We choose to go to the moon
I was reading about the moon landing, again. I get very emotional about the moon landing. I went to a documentary about it in the cinema a few years ago with a baby and his mother and I cried. And I’ll keep on crying about the moon. All that work to do something utterly fantastic.
When people talk about using the moon for mineral resources, when science fiction has people frothing about working on the moon in horribly grim pneumatic filtered air and recycled water circumstances, I think that’s not the point of the moon. Those kind of people can’t love the moon, they don’t have it in them, they don’t look up at the moon and think wow. The moon is a witch, pulling on tides and minds. Wolves howl at it. The movie Moonstruck. Walking in a park near the sea in the dark under the moon? That can make one believe in destiny. Who knows the truth about heaven, but while we’re down here we have the moon.
When they sent the lads up to the moon, various world leaders were invited to send messages alongside. Eamon de Valera, then the President of Ireland, signed off on this: "May God grant that the skill and courage which have enabled man to alight upon the Moon will enable him, also, to secure peace and happiness upon the Earth and avoid the danger of self-destruction.” The then Brazilian President wrote: “… I pray God that this brilliant achievement of science remain always at the service of peace and of mankind." Canada’s Prime Minister (the first) Trudeau said: "Man has reached out and touched the tranquil moon. Puisse ce haut fait permettre a l'homme de redecouvrir la terre et d'y trouver la paix. (May that high accomplishment allow man to rediscover the Earth and find peace.)"
Maybe if the moon has ‘a point’, it’s that from way up there you can look down on our blue and green earth and know that that’s it. We are living in a time where world leaders and various politicians think war is the goal. They have been there before, they will be here again. They are always utterly wrong. They are type of people who look up at the moon and feel nothing worth saying. They don’t deserve the moon, but the rest of us do.
Recommendations
I recommend this article on the Irish government’s careless treatment of our long-established neutrality. Thank you to all the academics standing up for peace. Shame on every member of the establishment and the media who is warmongering. All war brings is death and pain. That is what the word means. To to even look at it is to invite smoke.
Senator Tom Clonan is a strong voice on the value of Irish neutrality - well worth following and vocally supporting his contributions. Tom Clonan website
(Content warning: death, graphic details of violence) Read Garry McGillion’s testimony at the Omagh Bombing Inquiry from a few weeks ago in a news report in the Irish Times.
Paul Doran had a letter in the Irish Times in early March: “The ongoing clamour in this writer’s humble opinion for war and its preparations bring great sadness to myself and my family. If anyone wants a reminder as to what war looks like then they should re-listen to the Drivetime reports from RTÉ recently on the Omagh bombing and its effects on the people there today. I witnessed, like many of my northern brethren, the horrible and sickening reports of death and destruction for more than three decades. We should all ask ourselves: would we want our children or grandchildren to participate in this destruction of life?”
Foclóir.ie: They were travelling by the light of the moon - bhí siad ag taisteal faoi sholas na gealaí.
(Content warning: sexual abuse) When the Alice Munro story first broke, Brandon Taylor wrote a newsletter that is maybe all you need to read about it. Since hearing it last week, I have been thinking a lot about this New Yorker podcast with Rachel Aviv discussing Munro and her husband’s abuse of her daughter. The detail about the biographer will make you physically pause the recording for a few moments. You may say ‘wow’ or ‘what a fucker’ - underused word. One thing about these sort of news stories is that I can’t listen to them objectively, not that one should, but being Irish and having been young when all the threads here were pulled into daylight does make me wonder at people’s capacity to be shocked. (I was raised not far from Sean Ross Abbey.) I’ve heard of many women who stayed with men who have harmed their children. Some because they convinced themselves they had no other choice, some because they wanted to.