Lives In the Shadow of the Moon

"I wana promise you I am human,
I'd pinch myself to find out if it was really happening;
I walked on the Moon for three days of my life;
And now I am here to tell you about it - that's science fiction."
--Eugene Cernan, Apollo 10 & 17.

In the Shadow of the Moon (Australian release DVD packaging shown left) is a documentary about the men who went to the moon between 1968 and 1972. The film was shown in a limited theatrical release in the U.S. and Canada in late 2007 and also had a limited release in Australia in 2008.

The film is a series of interviews with ten of the twenty-four Apollo program astronauts, the notable exception is Neil Armstrong, interspersed with archival footage. The only speaking roles in the documentary are the astronauts themselves, although Neil Armstrong does appear in archival footage. The interviews are intimate; the astronauts speak directly to the camera. The power of this documentary is that I felt they were speaking to me alone.

The majority of the archival footage I have never seen and I found it spectacular, however, when describing scenes from the film to a friend he mentioned seeing some of the material before. The closest I've come before to that sense of awe is the photographs of Apollo presented in Michael Light's book Full Moon (published in 1999).

The film's title is a metaphor for the astronaut's lives defined by the shadow of their involvement and achievements in Apollo. The men, now in their seventies, reflect on what Apollo was to them at the time and what is to them now. For the first time I had a sense of these men as human beings rather than remote, larger than life figures. In the interviews one sees hints of the behind the scenes drama, and of the personal cost of Apollo to the men and their families.

This film makes the experiences of the astronauts accessible to us and in their own words. What made it different for me was the focus on the men, as they were then and as they are now, rather than a cavalcade of hardware being shot into space. But there is enough hardware shown to keep ardent technocrats happy. The film engaged me (code for I loved it) and I recommend it to anyone.

Australian release: Madman Entertainment (MMA 2791), 2 DVDs, $AUD 39.95. Contents: Disc 1: In the Shadow of the Moon; Disc 2: Behind the shadow (additional interview material); scoring Apollo (the music); interview with David Sington (director); original theatrical trailer.

The hard life of the ship Goya

The Goya had a vital part in my dad's story as the ship he journeyed to Australia in. Since identifying her and her role in my family history I wanted to know more about the ship, and her fate, in particular I wanted to locate a photograph. I searched high and low on the Internet, hoping to find something quickly, I did find some scraps of information and gleaned a few facts (e.g. at the time of my father's voyage the Goya was Norwegian owned and flagged), however, no photograph anywhere. Goya has a Wikipedia article, but alas, no picture. Much frustration, no satisfaction. I refined my search and googled again, finding nothing of use I gave up for the night ... fade to black.

A few days later, and at a holiday-time loose end, I tried again, this time reworking my search strategy and using Google's advanced search (forgot to do that first time around): better result, fewer hits, and more to the point. This led to a maritime history site, Ahoy-Mac's web log, and that led to a quick email to the site's author; his reply directing me to Australian migrant ships 1946-1977 by Peter Plowman. This I have done and was rewarded with a picture of the Goya (see below) and some additional information (see Plowman, 2006, page 36 if you are interested).


And her fate? Reading through Peter Plowman's book shows me that the Goya was a typical merchant/passenger ship -- not much glamour and a hard, hard life. The vessel started life in 1938 as the German cargo ship Kamerun; performed war service with the German navy until taken as spoils of war and allocated to the Norwegians; six changes of name; several owners; a migrant ship for only part of her life. Finally, in 1969, named Melina she was sold for the last time and was broken up for scrap at Kaohsiung, Taiwan. It appears that Goya's most famous voyage was her March-May 1951 journey to New Zealand. The 50th anniversary of that event was marked, in September 2001, by a celebratory dinner (see the New Zealand Government Internet site, beehive.govt.nz for details).

A last note, the Goya I discuss here is not to be confused with another German ship named Goya, which was sank with great loss of life by the Soviet navy in 1945.

The book's details: Australian migrant ships 1946-1977 / by Peter Plowman. Dural, N.S.W. : Rosenberg, 2006; ISBN: 9781 8770 5840 0; price $AUD 29.95.

Photographs rediscovered: Olympic Games, Melbourne, 1956

In my post for last Saturday (10 January) I mentioned discovering, among a box of photographs, two pictures of the opening or closing ceremonies at the 16th Olympic Games in Melbourne (taken either on 22 November or 8 December, 1956). Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing for certain that my father was the photographer, however, as I mentioned in the earlier post I have a vague childhood memory of him telling me once that he did go to the games.

The first picture shows the South African team, while the second shows another team passing in front of a police or military marching band; in the second shot the clock on the stand opposite gives the time as 3:55 pm. The two shots partially overlap indicating that they were taken from the same position in the stadium.

The original black and white pictures are 3 x 5 inches (7.7 x 12.7 cm) in size and are un-inscribed; click on the images to see enlarged versions.

Photographs rediscovered

While attempting to find some photographs for my mother I found a small box containing around 200 photos (and two postcards) of my dad and others, taken between about 1947 and the mid 1960's. There were also a few photographs taken from the early 1900's through to the 1970's of people, who must be Serbian relatives; many of earliest prints in this group are badly damaged. All the photographs are interesting, the ones in Greece are the first definite visual evidence of his time in Greece and appear to show him in the Greek army. Most of these are inscribed in Serbian and have dates; several have hand stamps with Greek text in red or blue ink.

Other photographs in the box where taken in Italy, and in Australia (Cooma and Lithgow?, New South Wales; Adelaide, South Australia). Some may have been shot in the Department of Immigration Reception and Training Centre, Bathurst. One of the most amazing finds is two photos of what may be the opening or closing ceremonies of the 1956 summer Olympiad in Melbourne. One of these shows the march past of the South African team. I have a very faint memory of my dad telling me that he did go to the Olympics.

Constant Reader its great to have re-discovered the photographs. Over time its my intention to scan all of the photos and find someone to translate the inscriptions. The selection of two photographs presented here are typical of the pre-Australian images. The first illustrated is of dad between two colleagues in what may be Greek army uniform, the photo is inscribed in Serbian and dated 10-II-47 (i.e. 10 February, 1947); the second is again of dad and a friend posing with a studio prop (dad is at the controls of the "plane"), inscribed and dated 10-IV-47 (i.e. 10 April 47).

Buyer beware: truth in print (and online)

I read voraciously, mainly in print form, and increasingly online and like to think I am a critical reader of what I have in front of me and can tell truth from fiction; now I am not so certain of my abilities in this regard. The Australian and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers today have reported on a hoax perpetrated on Keith Windschuttle, editor of the journal Quadrant (see A., p. 1 & SMH, p. 3, or go to the online editions).

Briefly, Quadrant (www.quadrant.org.au) under Windschuttle's editorship, published a hoax article, Scare campaigns and science reporting by Sharon Gould, in its January-February 2009 print and online issue. The newspapers report that Quadrant was the target of efforts designed to highlight the journal's right-leaning views. All was revealed by the online newsletter, Crikey (www.crikey.com.au/) yesterday. A blog by the anonymous hoaxer detailing the campaign to deceive Quadrant is to be found at the Cirkey blog site (http://blogs.crikey.com.au/crikey/files/2009/01/diary-of-a-hoax.html).

Windschuttle, in his rebuttal of the controversy, makes valid points:

"Any printed or online publication that accepts freelance contributions, as both Quadrant and Crikey do, is vulnerable to the same tactic. All such publications have an obligation to their readers to do a basic job of fact-checking, which Quadrant did in this case. The incidents, authors, publications and institutions in the article in question all checked out accurately. However, there is a point beyond which such sub-editing practices cannot go, especially when dealing with an author’s discussion of the detailed content of several books and their footnotes. There comes a point at which all publishers have to take their authors on trust." (Windschuttle, QED, 6/1/2009, http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2009/01/margaret-simons-and-an-apparent-hoax-on-quadrant).

That's reasonable, however, I would add that basic "fact-checking" should include the author's academic qualifications, and affiliations, referral by the editor to an appropriate expert for comment, particularly if the editor is not familiar with the content or the author. By doing this the editor reduces the risks of this sort of episode occurring. Much embarrassment to Mr. Windschuttle I think.

So, how does all of this effect me? The first thing is be honest: I have read the newspaper stories and then the offending article at Quadrant Online -- if I had read the article without forewarning I would not have picked it as fake. It mixes fact and fiction in a subject I have no expert knowledge in. I depend on a long chain of people being honest and doing their jobs. In spite of pretensions to be widely read I can't be expert in everything I read, yes, I can pick up obvious errors and distortions, and question what I read, however, I must rely on others to watch my back. When I agree with the arguments of the author of a piece I tend to be less critical and more forgiving of error, in short, when I trust I drop my guard. What I can do for myself is to be aware of my own biases and not be too bedazzled by something I like the look of on the page or screen.

The text of the hoax article, minus the footnotes, is available at Quadrant Online (www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2009/1-2/scare-campaigns-and-science-reporting).

Earth and Moon, part 2

On 16 December, 2008 I talked about the first picture of the Earth and Moon taken by Lunar Orbiter 1 during 1966. This morning while browsing the Astronomy Picture of the Day web site I found that APOD recently (18 November, 2008) featured a restored version of the same picture; its much better than the version I used to illustrate my earlier post. Go to APOD, this is the link http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081118.html; click on the image to enlarge.

The original image was restored by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project in November last year (www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/LOIRP/index.html). More information about the image, including a comparison of the original and restored versions, and historical documents are available there.

Image credit: © NASA/Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project, 2008.

Please donate blood!

This morning at a shopping centre near my parent's house I donated blood for the first time. The Paramatta mobile blood collection unit of the Australian Red Cross was there and donating blood was one of those things I always thought to do but had never quite found the time to do it, so I seized the moment.

A small crowd of people were patiently waiting outside the vehicle: some first timers like me, others experienced donors; all filling in the donor questionnaire. One fellow, a regular donor, usually donated as part of a group of 15 blokes and while he was waiting he had been trying to contact his "team" to get them to come in and give blood. After waiting for around 20 minutes I was called up and placed on a reclining couch and hooked up to the machinery. The nurse was pleasant and very expert - they go out of their way to make the process of donation as painless and comfortable as possible. Because I was new it took about an hour of my time. The 470 millilitres (20 for testing and 450 as the donation) I gave will help someone, somewhere, and now that I've taken the plunge I'll do it again.

Constant Reader, I hope, if you have the time and the inclination, you will donate blood too sometime; too many of us don't do it and it helps us all. I was fascinated by the process and the machinery (as usual), and by how painless it was. A small diary I was given at the mobile blood bank informed me that the Federal Government has declared 2009 "Year of the Blood Donor", additionally this year is the 80th anniversary of blood services in Australia.

If you want more information or want to make a booking to donate go to the Australian Red Cross' Donate Blood Service website (http://www.donateblood.com.au/).

Image: © Australian Red Cross, 2008.

Happy New Year and Welcome to the International Year of Astronomy

Happy new year, Constant Reader, I hope 2008 was kind to you and those close to you, and that 2009 is wonderful for you. As for me, I hope 2009 is much more gentle on my family. C.R., this morning finds me taking time from my hectic holiday schedule to write these lines to you: eating, drinking (and putting on weight), traveling, reading, watching cricket, and much music have been the order of the day. The absence of my late dad is keenly felt by us all here, nothing is said but he is much in our thoughts. No official resolutions by me for the new year.

Much of my newspaper reading of late is laced with stories about the imminent demise of the Australian cricketing empire and marveling over the haste of many in pronouncing the death. Although the body is sick and the spirit a bit confused, I think the body is not dead yet!

2009 has been declared by UNESCO and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) as the the International Year of Astronomy (IYA09). It marks the 400th anniversary of the first astronomical use of the newly invented telescope by the Italian scientist, Galileo Galilei.

The invention of the telescope is credited to Hans Lippershey. Although spectacles and lenses has been around since the 12th or 13th centuries no one is recorded as experimenting with two lenses placed one behind the other. Lippershey, so the story goes, saw that objects were brought closer when two lenses were placed in this configuration; he applied for a patent with the Dutch Republic some time before October 1608. News of the discovery soon spread across Europe leading to experiments by scientists to replicate and improve the instrument. Galileo was the most successful and most remembered by history.

If you are in Australia go to the IYA09 Australian node (www.astronomy2009.org.au/) for local events, if elsewhere go to the IYA09 global site (www.astronomy2009.org/).