In the wake of columnist and Nixon speechwriter William Safire's death, here is the speech that he wrote for the President to read in the event that the Apollo 11 astronauts were stranded on the Moon.

It's surreal to read this today; earlier this morning, I found the lyrics to "The Green Hills of Earth" running through my head:

We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.

Strange to think what might have been, and, thankfully, was not.

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Does anyone know where to find MP3 or video of a decent filksinger performing "Green Hills of Earth"? The only ones I could find today were, frankly, terrible.

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The Three Things Meme

Snagged from A Whole Lot O' Folks

1. Post 3 things you've done in your lifetime that you don't think anybody else on your friends list has done.
   
2. See if anybody else responds with "I've done that." If they have, you need to add another!(2.b., 2.c., etc...)
   
3. Have your friends cut & paste this into their journal to see what unique things they've done in their life.

Oof. This would be a lot easier if eclipsegryph and wy weren't on my f-list; a lot of my best stories are Coast Guard tales. Still...

1. Visited a major landmark just because it appeared in a movie -- and then had natural phenomena provide better special effects than the movie did.*
   
2. Attended the funeral (or other major occasion) of one of your all-time favorite writers (or other celebrities) in an official or invited capacity.**
   
3. Gone from being a child-free bachelor to a grandfather less than two years.

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* Devil's Tower, Wyoming: lightning storm. The year after Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out, no less!
** I buried Robert A. Heinlein.

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thebitterguy asked his readers, "Tell me a story that involves dropping a celebrity's name.  Even a minor one; like, award winning fanfic writer counts."

( Here's mine. )