Space Sticks and Tang

40 years ago today, Apollo 11 launched into space. The Apollo program and gardening are the two areas where my mother and I truly connect. We were living in Houston and I was a toddler at the time of the Apollo program. Everyone in our neighborhood was involved in the space program. Everyone's dad worked for NASA, Boeing, Northrup-Grumman. I remember once sitting on my father's shoulders at a neighborhood block party to welcome home astronauts. I attended Edward White Memorial Elementary School and it was years later that I realized Ed White died on the launch pad of Apollo 1 and why my elementary school had such a long name. My husband and I toured Kennedy Space Center one time and loved it - I got extremely emotional standing on the Apollo 1 launch pad that has never been used. I went back this past December - back to Seabrook, Kemah, Galvaston Bay, Clear Lake City. I took a drive down Saturn Lane and also a drive down memories I didn't realize were so strong. I was pulled strongly towards an internship that would afford the opportunity to do nutrition research at Johnson Space Center. I still find that a jet engine screaming down a runway moves my soul like no other sound. The TV image of liftoff makes me cry everytime. I stayed home the day John Glenn returned to space and jumped up and down screaming during countdown. I was standing in the Louvre when Challenger went down and felt like I had just be punched - hard. I was home when Columbia went down and both my husband and I could not stop crying. As a toddler, I was a space child. That still resonates somewhere in my core.

As a small child I drank Tang and ate Space Sticks. Tang became mainstream. I drank it hot at summer camp and poured the powder down my throat on the starting blocks of swim meets as an age-grouper swimmer. My grandmother made Tang Ice Tea: sometimes when I get extremely lonely, I still crave it. Space Sticks were something else. We LOVED them. I cannot tell you what is in them. But I would spend time at the Shepherds house and all the kids would fight over the last space stick in the box. Today I found them on Amazon (of course I did! Where else would they be?!) And while I am darkly fascinated, terrified, and frankly - disturbed, by a space stick, I may just have to get myself a stick or two and celebrate.

40 years ago today - someone of about my current age, climbed on top of one unimaginably huge rocket and dared to go to the moon. They went with nothing by a slide-rule, bad ice cream, Tang, and a box of space sticks. They went with the dedication and support of the brightest minds on earth. They went with the hope and inspiration of the entire world. Just how cool is that?

Good Food

Last night we had a picnic in the park by Lake Washington. In a thunderstorm. And downpour. With Shakespeare. Yes, really. It was perfect! Friends from Oregon were up and had spent the day watching baseball so we met them and other friends at Luther Burbank Park. We grilled burgers in the rain and then gathered around one of the two tables under the shelter for burgers (man food), tomato/basil/mozzarella/violet salad (girl food), watermelon (kid food), and raspberry sorbet (pretty food). We learned that the Shakespeare in the Park had been cancelled due to lightening so a group decided to picnic with their Richard the 3 library books. So we shared the shelter. We gave them watermelon and they did readings of Shakespeare - while waving the watermelon knife, wine bottles, and cookie dough! Huddling under blankets with long time friends and their families watching the lightening and counting to thunderclaps while laughing hysterically at the antics of our collective kids and the thespians made for the perfect meal - even if it was slightly damp and a meal fit for a warm summer night and not quite the stormy night we had.

All food shared with friends and strangers is good food. Our meal was heavy on the fruits, herbs, and laughter making it great food.


I had spent the weekend taking an Ayurveda intensive. There may be a post on that later. The part of the class that I loved was the premise in ayurveda that:
Our souls are guests in our bodies so treat your body well; be a gracious houseguest.

Eating well is how we thank our bodies for providing housing for our soul.

Having satisfaction and happiness is the goal of life. Not things mind you - happiness. Happiness like picnics in the park during thunderstorms with lifelong friends and random strangers.

Biking to Visit the Angels

Yesterday I biked with friends and my guy up Blewett Pass. Well, sortof. The 4 ladies biked 70 miles from Lake Wenatchee up Blewett and back down to Leavenworth. My guy joined in at Leavenworth. I took one look at the thermometer at 8:30 in the morning and thought "uh oh". So I did water patrol up the first 10 miles of Blewett Pass and then joined the fun on the old highway road and did the last 7-10 miles UP. Good thing too - we went through 15 liters of supplemental water in the 98 degree weather. Somewhere along the line I got hooked on biking UP hills. I hate, with a passion, descents. They scare me and I suck at descents. But climbing, call me crazy, I think is meditative. Your heart pounds, all you can hear is your own breathing and it sortof hurts but then the pain fades and all you hear is your breathing and the birds and you feel the sensation of the cadence and where exactly your feet are in the pedal stroke. There is a rhythm to it that is rewarding. Yesterday on the quiet road in the forest with the heat radiating off the potholed pavement I thought I had died and gone to heaven; just me, 5 friends and a bike going UP for hundreds and hundreds of feet. Oh - the down part down all the curves (don't go off the road - nothing but air) was frightening - but when I stopped to unclench my hands from the brakes the views about broke my heart they were so beautiful.

Dinner was grilled salmon, veggies, fruit, and champagne overlooking Lake Wenatchee - wonderful.