Shooting for the moon
Witnessing humanity’s next great voyage
Today, I sit here writing this newsletter in my NASA hoodie just as Artemis II left Earth’s orbit to slingshot around the moon. This is the first lunar mission by NASA in over 50 years. The four-person crew will go on a 685,000-mile, 10-day journey to travel deeper into space than ever before. One of the four is Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency – the first Canadian to go to the moon. This is the first stage in a series of steps to create a moon base and, one day, go to Mars.
Thursday evening, my sister Becky messaged the family chat to remind us all to watch the Artemis II launch. Becky and I love space – a passion definitely fostered by my mom. We’ve had a few adventures driving down back roads to escape the light of the city to watch stars, meteor showers, or even a lunar eclipse or two.
It was hard not to compare the Artemis II launch to the moments before the 1986 Challenger disaster, which broke apart 73 seconds into its flight. I was so nervous watching the Artemis II take off. I didn’t even realize I was holding my breath until they left the atmosphere, breaking past the Kármán line 62 miles above Earth.
Now, as the astronauts continue their 10-day journey, they are fixing any minor issues that are cropping up. Apparently, the computer is running ‘two Outlooks, and neither one of those is working.’ It seems you can’t escape Microsoft problems, even in space.
History was made on the night of the pink full moon. It’s not actually pink but is apparently named after pink-hued creeping phlox (or moss phlox) that are in full bloom at that time. It symbolizes the start of spring, renewal, and growth. I hope it brings us the change we need.
A (not so) Tiny Story of a Swiffer (and some tape)
Last week, I spoke of all the overwhelm I was feeling and how I needed a break. Well, the universe answered, and it wasn’t in the way that I wanted or expected.
I was rushing to the subway after a series of back-to-back calls. I was heading to a screening of the new documentary, Drop Dead City, a documentary about New York in 1975, following the lead-up to its near bankruptcy. After the screening, producer-directors Michael Rohatyn and Peter Yost gave a talkback moderated by The Atlantic journalist Michael Powell.
I just missed my train, so I was on the platform trying to figure out the best way to get to the theatre. My phone was acting up. My internet wasn’t working – maps weren’t showing me where to go. I couldn’t look anything up in my web browser. My frustration was building. Then, finally, the E train pulled up. The doors slid open, and as I stepped forward, I was jostled, and the phone in my hand slipped between the platform and the tracks and fell face-up on the rail.
SHIT! My phone! The train was going to run right over it! What do I do?
I ran to a man in a orange vest. He was cleaning the trains as they terminated. A jumble of words spilled out – “Train” “Phone” “Fell”- but the train was already moving. I didn’t hear the crunch I was expecting. Somehow, luck was on my side, and the train just nudged the phone off the rail to lie beside it in a century’s worth of filth.
The orange-vested man told me to NOT jump in to get it – I assured him I would never do that. My hands are great for typing, but I have no upper arm strength. If I went on the tracks, I’d never get out again. Not in the three minutes between trains anyway! I let him lead me upstairs to the booth. Explained to the customer service guy (let’s call him Rohit) that I dropped my phone on the tracks. Rohit was very nice. He made a couple of calls and told me to expect someone within the next hour or two. Sometimes you could be lucky, and someone could come in 30 minutes. But it was going to be a bit of a wait.
Ack! But my husband…he was expecting to meet me and a couple of friends outside the theatre. I had texted him to grab a seat, and that I would meet him inside, but I didn’t want him to worry. I asked Rohit if I could borrow his phone. He was surprised I remembered my husband’s number – and I was pretty sure I was right. I called, got his voicemail, then texted him to let him know my phone was on the subway track, and I might be late.
So down into the subway I went to wait beside the track until a man in an orange vest carrying a VERY long pole with a grabby thing would appear.
I sat, walked up and down the platform humming RAYE’s Where Is My Husband on loop, then sat some more. I kept my Bluetooth earbuds in just in case my husband called. I could see that my phone was working fine. It was just very, very out of reach.
An hour passed by in a flash (thank you, ADHD – I guess), and Rohit came down to tell me that he got a call to say the man with the long grabber would be there in 15-20 minutes. He also told me that my husband hadn’t texted back. Eep!
Turns out I called the right number but texted the wrong one – I put in a 7 instead of an 8 – so when I tried texting again with the right number, he said he got my phone message. I told him that I would go home after my phone was retrieved, as I would miss most of the event. I was disappointed, but didn’t trust that my phone would be saved from the bowels of the subway and get back to me if I didn’t wait there. It also didn’t help that I haven’t backed up my phone in a while. I ran out of space due to the sheer number of photos I take, so I REALLY needed to get it back in one piece.
So the wait carried on – and 30 minutes later, the long stick, grabby man still hadn’t appeared. It was 7 by this point, and I hadn’t eaten all day. I wasn’t going to make it if I didn’t eat, but I also didn’t want to miss my phone being retrieved. Rohit promised me that he’d show the man where my phone was and that I should go eat. Chipotle was the answer, and as I ate my veggie burrito bowl, an older Korean man gifted me the extra cup he accidentally got. I think he could see the stress on my face.
Not trusting the ETA of the grabby stick man, I bought a Ali Hazelwood book and headed back to the station, expecting to read until the man came. (Imagine this is me, but underground on a sticky bench in the subway.)
As I approached the customer service booth, Rohit was chatting with two police officers and an older Russian woman (let’s call her Sylvia). I stayed a few feet away, waiting for him to be finished, and hoped the woman was okay. Rohit spotted me and beckoned me over. I wasn’t the only one to lose their phone to the subway tracks – Sylvia did, too! Damn!
Now that there were two of us, we were automatically a team. Rohit suggested that we go buy our own grabber. If we got one, he’d help, even though he wasn’t technically allowed.
Sylvia was in a panic. She had a class to teach and no way to reach her students. We speedwalked to the dollar store, and it was – closed. Oh, no! Then we tried the home goods store – also closed. So back we went to the customer service booth. Rohit suggested CVS or the smoke shop – maybe we could borrow a grabber if they had one. CVS was a bust, and the smoke shop had no grabber (just one with a hook), so I tried 5 Below. I thought it was a clothing shop, but it was actually full of knick-knacks, and toys, and pet supplies, and phone accessories, etc, etc. It was very random. I walked the aisles thinking, “What would McGyver do?” But there was nothing long enough or grabby enough.
I returned to Sylvia and Rohit empty-handed – just as another man ran up to the booth to declare his phone was lost to the tracks as well. Three in one night? Wow! Rohit called again, and apparently, only one person was retrieving lost items on our line, which took an hour and a half to travel end-to-end on a good day. This day was one full of delays, and the grabby stick man was stuck on a train somewhere.
By this point, it had been three hours since the first call and two hours since they said they’d be there in 15 minutes. During that time, I witnessed a surprising number of people spit onto the tracks. Spotted a rat or two. Didn’t really want to think about what my phone was resting on/in.
The third man ran off to catch his train. He’d come back later to see if they found his phone, but Sylvia and I decided to wait. She worked at a nearby hospital and needed her phone. She gave ultrasounds to OBGYN patients. I asked her more about her teaching. Was it related to something medical? It wasn’t. She was a dance teacher – a tango teacher, specifically. Her whole face lit up when she talked about it.
When we hit the four-hour mark, Sylvia had had enough. She was going to go home and get a broom. I suggested grabbing tape as well. We could use the tape at the end of the broom to lift up our phones. The broom just needed to be long enough.
Off she went, and I read as I kept guard of our phones, still hoping that the grabby stick man would appear. She returned but had only found a Swiffer. I offered to go buy tape, so off I went to CVS again. I got two types of tape, hoping one would be sticky enough to do the trick.
As I returned to the station, three employees were waiting at the booth and watched me as I approached. It was Rohit, another woman, and their boss. They spotted Sylvia with her broom and now saw me with the rolls of tape. The woman told me it was super dangerous for us to try to get the phones ourselves. We should just leave a number, and someone would call when they got our phones. They didn’t know why, after four-and-a-half hours, no one had shown up, especially with multiple calls, now another one by the boss, but they were sure someone would come eventually.
I didn’t want to leave, but now the woman shook my confidence (I am regularly terrified of falling on the track when the platforms are crowded). I knew my husband would be home soon, so Rohit let me borrow his phone, and I told my husband I’d wait at the station for him.
I rejoined Sylvia and told her about the warnings I get. Maybe we should wait a little longer? Sylvia offered to hold me as I retrieved my phone. If you got low enough, the Swiffer could probably reach the phone. I’m clumsy on the best of days, and was sure I would be the one to fall in – so we decided to wait at least until my husband came. So we sat there with our broom and our tape – and a few minutes later, through the windows of the train car, I spotted my husband on the other platform.
“JOHN! JOHN!” I startled the people on the train, but my husband heard me and rushed over.
Now, my husband is an auditor. He is in risk management. So I was sure he’d say, don’t try to get your phones. Wait for the grabby stick man. To my surprise, he whipped off his jacket, grabbed his backpack, and started to talk through how we could use it as a scooper. We stopped him and told our plan – swiffer with tape. We could make the whole flat bit sticky and retrieve the phone. We covered the flat part with tape, and I suggested we wait for the longest possible interval between trains before trying to retrieve the phones. John was dubious about whether the Swiffer was long enough, so Sylvia decided to show him that it would work. She squatted by the edge of the track, extended the swiffer down, and when she pulled it up, my phone was stuck to the tape. HALLELUJAH! It worked!
Sylvia’s phone was next. But, once again, instead of waiting for an extended time between trains, she and John rushed over to where her phone was. It was a narrow part of the platform, so John got on his hands and knees and retrieved her phone. Though my phone was dry and seemingly untouched by its time in the bowels of the track, Sylvia’s was very, very wet. We’re not going to think about what it was sitting in.
Phones saved from the subway, we wrapped them in Chipotle napkins, high-fived each other, and took a picture of the swiffer that saved the day. And thus marks the end of my five-hour adventure in the depths of the subway.
PS I bleached and soaped my phone many, many times as soon as we got home. It took me a few days to not feel icky when I used it.
What I Worked on Last Week.
New Pilot Outline
This was the main focus of the week. I had to do acts three, four, and five. There were a few big action sequences and some weird set pieces that I had to figure out. It was a long slog – but mainly because I really like to fall deep down rabbit holes of research and live there for many hours – I was doing it AS I went scene by scene. Things like trying to find pictures of the interiors of buildings the characters would be in, or researching what post-strangulation would look like, or bugging my friend about the layout of the news organization he worked in, so I could figure out where a studio would be, where desks would be, etc.
If this is a problem that you face, write in a placeholder for the thing you need to research, like PUT BUILDING DESCRIPTION HERE. Mark it in red so you don’t miss it, then continue writing the outline/scene. This way, you stay in the flow of the story, and get through a draft of an outline, and THEN go back and research. Yes, there are elements that research could change, but often, research can take you out of the writing process, and it’s hard to get back in. I did my research throughout the process because I like to KNOW the answers before I carry on, but it meant I finished just in time for it to be due. I didn’t get a chance to do all the passes I normally would before I sent something in, and that is not the way I like to work. My portion was also WAY too long, but really, you need time to make something shorter and more refined.
Now, it’s just the two of us working together, and we are friends, but I wanted to do my best work. Turns out, we both loved our two halves of the outline, knew there were several things to cut, and we have already tackled the teaser and first act. We’ve scheduled two more days this week to tackle the rest, and then we can move on to writing the script. Wheeeee. That’s the fun part – and exactly when you can see what is and isn’t really working.
New Feature
Everything has been agreed! HOORAH!! The producer is sending over a contract, and we had to make a small pivot in the story — though originally it was going to be a whole new idea. This is how I averted a major change —
Earlier this week, the producer messaged to say he thought we needed to come up with a new idea in a different genre. He didn’t say why, but I knew the director who brought me on wasn’t interested in a different genre or searching for a new idea.
I jumped on a call with the producer and, after a few questions, realized there was overlap between our idea and something he was unexpectedly working on (something he thought had died). Thinking on my feet, I figured out a way to keep our idea intact, made a switch so we could stay in the same genre, and stressed to the producer that our director was a major asset and that we needed her, and this was the way to do it.
I got the producer excited about the new direction; the director is also on board. Win-win! All I need to do is write a short paragraph by the beginning of next week to share with the network. If they like the new direction, then I’ll write the full overview so we can sell this. It’s ALWAYS worth having a conversation about why something has to change – there is often more than one solution to any problem – like using tape and a Swiffer to retrieve a lost phone.
Procedural series
Our call got pushed back, so more next week!
Things I’m Loving.
This week I’ve been in a writing black hole. I barely ate or moved my body, so I’m not sure what I really loved this week, other than the space launch.
Here is the first picture of Earth from Artemis II. Isn’t it beautiful??
You can see more images on their website or Instagram!
That’s another week for me. If you feel inclined to donate to something today, why not give to the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation?
This is a non-profit organization founded by the Mercury 7 astronauts that provides more than 70 scholarships a year to the brightest and most talented college students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The prestigious Astronaut Scholarship Award is recognized nationwide as one of the largest merit-based scholarships for undergraduate STEM juniors and seniors! If you want to enable more students to pursue space-bound careers, you should! This is your chance to fund the future and maybe even help the next astronaut take to the skies.
As always, stay safe, stay informed, and be kind.
What an emotional and physical journey! I want to know more about Sylvia lol. Glad you made it out ok.