Where Angels Fear to Tread

While it was not my intention to appear as a complete fool, at least publicly, I have a feeling that the premature publication of "Canto I" may have created that impression. However correct your estimate of my idiocy may be, I wish to apologize to Homer--and to Humanity--for that poem.

After 20 years of writing, I really should know better than to run off like a maniac and publish early. I spent the weekend recosidering my version of Ulysses and re-reading the Odyssey (Fagles translation). I have no idea what I was thinking. A classic case of hubris. Oh, well...

There may be a few salvagable lines of text. I am going to put the whole thing into a drawer somewhere and forget about it for a few weeks, while I finish reading the Odyssey and begin working my way through my new math book. There is nothing like a little trigonometry to settle a jangled set of nerves.

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On a happier note, the crew of Atlantis has arrived safely back on earth, after a 12 day mission at the International Space Station. Thank Heaven for answered prayers.

Gentlemen, start your engines...

Book done, back from Houston, and all caught up on work, I find myself able to blog again, and to breathe.


Houston was wonderful. Warm, huge, and friendly. Apart from the cabbies, who had no idea where they were going most of the time, and when presented with a Mapquest map (by the friendly folks at the Hotel ZaZa) were not quite able to read it sufficiently to travel even a few short blocks.


I was only in the city two days, so my chance to sample the city's culture was limited mostly to migas and visits to two excellent musuems--the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Menil Collection--and an afternoon at the Johnson Space Center--which brought back all sorts of starry-eyed memories from childhood, when I was scheduled to be an astronaut. Perhaps, if I had stuck with astrophysics in college I would be busy up there, right now.

No life is without regrets. And none lacks its consolations. If I were orbiting the Earth, for instance, I might never have bumped into you.

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Even so, as we stare at the stars tonight, whatever our choices, or beliefs, let us remember the folks on STS-122, as they begin a new voyage tomorrow.



Safe journey.