We Choose the Moon by Womanwarrior

Womanwarrior (aka Mary Chodan) wrote this to let us know about a fascinating website. I'm reprinting it, with her permission, from the SpockMcCoyHaven Yahoo List:

For those of you too young to remember the Moon landing of July 20, 1969, (and those of you who do remember and cherish the event), http://www.wechoosethemoon.org/ is going to recreate the sequence of events that fateful week 40 years ago. Instead of watching it on black and white television, you'll be able to follow it on the website, on Twitter and on email. I urge you to access it if possible. I've been to the site, and it's amazing!

Personally, I'm going to follow it as much as I can, because 40 years ago it was my reality! I was barely 18, just out of high school, and my beloved Star Trek had been canceled. But I still had the Moon landing--a real step into the final frontier! I had followed every launch since Mercury. And because my Dad worked on the space program at Downey Space Center and the Miraloma Road complex in Anaheim, I had actually seen returned space capsules and met real astronauts. This was the ultimate graduation present, the embodiment of what I had resonated to and embraced in Star Trek. For that week, the world watched as one as we dared the eagle's flight, and succeeded.

President Kennedy put it best on May 25, 1961: "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone and one which we intend to win."

I was nearly 11 years old, and I believed--and still believe--that the intention of his speech is possible. We have only to commit to a worthy goal--ending world hunger, ending illiteracy, or a thousand others--and it CAN happen. It can...IF. WE. WILL. COMMIT.

Thanks for listening!

Mary