Moon Dance

Forty years ago tonight, I went with my mother to our neighbor's house -- the Karl's -- to watch the moon landing on television. There, in a darkened living room (the lights had to be out so Myrtle Karl could take a picture of the TV when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Sea of Tranquility), we watched history unfold while eating ice cream sandwiches and drinking birch beer.

I think none of us in that little house in Pennsylvania quite appreciated the magnitude of what we were seeing. And to this day, nothing in the scientific world seems quite so wondrous. Challenger launches seem routine and it feels like it has been a very long time since we as a whole have all been amazed by progress.

Of course, some think it didn't happen. And there were others, like my grandfather, who were convinced that putting people on the moon was not a giant leap for mankind. Whenever we had a stretch of extreme weather -- lots of snow, rain or a long hot spell -- he would blame it on space exploration. "Things just haven't been right since they went to the moon."

Maybe July 20, 1969, was when global warming really began.