02-03-03 - 5:12 p.m.

Last week was kind of a heavy one for multiple reasons. For one thing, my old roommate Jason's great-grandmother died Tuesday morning. He called me at about midnight that night to tell me. It had been coming for a while, so it wasn't too much of a surprise, and they had a few days to prepare themselves while her health deteriorated. She was 90-something. I haven't been sad about it really, but it is like a chapter in Jason's life has closed. He took care of his grandmother and great-grandmother when his grandmother had a stroke the Thanksgiving before last, and he's been living with or near them since then.

Then this weekend a bit of bitter irony. On Friday night I was on the phone telling my dad about this book I had just bought a week ago. It's called The Space Shuttle Operator's Manual. It's one of those things from my childhood I've had in mind to track down for ages. Well, I did, and now I have it. I'm not really (or at all, actually) a technical, mechanical kind of person, but I am interested to see what would go into designing and operating a spacecraft, if I ever wanted to be imaginative and design one.

Plus, I grew up with NASA and astronomy in the background. Space centers and planetariums etc. were frequent stops on our family vacations. And even though I liked Star Trek better than the clunky-looking stuff of real space exploration, I did (and still do) like the space program. NASA to me is like one of those acquaintances that you really like but just don't get around to visiting much. So the next morning when I walked into the living room to see the news that Columbia had broken up, it was like hearing that one of my friends' brothers had died.

It's too bad it takes things like that for society to pay attention to such deserving people. I'm guilty, too, of course. It was nice, though, to hear people in the media appreciating some of our less celebrated values--the scientific enterprise, the spirit of exploration, and most apparent this weekend, the courage needed to expand one's reach.