When we traveled to Washington, DC last summer we were lucky enough to get a White House tour. Back in the mid-nineties when we lived in DC, this wasn’t such a big deal, but in the post-9/11 era it’s become a bit more difficult and mired in a bit of bureaucratic bullshit. Since we were going to tour, oh, one of the most historically significant buildings in the United States the wife, son, and I all dressed in business casual.

I recently finished reading Hampton Sides’ Ghost Soldiers, an account of the Bataan Death March, life in a POW camp in WWII Cabanatuan, and the liberation of the survivors of the Death March and the POW camp by elements of the US Army’s 6th Ranger battalion during the liberation of the Philippines. The book is at times both disturbing and inspiring, a look at the best and worst that we do to each other.

When I was in middle school, I admired cummings for his disdain for capitalization. As I grew older, I came to love his imagery and the way he chose each word with such care to carry his theme home. somewhere i have never traveled somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though I have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands -- e.

Occasionally I stumble across a bit of art – a photograph, a short story, a drawing, a poem – that makes a connection in several areas that I have interests in. Today’s poem by Keith Gottschalk is one of those pieces. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve always been interested in spaceflight and aviation. So the first hook this poem put in me was the tie to those fields; anyone who has studied the history of spaceflight is likely to immediately catch the title of this poem and it’s obvious reference to Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space.

Normally, the weather is fairly dreary around here up until at least mid-April, after which it clears up, and then – right when we’re getting used to wearing shorts again – it drops back down to remind us that we’re not quite out of the woods yet. This year seems to be a bit different; we’ve experienced some unseasonably warm weather of late and the smells of spring are all around.