I’m sure you’re dying to see the front door that has caused me so much anxiety. I’ve applied the first coat of tung oil to the threshold. The rest of the wood trim will be primed and painted white. Not sure yet if I’m going to gel stain the fiberglass door or paint it. I’m using an old tablecloth for a dropcloth. Hey, not all of the items I post can be exciting and entertaining!
The Old Guard has now truly come to an end. As Bismo said tonight, it’s perhaps fitting that Walter Cronkite passed away during the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s flight to the Moon. This video clip is from a 2007 CBS special celebrating Cronkite’s 90th birthday. The program was produced by Nancy Kramer, who Carol and I helped last year with some background material for an installment of 48 Hours|Mystery.
I also agreed with Bismo when he said that he never warmed up to Huntley and Brinkley as TV news anchormen. Many adults apparently preferred the team, but they were much too severe to appeal to kids. Cronkite was The Man. He narrated the audio book of his autobiography, “A Reporter’s Life”, and I listened to it twice, all the way through. It was abridged from his book, but I trusted Walter to leave in all the good stuff.
Cronkite is indelibly associated with not only NASA in the 60’s, but his live coverage of the assasination of JFK, and his landmark editorial asserting that the Vietnam War, in his opinion, could not be won. Cronkite’s credibility and judgment were held in such high esteem that LBJ realized his Presidency was doomed and he declined to seek re-election.
Another noteworthy accomplishment of Cronkite’s was that he helped introduce The Beatles to America. Here is a video clip from Nancy Kramer’s TV special that I first posted over a year ago.
© 2007 CBS Worldwide Inc.
[flv:/Video/2008/FEB/CronkiteBeatles.flv 440 330]
Lastly, I would like to point out that Walter Cronkite was a big fan of the comic strip Peanuts, and he wrote the introduction to volume 2 of The Complete Peanuts. Walter cried on air when John Kennedy died, he cried on camera again when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, he denounced the Vietnam War, he has a Beatles connection, and he loved Charlie Brown and Snoopy. I loved the man and everything he stood for.
It was forty years ago today that Apollo 11 lifted off. A month ago, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter left Earth for the Moon. Congratulations to Professor Harlan Spence of Boston University, whose CRaTER payload is on the LRO, studying the long-term effects of radiation on humans. (I doubt that one of those effects is to turn people into super heroes, like the cosmic rays that created the Fantastic Four!)
The LRO will drop to an orbit of 30 miles above the Moon and take pictures of the Apollo 11 landing site. I’m really looking forward to seeing those. I wonder if anything’s been moved? 😉
I’ve talked about Boston radio station WBCN numerous times, most recently about it being an early promoter of Monty Python in America. It was once one of America’s premier underground radio stations, and it will, for now, remain streaming on the Web, but it will soon be gone from the airwaves.
Happy 60th birthday to writer, broadcaster, dramatist, and (I’m guessing on this one) bon vivant, Brian Sibley!
Today has not been good. A small home improvement project — a new front door — has turned into a major undertaking, with the end result still unknown, and the (new) contractor is still here after nearly twelve hours. I wish my original contractor, the one who did the porch, hadn’t run into some personal trouble and left me high and dry on this job.
