UPDATE: Before we begin, Judge Tom Petersen reads the blog!!!
Judge Tom Petersen said...Hey ! I enjoy the repartee and accept criticism but I am neither senile nor absent. I am 67 and sit in County Court Criminal.
Believe me, I get absolutely no pleasure of writing a letter like that but I believe it to be true and felt I had to say it.
Judge Tom Petersen
and
In response to my being uninvolved in Juvenile, I have been involved for 42 years, beginning as the first PD there after the Gault Decision in 1967. prosecutor, ten years as Judge and for the past 15 years administraor of the TROY Academy school and the Teen Cuisine restaurant/culinary arts training program, both of which I initiated in 1992, three years after becoming a Judge.I have been Adjunct Professor of Criminology at the UofM for almost 20 years.
Thanks for your comments.
Judge Tom Petersen
4o Years ago today Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin successfully lifted off from the Moon (where Mission control cleared them as number 1 on the runway) and began their journey home fulfilling President Kennedy's commitment to landing on the Moon and returning safely before the decade was out.
It is worth remembering that when Kennedy committed this nation to a Moon landing (May 25, 1961) , NASA had a total of 16 minutes of manned space flight experience (Alan Shepard's sub-orbital flight).
We had no idea about things like the ability of humans to survive a lengthy space flight.
Most of the equipment, technology and theories needed to get to the moon were not even invented, much less contemplated.
There are things you know. There are things you don't know. And there are things you don't know you don't know. Apollo 11 involved discovering, learning, and mastering hundreds of thousands of things we didn't know we didn't know in 1961. And we did it in a little over 8 years.
Think about it. We as a human race reached to the stars and touched one of them.
We wrote yesterday that Apollo 11 remained the high water mark for our country. That is saying a lot. More than the battle fields of the Ardennes. More than the beaches of Normandy. More than flight itself or conquering Polio, Apollo 11 remains the ultimate proof of the greatness of our country.
It should be no surprise that the first nation dedicated to the principle that people are equal and free to develop the best within them, was the first and only nation to develop the technology to land on the Moon.
40 years ago today three Americans began their great journey home.
The safe return of Collins, Aldrin and Armstrong represented the triumph of reason, genius, and the kind of dedicated hard work that only free people willingly perform.
This indeed was our finest hour.