Wapakoneta

We travel the Spaceways

I’ve got my eyes on the skies this week for the 40th anniversary of the moon landing and the first steps on the moon.

Sadly, I won’t be able to make it Wapakoneta, Ohio to see the World’s Largest Moon Pie

Wapakoneta - Moon Pie Mock up

But at least I’ll be in Seattle on August 15th when the EMP (Experience Music Project) kicks off its newest exhibition:    Spaced Out! The Final Frontier in Album Covers

EMP FROM ANOTHER WORLD

117 space-themed record album covers released between 1940 and 1969—the dawn of the space age— will be display.

Here are some more cool samples:

EMP MEL TORME

EMP SPUTNIK DANCE

The exhibition will be on view at the EMP through Jan. 3, 2010.

Celebrate the 40th anniversary of the moon landing with Nixon and the astronauts

July 20th is the 40th anniversary of the moon landing and there will be loads of celebrations and commemorations around the country.  You can read about many of the events on the NASA Web site, but two events of special note are the Summer Moon Festival in Wapakoneta, Ohio (Neil Armstrong’s home town) and Splashdown 2009, on the USS Hornet, the ship tasked with plucking the Columbia capsule containing the three astronauts out of the Pacific Ocean.

The Summer Moon Festival (July 13 -20, 2009) seems especially intriguing, because in addition to the World’s Largest Moon Pie, the town is promising visitors that they’ll get to see (and nibble on?) a life-size statue of an astronaut made entirely of, you guessed it, cheese.

This “sample” cheese astronaut is “just” 40 pounds, but I’m sure you  get the picture…

Wapokaneta, Ohio - Astronaut of cheese(Photo courtesy The Cheese Lady: www.sarahcheeselady.com)

The USS Hornet’s Splashdown 2009 event (July 23-26) will be fun as well, especially if they display this photo of then President Richard Nixon telling jokes to the astronauts while they were in a quarantine capsule (in case they had “moon germs”) on the USS Hornet.

USS HORNET Nixon Telling Borman Joke RGB-1

Photo from the book Hornet Plus Three: The Story of the Apollo 11 Recovery, by Bob Fish.