I moved my studio last month. I’m excited now to be sharing a space with four great authors and illustrators. The crew here includes — or will include, once everyone (else) gets back from summer vacations and time away and so on — Sophie Blackall, John Bemelmans Marciano, John Rocco, and Sergio Ruzzier. We’re in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, near the Gowanus Canal, a fabled strip of water, infamous for the sludge and worse that industry has poured into it over the years. Thomas Wolfe wrote:
“And what is that you smell?
Oh, that!...It is the old Gowanus Canal, and that aroma you speak of is nothing but the huge symphonic stink of it, cunningly compacted of unnumbered separate putrefactions. It is interesting sometimes to try to count them. There is in it not only the noisome stenches of a stagnant sewer, but also the smells of melted glue, burned rubber, and smoldering rags, the odors of a boneyard horse, long dead, the incense of putrefying offal, the fragrance of deceased, decaying cats, old tomatoes, rotten cabbage, and prehistoric eggs.”
...is, well, you know what. The good news, for me, at least, is that I do now finally see light at the end of the tunnel, the tunnel that is my next book as author/illustrator. (Like Moonshot, the new book centers on long-distance travel in the year of ’69.) There’s a lot of tunnel left still, no doubt — someday I’ll blog about what an unexpectedly complicated book this has been to make — but the steam is up!
Today, July 26, 2011, marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 15, flown by Commander David Ross, Command Module Pilot Alfred Worden, and Lunar Module Pilot James Irwin.
Earlier this year I had the chance to hear Dave Scott speak about his trip, the fourth manned landing on the moon. Scott was modest and accessible, but listening to him was nevertheless a reminder of the intelligence, education, nerve, and skill that went into these missions. Scott led the first of the J missions — missions that gave the astronauts improved lunar modules, improved backpacks, Boeing-built lunar rovers, more challenging landing sites, more time for exploration, and more ambitious science to perform. (It’s an irony of Apollo is that even as funding cuts had the end of the program in sight, the missions and their ambitions were expanding.)
Once they landed their Lunar Module Falcon, Scott and Irwin settled in for almost three full days on the moon. They would spend over eighteen and a half hours of that time outside their LM, walking (and driving) the lunar surface. (Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were on the moon for less than a day, and able to spend only two and half hours on the surface.) Scott and Irwin worked in a dramatic landscape: along the edges of both the Apennine Mountains and Hadley Rille, a deep channel in the moon's surface. The men deployed and performed scientific experiments, took photographs, and collected lunar samples. The most famous of the samples came to be known as the “Genesis Rock” because of its incredible age — 4.5 billion years.
Here is one of the more modest but also more accessible experiments that Dave Ross performed on the moon:
Meanwhile, in lunar orbit the Command Module, Al Worden had his own work to do. His duties included the first “deep space” spacewalk — a trip out the hatch to retrieve film and check equipment on the command and service module. Imagine being alone in lunar orbit while your crew mates are down on the moon, and now imagine being alone in lunar orbit, outside. You can see video of Worden’s EVA on his website, here.
You can also find on that same page of Worden’s website this account of how the Apollo 15 mission patch was designed:
“The mission patch for Apollo 15 was basically designed by the Italian dress designer, Emilio Pucci. We had as a crew evaluated some 540 different designs for our crew patch. They appeared either too mechanical or to have nothing to do with the flight, so finally, through a mutual friend, we asked Pucci if he would help us with the design. Now, Pucci, as I best recall, was an aeronautical engineer and had a good feeling for flight. With his artistic nature, we felt that he would be very helpful in the patch design. He did send us a design which was basically the same as the patch we eventually used, however the colors were in the normal Pucci blues, purples, and greens. We took his design, changed it from a square to a circular patch, made it red, white and blue, and put a lunar background behind the three stylized birds that were the major Pucci contribution.”
First, this makes me wonder who was the go-between between the NASA astronauts and the Italian dress designer. Second, this makes me, and I type this respectfully, just a little glad that Worden became a test pilot and then an astronaut, and not an art director.
Next: Apollo 16
Sources: A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts, by Andrew Chaikin; http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo15.html; http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/AS15/a15landsite.htm; http://www.emiliopucci.com/Index.aspx
Sandra Jordan and I had the pleasure of speaking about making Ballet for Martha at the Nantucket Atheneum this weekend — a beautiful building and institution, with a wonderful staff. Thank you to Maggie Sullivan, Molly Anderson, Bess Clarke and everyone at the Atheneum for the invitation and for making the visit possible.
While in Nantucket Sandra and I also heard of a humpback whale, deceased at sea, washed up on the south side of the island. A bookseller from Mitchell’s Book Corner drove us out to have a look. Thank you, Anne. We had a look, and more. When we were downwind from the late whale, we knew it.
More about the Atheneum here, Mitchell’s here, and whale here.
Despite it taking an honest thirteen hours to get there (Delta! LaGuardia! Fog!) I had a great time in New Orleans this past weekend at the American Library Association Annual Conference. Thank you to those who gave reason to make the trip, to Caroline Ward for hosting a panel that I enjoyed being a part of (a little bit more on that via Shelf Awareness, here), and to this year’s Robert F. Sibert Committee for a Sibert Honor for Ballet for Martha. Thanks to Neal Porter and everyone at Roaring Brook and Macmillan for bringing me down and for lodging and feed, and to Simon & Schuster for signing time and a ticket to this year’s Newbery/Caldecott banquet. Between seeing old and new friends, and getting a glimpse of the remarkable books people are making, and trying to get just a little bit of a feel for the city, the days were overfull, in the best way.
A Robert F. Sibert Honor Book and a New York Times 10 Best Illustrated Books of the Year selection. “Breathtaking, thrilling and perfect.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
