Gray Lady, Gray Melon

This (unretouched) image from today’s paper is the sort of thing I’d like to see more of in The New York Times.

(Copyeditors: The New York Times? The New York Times? The New York Times? Eh?)

Return of the Hinky-Pink

While Moonshot has been burning along here with a fire - up - another - carafe - of - the - strong - stuff - and - give - me - every - waking - moment urgency, off out of sight The Hinky-Pink has gone and turned into a bona fide book. It’s good to have this reminder that the contained chaos and labor that goes on here does indeed eventually resolve itself into book form, and it’s good to see The Hinky-Pink on its own terms, too. I’m pleased with the look of the book, and the nice small size of it, and it perhaps goes without saying that Megan McDonald’s text still feels as funny and spry as it did the first time I laid eyes on it, almost five years (!) ago.

Therefore, even though the book doesn’t come out until September, I say now: Avanti, Hinky-Pink!

The Easter Moon

Easter, as you may know, or not know, or, like me, vaguely recollect, is celebrated not on a fixed date but on the Sunday on or following the first full moon after the vernal equinox. (Got it?) Never one to miss a moon connection these days, here is a quick and not very good snapshot of said full satellite rising over Jamaica Plain, MA, in the early evening of Friday the 21st. I say not very good because the detail and tones of the moon’s face are lost. Still, the overall impression is not so far off; the sky was that deep electric blue, and the moon came up bright as a spotlight, with a warm tint to its color, beaming like a second sun. It was something to see.

Sorry, Bob

One of the joys of teaching a children’s book writing and illustrating class is the chance to share the dark but wise writing advice, “Murder your darlings.” (Until I Googled it just now to check it, I had always thought that the line came from Orwell, but apparently I’ve been wrong. That’s another story, though.) Anyway, my translation of that phrase has always been: Don’t let pet moments get in the way of the story you really want to tell. It’s a line that’s always more fun to deploy than accept, but at the last minute here I took the bitter pill myself and decided that an LP of Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline (his Spring 1969 release) didn’t really belong in this drawing of a family watching the first moon landing, and I took it out. (I had already taken out the lava lamp. The George Nelson ball clock stayed.) And now? I kind of miss Bob.

Others’ stories of darlings murdered, happily or with regret, are welcome here, if you’ve got the material and the itch to procrastinate.

You don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?

Here’s a quick note wishing No Country For Old Men good luck at the Oscars tonight, if only because it is, to my knowledge, the only Best Picture nominee ever to mention my hometown. I don’t remember seeing the fellow behind the counter around while I was growing up but he seems a man of his word so I’ll assume we just missed each other.

A longer post would extrapolate on the funhouse mirror parallels between the character of Anton Chigurh and Leonard Smalls, a.k.a. the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse, from an earlier Coen Brothers favorite, Raising Arizona. But that’s for later. I’m on deadline now.

More Moon

How about that eclipse last night, eh? When the Moon was fully in Earth’s shadow and had that pale red glow, it looked to me somehow lit from within, and eggshell thin—a strange and wonderful effect.

More breaking news on the Moon in this short NASA article about exploration being conducted now (right now) by both Japanese and Chinese satellites. While interesting in its own right, the piece also has the benefit of using the words "China" and "Moon" in the same sentence, which always brings to mind one of the my favorite exchanges from the Apollo 11 transcripts. The following is from a few days into the mission, between Mission Control in Houston and Buzz Aldrin on his way to the Moon:

Mission Control:
“Roger. Among the large headlines concerning Apollo this morning, there's one asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient legend says a beautiful Chinese girl called Chang-o has been living there for 4000 years. It seems she was banished to the Moon because she stole the pill of immortality from her husband. You might also look for her companion, a large Chinese rabbit, who is easy to spot since he is always standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree. The name of the rabbit is not reported.”

Buzz Aldrin:
“Okay. We'll keep a close eye out for the bunny girl.”

The bunny girl! If they ever met up with her, they never mentioned it.

Red moon rising

An increased awareness of all things lunar being one of the byproducts of the Moonshot, here, then, for your reading pleasure, is information about tonight (Wednesday) night’s lunar eclipse. Last one till December, 2010! Crack out the binoculars, especially if you've never looked at the Moon magnified. Even a modest pair of binoculars will reveal plains, mountains, and shadows dipping into craters. That's a real place, that Moon up there.