Fort Worth and the Moon

With tomorrow being the fiftieth anniversary of Neil Armstrong's "giant leap for mankind," space exploration seems to be on many of our minds. This morning I got to thinking about the Apollo 12 mission to the moon and my grandfather's small, unusual role in that mission. 

My grandfather, Marlin Dollar, made Fort Worth Police badges for more than sixty years, and he was asked to make an honorary badge for astronaut Alan Bean to carry with him to the moon. On November 19, 1969, Apollo 12 landed on the lunar surface with a panther badge in tow.

Replica Apollo 12 mission patch in my office 

   

Back from the Czech Republic

I recently had the opportunity to travel back to the Czech Republic and visit Rumburk, the town where I lived and worked for five years. I had not been there in more than a decade, so I often found myself in a meditative state trying to make sense of it all. During those two weeks abroad, I spoke Czech the vast majority of the time, and upon arriving back in Texas, it took me a couple of minutes to readjust my ear to English, my native language. Last night my dreams also crossed the border. Somewhere in my sleep they changed back into English.

Loreto Chapel in Rumburk, where I once saw Nobel Laureate Vaclav Havel

Krasna Lipa, the namesake of a Waylon County town