A series of long, non-gaming posts. Mostly to just document this extraordinary time.Part I is here.
Life in the Bunker
Continuing from last time– During the spring while the supply chain was stabilizing somewhat– at least it seemed like we weren’t likely to starve in the near term, much of everything else remained in a state of precariousness.
On the work front, management’s initial denialism from January and February was overtaken by the events of lockdown. I make the distinction here between leadership and management. We had plenty of the latter and scant little of the former.
Fortunately, when the lockdowns began rolling out county by county (and thereby potentially impacting our offices and all of the employees differently depending on where they lived), our former leader was recruited back to a temporary position of de facto leadership to help guide our organization through these existentially dangerous straits. A little demonstration of leadership in a crisis goes a long way. Particularly one that remained clear eyed, rooted in factual reality, capable of communicating and cognizant of the fact that human beings were involved in the process.
We found ourselves with a business, far from “essential,” with about two thirds of its employees unable to work. The pandemic and lockdown prevented all but the most rudimentary activities in our offices, and most couldn’t do their work remotely in any case. Temporary layoffs were the order of the day.
The rest of us were desperately trying to work for our customers whose lives and businesses were thrown into chaos as well. It wasn’t even clear how any of our customers were going to survive the disruption (and frankly, whether we were ever going to get paid, and thus whether we would survive in any recognizable form).
A series of long, non-gaming posts. Mostly to just document this extraordinary time.
The Gathering Gloom
It was just about a one year ago when the world here changed. The COVID stay-at-home/shelter-in-place, call it what you will measures began rolling out just about one year ago now, catching many flat footed.
I live and work in Northern California just outside the Bay Area. About a year ago, the Bay Area counties announced their lockdown and surrounding areas were rapidly moving in that direction too. We were expecting something any moment.
We had been following the developing situation for weeks with increasing trepidation. While up north Seattle was becoming a local hotspot, transportation and network connections were distributing COVID globally in now fairly obvious ways, but at the time in ways that certainly didn’t seem direct. From abroad to an elder care home in Seattle seemed pretty indirect and frankly terrifying. There was no good news. Only bad news and worse news.
For those of you that only see this in a reader, you may resume your daily routine.
For the rest of you, I’m doing a little blog maintenance and such, so I’ll be trying out some new themes, etc. over the next few days or weeks. Don’t be alarmed or adjust your medication. Its not you, its me.
And for those of us there, we all got a “Species First” achievement of witnessing the first time a human being set foot on an extraterrestrial object– our first steps as a species on some place not our home. Hard to believe its been 40 years since my Mom dragged me as a wee four year old into watch the moon landing live on television (our old exceedingly crappy black and white)– one of my earliest memories. I can only imagine that kids alive in the 1500s or during the great age of polar exploration could have been as captivated by tales of the derring do of the explorers. Their exploits provide the spark to fuel the ambition of a generation or more.
After Apollo 11’s moon landing, having gone to the moon and done the other thing (not because they were easy, but because they were hard…), NASA nerfed moon exploration and introduce the raid grind with the New not-so-Galactic Exploration patch that brought us Skylab and the Shuttle Missions.
Instead of continuing exploration of the old world “endgame content”….
Old Lunar Endgame Instances
…we were treated to the raid grind of Skylab and the Shuttle missions giving us such firsts as:
First Latin America Get Away Special canister to fly aboard a Space Shuttle. STS 108
First occurrence of combustion product penetration into the J-joint of redesigned solid rocket motor (RSRM). STS 78
First plants to complete a life cycle in space – a crop of wheat grown from seed to seed. STS 81
First landing with new synthetic tread tires. STS 50 and
First use of drag chute during landing; deployed after nose gear touchdown for data collection only. STS 49.
With all due respect to all invovled in the Shuttle program and a nod to the many, yes, lets admit it, boring but necessary and useful achievements (cough, Hubble fix, cough), lets face it, its not even as exciting as Ice Road Truckers. Likewise with all due respect to the Shuttle crew members lost in the Challenger and Columbia disasters (and their families and loved ones)– both bona fide “where where you then” moments– don’t get me started with the attunement raid grind for the International Space Station which apparently requires no less than 3 international space agencies to participate and has a seven year reset timer.
We stand to lose the knowledge and wisdom of these first generation of extra earthly space explorers (Armstrong is now 78). For those with the inclination, I highly recommend the Discovery Channel miniseries, When We Left Earth, likely the last documentary to include first person accounts of this extraordinary period of human exploration.
Fundamentally, I think Armstrong had it right. He capped in 1969 and rather than pursue so called “endgame” content doing laps around the planet, he parked himself, remained largely out of the public eye and slowly faded into the icon of our last greatest boldest achievement. Yin to Armstrong’s Yang, Buzz Aldrin has cultivated a more public profile as a zealous advocate for human space exploration.
With the more time that passes since those halcyon days in the early 1970’s, I gain even more appreciation of the extraordinary boldness, courage and achievements of all off those involved in the moon exploration effort. Was a time when the saying “If we can land a man on the moon, we can certainly accomplish X…” was a good natured challenge for our society to match the best efforts of those in the vanguard and to achieve something truly human in scale. As I scan the phrase with my eyes, I can’t pull them off the first clause– “if we can land a man on the moon…” Frankly, I don’t know if that’s true anymore.
When I was young and naive and a life was full of possibilities, landing a man on the moon was no longer a goal, it was a fait accompli, a measure of our both our achievement and a testament to the possibilities open to us should we bend our efforts collectively toward the common good. On July 20, 1969, for a brief moment in time we were all merely human and the universe stood before us through the opened door of space exploration. Forty years hence, the audaciousness of such goals seem almost as inconceivable as they might be inachievable again in our lifetime.
Hopefully, the next expansion will rekindle the flame of exploration that is fading as Apollo receeds into the past.
potshot 