Workers in most developed countries can be excused for being baffled by the hue and cry in the US Congress concerning health care. Most of these countries have affordable health care built into their economic systems. Their response is likely: “What’s the big deal?”
Here’s the big deal, of particular importance as Congress heads home for its summer break—without passing a health care bill.
It seems like yesterday that we watched the first men to actually walk on the moon. When I was a freshman in Lawrence College (now University), an avid science fiction fan, the woman sitting next to me in Physics 101 asked me what I wanted to do when I graduated. My answer was: “Put man on the moon!” Thus continued the steps I took to become a “rocket scientist” (at age 15 I was the youngest member of the American Rocket Society). Although my post-BA career mostly wound through the military space program I was able to help NASA decide on the cameras to use for surveying the Moon in order to pick suitable landing sites.
And now it’s 40 years later. In the words of Walter Cronkite on the grand occasion of the first landing; “Whew!” What a magnificent sight! Yet much has happened—and failed to happen—since that day.