Virginia Is For Families

A friend of mine was out photographing the moon’s eclipse last night and that got me thinking. Who owns the moon? I remember reading history books in high school that told about European explorers coming to the new world and making claims centuries ago. Spain owned this. Portugal owned that. England and France fought over land each wanted to own. No one paid too much attention to the folks who were already here and had been here for centuries. Or, at least, their ancestors had been here. And don’t forget about Big Foot and his friends. Their ancestors were here before there were any men. Although very shy they often left footprints about two feet long in the woods. They were hinting. We are here! Don’t assume you own anything!

So when Ron said he was going to take pictures of the moon I wondered if, maybe, we owned a piece of the moon. Because an American astronaut was there awhile ago and planted a flag. Do all Americans own the moon? Or do we own the parts where our stuff is? Do piles of junk we left there mark our territory?

I heard recently that the government of China wants to map the moon. And I wondered if maybe they were trying to make a statement. Like Big Foot was trying to make a statement. Because it is likely they plan to go to the moon when they are able and probably don’t want to ask anybody if it’s alright to land there. I also wonder if they plan to name all the roads up there after their own guys. If they do that does it mean they own the moon?

There are a lot of questions about space. The space station belongs to a lot of nations. Everyone contributed something and it’s a group effort. Is the plan to do the same thing when earthlings start going back to the moon? In other words is mankind going to start doing things differently? Or is it going to be business as usual? Will we see guys with ray guns bouncing fifty feet in the air while they try to see who is shooting at them from a crater? I saw a pretty good movie about guys with swords fighting each other up around the tops of trees not long ago. I think it got an Academy Award. Maybe somebody is already training for moon combat.

And don’t forget about Big Foot. No I don’t mean he’s up there on the moon trying to stay out of the line of fire. He’s down here. But his cousin the green tinted Big Foot with the ability to jump over mountains is up there.

They have questions. We have questions. And nobody ever offers any answers. The next really big piece of real estate is right up there and sometimes it seems so close you could touch it. So I have a question for my candidate this election season.

Who owns the moon? It should be entertaining trying to get an answer to that one.

http://davidnotes.com/2007/08/26/tales-from-the-library-men-are-from-mars-and-women-believe-it/

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More Writing

http://davidnotes.com/2007/09/08/im-up-to-the-top-four-hundred-k-blogs-now/

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