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I meant to post something a few days ago in memory of the 17th anniversary of the Challenger explosion, but I forgot.

Yesterday, I had to get up early (for me) to go up to the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco. Decided to do a quick email check before going to wake up Kam, and someone had posted the news about Columbia to a mailing list.

It hit me pretty hard. I hadn't meant for it to be the first thing Kam heard on waking up after too little sleep, but she could tell I was upset, so I told her.

For most of the day I was fine. I pretty much put it out of my mind. Kam and Kathleen and Susan and I took Carla Speed McNeil (my Finder review), Rachel Hartman (no relation), Lea Hernandez, and Layla Lawlor to dim sum at Yank Sing (a tradition started a couple years ago by Sarah and Kathleen); then we proceeded to APE, where I bought all three of the Amphigorey volumes and Sparks: An Urban Fairytale (review). I also picked up a couple of books from Soft Skull Press (publishers of Nick Mamatas's Northern Gothic): the collected Get Your War On (which I'd been meaning to order for a while) and a cute little volume physically styled after Mao's Little Red Book (a.k.a. Quotations from Chairman Mao) titled Yes, You ARE a Revolutionary!

I think that paragraph had enough links in it. Time for a new one.

By that time, Kam and I had missed the all-peninsula peace march scheduled for that afternoon in Palo Alto, so we took the long way home, down 280 in the warm sunshine. We detoured to see the Pulgas Water Temple (close-up), but it turned out to be closed during construction (apparently until 2004). We came back to Palo Alto, where there was little sign of the march having happened, and had an early dinner; chatted with Mya; then I read stories for most of the rest of the evening.

But first I checked email again, and saw more about the shuttle, and even though there was really no new news, it made me cry again.

And this morning, the same thing all over again, as I wandered by BoingBoing more or less by accident and found a link to the comments posted at PNH's blog. There were a couple of things I thought were particularly well-said or nice sentiments, such as this from Mary Kay Kare:

Still, there are worse fates in the world than to die doing something you wanted more than anything else to do. Something you knew was dangerous and went ahead because it was important. Because you wanted to. We must, as always, learn what we can from our failures and go on to bigger and better things which would not have been possible without their sacrifice.

And this from Lois Fundis:

I'm appalled at the thought some people have expressed that the space program might be cancelled. It wasn't after Apollo 1; it wasn't after Apollo 13; it wasn't after Challenger; it shouldn't be now. And I don't think it will be. After a time of mourning and of doublechecking and beefing-up the safety precautions, we'll pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and shoot off into space again.

It's what people do, from the time we're tiny babies: Experiment. Explore. Investigate. Try. Fail. Try again.

I'm not normally terrible fond of Kipling, and Hymn to Breaking Strain is a little too human-centric for my tastes, but I do like the end of it (as slightly modified by Leslie Fish's setting-to-music and my imperfect memory):

In spite of being broken—

Or because of being broken—

[We] rise up and build anew.

And right about the time I was typing the above, Kam stopped by briefly and pointed out that it's a gorgeous day outside. Maybe at some point after breakfast I'll take the PowerBook and go sit in the sun in a park to read.