Mark’s Musings – July 17, 2019
Mark Fortune
Are you prepared for a hot and humid latter part of the week? The predictions are for 90 degree days from Wednesday on with the normal pop up thunderstorms. When you wake up in the morning and it is already 75 degrees you know it is going to be a very hot day.
The fairgrounds will be a busy place this weekend with events on Friday and Saturday evening. The always popular rough truck is on Saturday night and a new event takes place on Friday night. It will be a lot of fun for the participants and the crowd. Probably not so much for the vehicles.
Speaking of vehicles this past weekend I hope you had a chance to enjoy the CCAPA annual tractor show at the fairgrounds where lovingly restored machines of yesteryear basked in their glory days gone by as tractors in bright hues of red, green, orange and blue entertained the youngsters and older folks alike.
Kudos to the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team for capturing the World Cup again! And in a move meant to promote gender equality with regard to pay, Proctor & Gamble is donating $529,000 to the team to get the women’s wages to the level of the men. Nice move P&G!
Each of the 23 players will receive $23,000 – and Proctor & Gamble ran a full page ad in the Sunday New York Times announcing the move with Secret deodorant the sponsor.
July 20, 1969. Where were you? It is one of those days in history that, depending on your age, you can recall with some clarity where you were and what you were doing. As less and less people of our nation can recall where they were on December 7, when they heard the news about Pearl Harbor, there are still millions of us who remember the moon landing of 50 years ago.
I was at Grandpa and Grandma Fortune’s house in Roscoe – that is Thelma and Bob or to some, “Diny”. That is another story. And yes, the television showed the same grainy black and white that we have seen hundreds, if not thousands of times. But it was still a defining moment in history for this nine year old kid and a day that seemed to provide the gifts for birthdays and Christmas for several years. Apollo model moon rockets, coloring books – yes, with the 64 pack of Crayola crayons – at Christmas time gave this youngster many hours of entertainment. It would be cool to have some of those things now but we typically do not think of that when mom says “clean up your room”.
But it was a glorious day for our nation nonetheless and one that vaulted Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins into the history books. It would be interesting to give a quiz and see how many Americans can name all three of the Apollo 11 astronauts – instead of just the two that walked on the moon. Did you know that the Saturn V rocket is still the most powerful ever built? At least it is right now. But it won’t be at the end of this year if all goes well for NASA as the folks in white coats and pencil protectors (that’s how I imagine them) continue working on the largest and most powerful – and most expensive – rocket ever in their facility in New Orleans. It’s called the Space Launch System or SLS. Check it out.
Category: Mark's Musings, Opinion
