Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame

The Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame opens in Seattle this week. The New York Times has an article on it today:

SEATTLE, June 10 – Donna L. Shirley used to run NASA’s Mars exploration program. Now she is doing something even more far out.
Ms. Shirley, who retired from NASA in 1998, is director of the new Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame here, set to open on June 18. Instead of pointing space probes at the next rock out from the Sun, she now oversees exhibits exploring the universe of “What if?,” from genetic engineering to aliens to parallel worlds.
“I took the job because I really believe that science fiction can be used to interest people in literacy, science and technology,” Ms. Shirley said, “and because I thought it would be fun.”

Reagan’s Legacy

While the so-called liberal press caps a week of servile eulogizing of former President Ronald Reagan, I thought it might be useful to point readers toward one of the few counterpoints in this orgy of Gipper nostalgia. New York Newsday ran the following op-ed piece yesterday: Urban suffering grew under Reagan

Reagan is often lauded as “the great communicator,” but he used his rhetorical skills to stigmatize poor people, which laid the groundwork for slashing the social safety net – despite the fact that Reagan’s own family had been rescued by New Deal anti-poverty programs during the Depression.
During his stump speeches, Reagan often told the story of a so-called welfare queen in Chicago who drove a Cadillac and had ripped off $150,000 from the government using 80 aliases, 30 addresses, a dozen Social Security cards and four fictional dead husbands. Reagan dutifully promised to roll back welfare. Journalists searched for this welfare cheat and discovered that she didn’t exist. Nevertheless, he kept using the anecdote.

The full article by Peter Dreier, director of the urban and environmental policy program at Occidental College, is well worth reading.

Memorial Day 2004

Taps
Day is done,
gone the sun,
From the hills,
from the lake,
From the skies.
All is well,
safely rest,
God is nigh.

There is no official set of lyrics for Taps; the above is the first verse of the most frequently cited version.

Readings
Jorie Graham’s poem of remembrance, Soldatenfriedhof, in today’s New York Times.
The American Battle Monuments Commission page of American War Dead.
To find out about war dead in Iraq, visit Lunaville.org’s Iraq Coalition Casualty Count.
The Washington Post has a moving lead editorial today: Memorial Day.
For an unromantic view of “The Good War” from one of its infantrymen, read Paul Fussell’s Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War .