Asian male, mids 20s, neat black hair, wearing a black wharf jacket and black corduroy cap. He stares blankly through fogged black framed glasses waiting for the adjustment to take place.
Stiff, Mary Roach (Norton)
Page 114:A crashed plane will usually tell its own story.
1986:
The A/V tech called the teacher over. It was starting. She gathered the group around the television, her arms folded tight over her chest, waiting for the countdown to start.
"Front row seat, kids! I’m getting goose bumps!” she said, surveying the students like they were her flock.
In Concord, New Hampshire a larger group of students, a whole school, likely the whole town, gathered around a television, too, watching one of their own prepare to launch into space.
From the impossible to the remarkable to —in a single, deafeningly quiet moment—the unimaginable, it was done.
A plume of smoke inflated across the sky like a parade balloon. The girl thought it looked like a caterpillar, its antennae reaching out, seeking. She prayed that once its folds had plumped up, its body extended in full, it would unveil something hopeful.
Why was this happening?
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Spadina streetcar, on at College through the back door.
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2 comments:
Powerful... I remember I was at my neighbour's house, a schoolteacher, she was giving me Hindi tutorials, and we heard about it. It was early in the evening, and I was falling asleep on my books, and then we saw it on the news.
It's a strange new world. Doing research I, of course, found the clip on YouTube and, preparing to experience it all over again, found myself looking at something through entirely new eyes. (Then it wouldn't stop and I had to Force Quit out of the program, suddenly quite angry that it was making its way into my home without my invitation.)
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