”
watching, whether via Netflix or DVD, per day – working my way
through various series that I've either never seen or not seen in a
long time (I set aside my first viewing of HBO's Rome
since its initial airing, and for which I benefited from a generous
colleague who taped them for me then, after its first season in order
to take up with this) – I'm only a few episodes in at this point.
I'm hoping that this evening I can monopolize the TV and watch the
few episodes I need, back to back, to get to their depiction of
Apollo
11
at approximately the right time.
Cheers!
– and Ad
Astra!
