Water Can Float Me Up
Top photo by Jeff Worman
NASA is saying that there is water on the moon, enough to sustain a Moon Base.Of course, there is.
Why is it not surprising where it was found?
Clavius.
Clavius Base?
Sound familiar?
Beside water, will they find the monolith too?
In Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, that was the place, that was the base, the one with the monolith found during construction: Clavius. This had everyone scratching their heads but today it makes perfect sense. Visualized and further made legend by Stanley Kubrick’s motion picture of the same name. Since he made it into the 1968 film, then a year later boots on the moon. The base on the moon: Clavius.
Why not?
We’re already living through Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain. The quintessential Global Pandemic from space.
Why not 2001 in the 2020s?
But let’s get back to Clavius.
The fictional Roman officer, named Clavius, who gave the command to kill Jesus with a spear: inconsequential unless you try to draw comparisons perhaps to the spear and the monolith.
What was that monolith anyway?
What about the Dawn of Man? Do I need to watch Ridley Scott’s Prometheus again?
What about Europa? NASA wants to visit that too. But I think God said no in 2001. What will be the word in the 2020s?
As far as other worlds go, what about Enceladus? It has those spires, fumaroles like Mount Erebus in Antarctica. I was fortunate to see those on a 40 K snowmobile trek about -40 F, from Scott Base. It was on an excursion I won in a lottery of sorts, my name pulled from a hat, at McMurdo back in the teens, to take part in: A Room with a View – an outpost to see the fumaroles. On Earth.
My hands are still frozen.
Europa has the monolith.
Did I spoil it? The movie is over 50 years old. The story it is based turns 70 in 2021. What about a Star Gate? I was looking up McMurdo, before I went there, and I saw that McMurdo has one. Then I watched the show. It’d be nice to get Off World and have some peace. It is hard to separate fiction from reality sometimes at this point.
How about David Bowie’s (not David Bowman as in 2001) – how about his song on “The Man Who Sold The World”? Opening Line… ‘President Joe once had a dream…”
As opposed to The Man Who Sold Out the World.
In the real world.
Then there’s the Moonbase Clavius organization … Neil was there and soon enough maybe you too.
Jeff Worman lives in Walworth County, Wisconsin where there is water and a crisp, cool night sky conducive to the creative process. He has been drawing and writing since he was able to hold a pencil in his hand. Worman started out as a high school intern at the Bugle-American, an alternative newspaper in Milwaukee, and was a founder and long standing contributor to the Crazy Shepherd which emerged from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is published currently as the Shepherd Express.
Worman’s column The Hourly Why was conceived in 1982, published broadly in underground newspapers over the decades and can be found online today at www.thehourlywhy.com. He also channels his signature character Deke Marler who hosts Music Time USNA (United States of North America), a radio show from the future, spinning ads for hovercrafts and brain implants, traffic reports between earth and sister colonies, with interstellar news and weather. Blues jams with musicians from his neck of the woods feature Worman on the harmonica and, on occasion, his parodying lyrics.
In addition to cartooning, illustrating and reporting, Worman serves as secretary of Kettle Moraine Community Broadcasting, which is home to WFAQ-LP-FM, 101.3 Mukwonago and wfaq.com. He has a great love of the outdoors and champions charities by riding those long distance centuries on his road bike to raise funds.