The four Artemis II astronauts did a dress rehearsal in December for what will happen on launch day. Clockwise from front left are pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist Christina Koch and commander Reid Wiseman. Credit: Gregg Newton/AFP via Getty
Topics: Applied Physics, Civics, Culture, NASA, Spaceflight
“Artemis is the ancient Greek goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, and chastity. As the daughter of Zeus and Leto and twin sister to Apollo, she is also recognized as a goddess of childbirth, fertility, and the protector of young girls. She is commonly depicted as a young huntress with a bow and quiver.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Artemis-Greek-goddess
https://www.theoi.com/Olympios/Artemis.html
April 1st, 2011, was my last day at Manor High School. I had accepted a job at Applied Materials in a place called Fishkill in upstate New York. I was to leave the next day on a flight with (then) a black Labrador Retriever named Raven, and a Texas Box Turtle named Speedy. I would be alone except their company for about two months.
The reaction, and surprising responses from the students were a surprise to me. My hats off to anyone in the teaching profession, K-12 and college, that has to navigate the expectations of school districts, and the disappointment when their product matriculates to college campuses having fulfilled the graduation requirements of their schools and districts, but without the study skills requisite a generation ago.
“This (had) better not be an ‘April Fools’ joke, you bastard!” That was a young Hispanic female, (I'll call her Mary) who I didn’t think my presence in the classroom had much meaning to her.
For a young African American male, I’ll call him Mike, I was the only positive black male role model in his life. Both of his parents were in prison for various offenses, and he was in a foster home that for his foster parent, Mike was just a paycheck.
I also find it ironic that the pilot for the Artemis is Navy Captain Victor Glover, an African American that I guess didn’t get purged in all the Project 2025 “anti-woke” focus. He his competently commanding, and piloting Artemis in orbital flights around the Moon as he and his crew conduct experiments. It must be a daunting disappointment to the conspiracy theorists that were confident we never visited (and Francis Ford Copula filmed it all on a Hollywood set).
“As the daughter of Zeus and Leto and twin sister to Apollo, she is also recognized as a goddess of childbirth, fertility, and the protector of young girls.”
It is ironic that childbirth, fertility, and bodily autonomy were legislated away by this Supreme Court in 2022 after 50 years of sacred precedent, that the majority who ripped this away lied about respecting under Oath.
It is ironic that his first two major firings from DHS and DOJ are women, who were not remotely qualified for their government positions, but the majority of massive firings of primarily African American women, were more than qualified for theirs, and mediocre white males are allowed to keep their power and authority because of the obvious formula: pale skin and penises.
It is ironic that Artemis was the protector of young girls. The victims of Jeffrey Epstein could have used her on his “Island of Dr. Moreau,” the young women not being turned into mutants or monsters, but “othered,” thingified, objectified, discarded once passed through the smoldering arms of Moloch.
“Moloch (or Molech) is an ancient Canaanite deity associated in the Hebrew Bible with child sacrifice. Often depicted as a calf-headed, human-bodied bronze idol, sacrifices involved burning children in a fire within or before the statue, specifically in the Valley of Hinnom.”
Perhaps we’ve always had an “Epstein class,” the first island named Monticello, the author of the U.S. Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, a 44-year-old married (then widowed) enslaver forcing himself on a 14-year-old, enslaved soul, Sally Hemming, herself the daughter of Jefferson’s father-in-law, making him both a pedophile and practitioner of incest. The Library of Congress is based on the library of this “founding psychopath,” Sally’s half-brother.
“The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival by John Bagot Glubb is a 1978 book that analyzes the rise and fall of empires, arguing they follow a predictable cycle of about 250 years, moving from military expansion to wealth, intellectualism, and eventual moral decay and collapse. Glubb, a British soldier and historian, uses the examples of Rome and Britain to illustrate this pattern, suggesting that modern civilizations face similar challenges and that understanding this historical cycle is key to survival, warning against over-reliance on intellect without self-sacrifice and service.”
https://archive.org/details/the-fate-of-empires-sir-john-glubb
Though I honor and salute the achievements of Captain Victor Glover (he visited the 50th National Society of Black Engineers virtually from the International Space Station in 2024, prior to what we see now was a consequential; existential election), I’m sure the Captain can recall the sage words of Marvin Gaye, who’s birthday was April 2nd, words that still hit powerfully today in this moment, months before our nation’s 250th birthday:
“Rockets, moon shots.
“Spend it all on the have-nots.
“Money, we make it.
“Before we see it, you take it.
Chorus
“Oh, make me wanna holler,
“The way they do my life.
“(Yeah) Make me wanna holler,
“The way they do my life.
“This ain’t living, this ain’t living.
“No, no, baby, this ain’t living.
“No, no, no, no.”
Marvin Gaye, "Inner City Blues" (Make Me Wanna Holler), Genius Lyrics
Artemis II mission is about to fly humans to the Moon — here’s the science they’ll do, Alexandra Witze, Nature
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