I'm into countdown mode now.
Ten, nine, eight...days until Lessons Learned launches out of its shipping boxes and onto the shelves.
Holding at ten for today, though.
What a cool word. Launch. Someday I'll research its derevation and see how it was used before space exploration became a part of our daily lingo. Did Wilbur and Oliver use it? How about a reporter watching the first hot air balloon rise into the sky? Did "launch" find a spot in his breaking news?
The children at Pilot Mountain did hear that word, read it in their Weekly Readers from what they remembered, saw it in action in real time on the small tv screen the principal brought to the school that morning, rabbit ears and all. Today's child would scoff at the sight, metal rods extending above some tiny box, the principal holding one end, twisting it around, barely breathing when the focus hit exactly the spot because if he moved, the image would distort or worse, disappear.
The parents of those children of the fifties might have used the word launch when they were standing outside at night, tracing the bright artificial satellite named Sputnik, teaching their own kinds of lessons about space and the future. What did they say? How did a parent back then explain what would be ahead when he had no idea himself?
Back snug in bed, in the coolness of a pillow, just before sleep overtook them, what lessons ran through these children's heads?
Lessons Learned!
Launching soon, September 25, 2012.
Catch of the day,
Gretchen
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