Jim Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13, died yesterday. He was 97.
I can’t add to anything that others have written, and I won’t try. I read Lovell’s book on the Apollo 13 disaster, Lost Moon, and, of course, I’ve seen Tom Hanks’ portrayal of Lovell in Ron Howard’s Apollo 13. I’ve known the story of the disaster–the explosion of the oxygen tank, the crew’s harrowing journey home using the lunar module as a lifeboat–almost all my life.
In 2019 the BBC World Service aired a program (and podcast) about the Apollo 11 mission, 13 Minutes to the Moon, hosted by Kevin Fong, to mark the 50th-anniversary of the first manned landing on the moon. The following year, the program’s second season covered the Apollo 13 disaster. It began airing in March 2020, just as the COVID pandemic ramped up.
The second episode of the second season dropped on March 18, 2020. That was my first work-from-home day at Diamond.
I do not know if I listened to the second episode that day or the following day. I’m not sure when I downloaded it; the date my file has is in October 2021, which would have been when I archived it to the external drive it now resides on. But I do remember my emotional reaction.
The second episode, “Death of the Odyssey,” covers the immediate aftermath of the oxygen tank explosion on the command module. Systems are losing power, it’s not clear what’s wrong with the vessel, and Mission Control makes the fateful decision that Lovell and his crew need to power down the Odyssey command module to conserve oxygen and electricity.
I’ve known this story for years. I’ve read about it many times. I’ve watched Apollo 13 several times as well. I know how this turns out.
The ending of the episode, the powering down of the Odyssey, broke me that morning in March 2020. The way Fong told it, supplemented by vintage voice recordings and new interviews with Lovell, in that moment, with the world shutting down, cooped up at home for, at the time, perhaps four to six weeks, it shattered me. I sat at my desk and I wept.
I remember that I listened to a BBC podcast from a few years earlier, Anarchy Must Be Organized, a history of the Bonzo Dog Band hosted by the late Neil Innes — he had died three months before — because I needed some happiness and I needed it right then.
“Great men are forged in fire.” So said the War Doctor on the Last Day in his dark moment of the soul. Jim Lovell was already a great man in his trial by fire.
He had good innings.
Debian 13, codename Trixie, released today.
I use Linux Mint Debian Edition, which is Linux Mint built on top of Debian instead of Ubuntu. At the moment I have a twinge of FOMO — Fear of Missing Out — because LMDE won’t upgrade to the new Debian 13 base for a few months yet — November, maybe October — but it’s just a twinge.
But, for those who celebrate and are rocking their new and shiny Trixie installs, Happy Release Day!
This weekend, Jen Pawol becomes the first woman to umpire a Major League Baseball game.
I’ve seen Pawol umpiring minor league games at least twice. In 2022, she was assigned to the Eastern League and she worked a series between Harrisburg and Richmond that May.
In one of the games I saw she was behind the plate, and I remember that she was occasionally dwarfed by the batters. From the stands, the only thing that marked her out as different was the ponytail that emerged from her cap.
May she have a long and successful career in The Show.