Mockingbird Hill Cottage

This is where we are today. Here, and in the den. The A/C has been on since 7 am. It’s so humid, you can cut the air with a knife. Don has already been out to water the plants and we’ll do it again later in the day. Today and tomorrow have been given an “Excessive Heat Warning.”

So, we’ll be staying indoors. No portraits for Don, which is frustrating for him as that’s two days lost. But heck, no one is going to want their picture taken in this weather! I sure wouldn’t.

I’m grateful for air conditioning, books to read, movies to watch, and shelter.

By the way, I went out on the porch in the dusk yesterday to water a few potted plants that had sagged from the heat. Earlier in the day, I had checked the nest in the clematis and the three eggs were there but no mama. I was starting to think they had been abandoned. As I walked around the porch, I saw a sparrow hop out of the top of the clematis and drop to the ground. So, the eggs are still viable and mama and papa are tending to them. Good news!

If you’re old enough to remember, where were you on this day 50 years ago, the day of the first walk on the Moon?

I was performing (what else is new?) out at a place called Camp Dearborn. It was a huge camp owned by the City of Dearborn, but at a distance from the city, where residents could spend a week or two camping with their families. Not unlike the Yogi Bear Campsites that are just down the road from us – lots of activities for families and kids, that kind of thing. My family never camped there – too many people, too much noise. My parents preferred to go ‘up north’ and camp in Northern Michigan, which was beautiful, but boring for me as a young kid. As you would expect, my head was buried in a book much of the time.

Back to why I was with a gang of teenagers at Camp Dearborn: We were doing a summer musical, something I did every summer when I was in junior and senior high school, so the city asked us to perform scenes from it that night. We knew the walk on the Moon was happening and, oddly enough, there were televisions in various parts of the facility – outdoor televisions with small screens that were on some sort of pole accompanied by a few benches. At the point when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were to set foot on the Moon, we all ran over to a television set to witness it. It was not unlike standing outside the window of a department store watching a small television set in the midst of a large crowd of people. It didn’t have the intimacy of watching in your living room, but it did have the energy and collective awe of a crowd of people who couldn’t believe what they were seeing, who cheered as Neil Armstrong said “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

I remember it pretty vividly.

50 years ago! Amazing.

Happy Saturday.