Planet Earth is Blue

Sally Ride passed away this week.  I'm trying to think of adjectives to do justice to her, but I'm coming up short.  Let's go with nouns and verbs.  Astronaut, inspiration, trailblazer, teacher.  She studied, she worked, she achieved, she galvanized. She blasted off into space at 32. She broke boundaries. She smashed ceilings. She opened up possibilities. She led by example to get children - especially girls - excited about math and science.

I was one of those little girls.  I used to watch 3-2-1 Contact on PBS with my brother Charlie when I was supertiny, like aged 3 and 4.  People (nerds) our age might remember this show as a pastiche of weird tech-y and science-y segments, with a little mystery thrown in. (Whaddup, original Bloodhound Gang?! Remember that time you made a pinhole camera when you were all kidnapped and thrown into the back of a van but you used science to figure out where you were and you totally thwarted your enemies?  Classic.)  It also had a killer opening segment and theme song.

AMAZING! Memories...

Anyway, it was a great educational show that was pretty important in hooking my interest in science at an early point in my life.  And I remember Sally Ride would come on the show.  She was in a couple of episodes explaining to the hosts - who were always regular kids rocking the best in early 80's fashion - what it was like to work in space, how to use different tools on the shuttle, how to negotiate the details of your day in zero gravity, etc...  I remember how she never talked down to anyone, how she explained things with enthusiasm and patience, and how much she smiled.  Seriously, do a google image search of her.  She had such a terrific smile.  I mean, she got to go into outer space - wouldn't that make you smile for the rest of your life?

Being on Sesame Street would make me smile for the rest of my life.

When someone dies, one of the stock phrases in our arsenal of "things to say to people who are grieving" is "I'm sorry for your loss."  We all say it, almost as a reflex at this point.  I'm not saying that we don't genuinely feel sorry when the situation calls for it, just that the phrase itself gets so much use that it starts to lose the intended effect after a while.  But then the actual experience of real loss re-infuses the phrase with meaning.  And then we remember why we say it.  Right now, I'm sorry for our loss.  The world is a better place because of her, and it's a genuine loss that she is no longer here to keep doing what she was doing. She was only 61. If she hadn't fallen ill, I know we would have seen so much more come from her work. She was one of those rare people who was brilliant but could still explain things in a clear and thorough way, and make it understandable, interesting, and exciting. This is no small feat.  She made discoveries so she could share the knowledge, so that she could bring more people into the conversation and show them how awesome the study of the universe could be. She was an ambassador of science because she made it accessible by changing how this country thought of the space program and about what kind of people could become astronauts.

I'm so sad she's gone; I'm so glad she was here.

And I know everyone is saying this right now, but it has more meaning than it ever has before:

Ride, Sally. Ride.