Neil Armstrong

Interesting coincidence. Today I finished reading "First Man," the new biography of Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon. One small step, and all that. So, from my "To Read" pile, I picked up "A Crack in the Edge of the World," a book about the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.

Now, the coincidence is that the earthquake book opens up with the idea that viewing the Earth from the Moon at the end of the 1960's helped to understand the Earth as a complete system, and the author uses the idea of Neil Armstrong standing on the Moon looking at the Earth as his starting point for his literary metaphor.

So, a neat coincidence.

For those of you who don't know me well, one of my interests is reading about the history of the space program, so when word of an authorized biography of Armstrong being published came to my ears, I knew that I'd be reading the book. And I was not disappointed.

The book gave a truly detailed look at Armstrong's life, from his youth and family history, to the modern days. Armstrong has always seen his accomplishment of being the first man on the Moon in the context of the history of aviation and spaceflight, and the book does a good job of providing that context to the reader in an interesting, compelling manner. We read of Armstrong's first lessons in flight, to his days as an aviator during the Korean War, his work as a test pilot in the 50's flying, among others, the X-15 rocket powered plane, to his days as an astronaut and afterwards.

To most readers familiar with Armstrong the astronaut, the beginning chapters may be a bit much for some, but I found them quite interesting, as it was a world I didn't really know much about. Of course, the meat of the book was his NASA days, with his post-Moon landing life covering the last 15% or so of the book.

Through it all, Armstrong comes off as a focused, unassuming, intelligent individual, who also did not necessarily think about the "human" aspects of his flight, or if he did, was not comfortable sharing those thoughts. The book certainly isn't an expose of the inner man, but neither does it shy away from the less easy to excuse aspects of his personality. A worthy read, whether you're interested in the space program or not.

I'll keep you all up to date on my new reading, and how it's progressing. I like finding non-fiction books that are on a topic I find interesting, but that I don't really know much about. I know the basics of the story of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake (it was big), but other than that, not much.

Tonight was the Dean of the College area holiday party. I generally don't really enjoy these type of events, not because I don't like the people (I do, I enjoy the company of my co-workers and others in the Dean of the College area), but that I prefer smaller social settings over ones like tonight's, that had at least 100 people attending. I ended up focusing on talking to my immediate co-workers, and a few others. I probably should get more comfortable in these situations, but I'm also happy to find the smaller conversations when I can.

For me, the smaller gatherings are those in the 10-20 person range. Any larger than that, and it tends to get excessive in my book. But, I'm am comfortable talking in front of large groups, and don't mind some of those settings. I think it's also the cramped nature of when at parties, you're all pressed together with no space to move. Perhaps I'm a bit claustrophobic? I never really thought of that before.

This has been a longer blog than I expected, so I close with my Now Playing note:

NP: John Lennon, Luck of the Irish (Live)