doodledee

I was in 6th grade when the Challenger exploded. We were having our 10:30 milk-break and our teacher - Ms. Johnson - was down having a smoke in the teachers' lounge. Most days she was gone the whole time, but that day she came back early. She had tears in her eyes and a TV on a cart. She plugged it in, turned it on, and went and sat at her desk.

Nobody talked for quite a while. I don't think any of us had seen a teacher cry before.

Fast-forward 17 years.

We heard about the Columbia pretty much as it happened. The TV was already on, and 6 of us were just vegging-out while Justin and Laura cooked swedish pancakes for breakfast. NBC broke in with the story. You know the rest.

It's a damn shame.

And, according to a letter the Strib published today it's also Bush's fault.

Scripps Howard News Service has reported how NASA tried to maintain the shuttle schedule on a tight budget -- indeed how last April concerned members of Congress' NASA funding subcommittee discussed how the space agency had lost 40 percent of its funding in the last 10 years, but under pressure from the Bush tax cut, they went ahead and cut NASA's human space flight budget another 10.3 percent.

The media made no fuss when NASA critic/Bush friend Sean O'Keefe was selected to head the agency and then set out to reduce shuttle upgrade spending by 43 percent through 2006. Nor did the media fuss when, in April 2002, NASA's independent auditor Richard Blomberg told the House Science Committee, "I have never been as concerned for space shuttle safety as I am right now."

Will the media now look at where Bush leadership is taking us?

The word of the day is 'classy'.

Even with the 'contingency', it was still a fun weekend. We hiked, ate, soaked, ate, drank, ate, and played a bunch of games. Sign me up for that deal every year.