The Explorers' Club, № MCLII

Operation AXIOM: The 40th Anniversary of the Chernobyl Disaster
26 April 1986: Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant of V. I. Lenin suffered a catastrophic failure; operator incompetence, lax safety culture, & poor reactor design lead to explosions, meltdown, fires, & the massive release of radiation; thirty-one deaths are directly attibuted to the disaster, mostly from radiation poisoning; the Soviets did not publicly admit to any accident until two days later, 28 April.

Commentary: Chernobyl could—& should—be an entire series of episodes: the inept & corrupt Soviet construction of the plant, the known design flaws in the reactor that weren't addressed, the exposure of first responders & later "liquidators" to unsafe levels of radiation, the delayed evacuations of Pripyat & Chernobyl, the Exclusion Zone, the "sarcophagus," the New Safe Confinement, the February 2025 Russian drone strike, & the tragic poetry that the disaster was triggered by a safety test. Someday.

Semper exploro.

The Explorers' Club, № MCXX

Operation AXIOM
9-10 November 1975: Valery Sablin, political commissar of the Soviet frigate Storozhevoy, led a barratry in protest against the corruption & complacency of the Brezhnev era; the Storozhevoy fled Riga, bound for Leningrad; the ship was pursued by half the Soviet Baltic Fleet & boarded by naval infantry after the crew turned against Sablin; he was tried for high treason & executed in August 1976.

Commentary: The mutiny was unknown in the West until it was a subject of a master's thesis in 1982. That master's thesis helped inspire Tom Clancy's 1984 novel, The Hunt for Red October.

Semper exploro.

Section 31: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-2024)

Episode o' the Day
"Little Green Men" (season four, episode eight; 6 November 1995): Wikipedia-link.

Commentary: "Little Green Men" is a romp, revealing that the 1947 Roswell incident had been caused by Quark, Rom, & Nog (& Odo, who maintained a much lower profile), who inadvertantly traveled back in time after Cousin Gaila sabotaged Quark's new starship, the Quark's Treasure. Delightful!

The Explorers' Club, № CMXCI

Operation AXIOM: The Cold War—The 40th Anniversary of Able Archer 83
7-11 November 1983: N.A.T.O. forces conducted an annual military training exercise, simulating a conflict escalation to DEFCON 1 (nuclear war); the Kremlin feared Able Archer was a ruse of war, to disguise a first strike, despite K.G.B. field reports to the contrary; Soviet nuclear forces were put on elevated alert status, but N.A.T.O. defused the crisis by refusing to raise its alert status in response.

Commentary: The Soviet overreaction to Able Archer 83 was dangerous, but we urge you, dear explorers, not to heed the doomsayers who contend the world was on the very brink of nuclear annihilation. Just say "No" to sensationalism!

Lest we forget.

The Explorers' Club, № CMXLVIII

The Space Race—Astronaut Group 2 (the "New Nine"), Part VI
Frank Frederick Borman II (born 14 March 1928), Colonel, U.S. Air Force—He flew Gemini VII (1965) & Apollo 8 (1968), commanding both flights; he served on the review board after the Apollo 1 fire & as N.A.S.A.'s liaison to the White House during Apollo 11, being in the Oval Office with Nixon; Borman described his role as an astronaut as neither an adventurer nor a scientist, but a "Cold War warrior."

Commentary: As of this publication, Colonel Borman is still alive, aged ninety-five.

Borman's (played by David Andrews) verbal duel with Senator Walter Mondale (played by John Slattery) during the Apollo 1 episode of From the Earth to the Moon is possibly my favorite moment of the entire brilliant miniseries.

Bonus! Space Race Song o' the Day: The New Nine—Frank Borman
Robert Preston, "Gary, Indiana" from The Music Man: Original Soundtrack (Space Cadet Mike Papa Whiskey)

The Wayback Machine Tour of Frank Borman
The Explorers' Club, № DCCLXXXVII: The 55th Anniversary of Gemini VII, Part I
The Explorers' Club, № DCCXC: The 55th Anniversary of Gemini VII, Part II
The Explorers' Club, № DCCXXIV: The 50th Anniversary of Apollo 8, Part I
The Explorers' Club, № DCCXXV: The 50th Anniversary of Apollo 8, Part II
The Explorers' Club, № DCCXXVI: The 50th Anniversary of Apollo 8, Part III

Semper exploro.

The Explorers' Club, № DCCCXLVIII

Operation AXIOM: The Space Race—The 55th Anniversary of OPS 0855
3 November 1966: OPS 0855 lifted off from Florida's Cape Kennedy Air Force Station, an unmanned "Gemini B" spacecraft atop a Titan IIIC rocket; this was the only flight of the U.S. Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory; the Gemini capsule flew a suborbital trajectory & was recovered by the U.S.S. LaSalle; the laboratory mockup entered low Earth orbit, burning up during re-entry on 9 January 1967.

Commentary: The Gemini capsule, SC-2, had previously flown the suborbital Gemini 2 mission (19 January 1965). For the M.O.L. project, it was modified by having a hatch installed in the heat shield, through which the crew would access the laboratory module.

Semper exploro.

The Explorers' Club, № DCCCXXXV

Operation AXIOM: The Cold War—The 60th Anniversary of the Berlin Wall
13 August 1961: East German & Soviet troops closed the borders between West Berlin/East Berlin & West Berlin/East Germany; workers & engineers began stringing up one hundred twenty-four miles of barbed wire & tearing up roads to render them impassable; concrete barriers & machine-gun towers would be added later; the East German name for the Wall was the "Anti-Fascist Protective Rampart."

Commentary: The Wall was described as a defensive barrier, the "Anti-Fascist Protective Rampart" (antifaschistischer Schutzwall), yet the machine guns were pointed inward at the Communist citizens of East Berlin & East Germany, not outward at the "fascist" citizens of West Berlin.

The Explorers' Club, № DCCCXXVIII

Operation AXIOM: The Cold War—The 60th Anniversary of the K-19 Incident
4 July 1961: The Soviet Hotel-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine K-19 suffered the loss of all nuclear reactor coolant; to avoid a reactor meltdown, officers & crew worked in a highly radioactive environment to jury rig a new coolant system; they succeeded, but most of the sub was irradiated: eight men died of radiation poisoning within three weeks, & fourteen more within two years.

Commentary: As a result of the near-meltdown & irradiation, the K-19 was nicknamed "Hiroshima." The submarine continued to have a cursed career, colliding with a U.S. attack submarine in 1969 & suffering a deadly on-board fire in 1972 that killed thirty sailors.

Lest we forget.

The Loot: 40 Jahre

The title 40 Jahre is inspired by the film Good Bye, Lenin!, which made me aware that Communist East Germany, the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, D.D.R.), celebrated its fortieth anniversary of (puppet) statehood in 1989, mere weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall. I also considered the titles The 40-Year-Old Virgin or This Is 40, referencing the motion pictures of the same names, but there is something in the desperate, in fact already defeated boast of 40 Jahre D.D.R. that makes my black heart sing. Am I as doomed as East Germany? Probably, but aren't we all?

My closest kin were, as ever, overly generous.

Apollo 11 Anniversary
Flown Apollo 11 Kapton foil from the Columbia (1969)
First Lunar Landing 5th Anniversary envelope (1974)

Books
Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Christus Vivit! (Christ Is Alive!)
Christopher Carstens, A Devotional Journey into the Mass: How Mass Can Become a Time of Grace, Nourishment, and Devotion
Sam Guzman, The Catholic Gentleman: Living Authentic Manhood Today
Ulrich L. Lehner, God Is Not Nice: Rejecting Pop Culture Theology and Discovering the God Worth Living For

Commentary: Carstens is one of the hosts of the podcast The Liturgy Guys, which your humble narrator enjoys immensely.

Motion Pictures
Congo (1995)

Commentary: I have an absurd fondness for Congo; objectively, I know it's a terrible film, but I prefer it to many other, "better" films all the same.

Haberdashery
"Fe Sharpens Fe" T-shirt
"Moses was the first person with a tablet downloading data from the cloud" T-shirt

Commentary: "Fe Sharpens Fe" references Proverbs, 27:17:

Iron sharpens iron,
and one man sharpens another.

The use of the symbol Fe, including iron's atomic number twenty-six, makes this not just a funny Christian T-shirt, but also a funny science T-shirt.

Unlike "Fe Sharpens Fe," the "Moses" T-shirt, which includes a graphic of the tablets of the Ten Commandments, wasn't on my list, but is a quality gift all the same. I wore it yesterday, because the First Reading at daily Mass was the Ten Commandments from the Book of Exodus, though at both Masses I attended (a birthday week treat to myself), the readings for the Memorial of Ss. Joachim & Anne were read instead, with the First Reading from the Book of Sirach.

Eaglemoss Star Trek Starships
№ 57: Romulan Bird-of-Prey (2260s)
№ 123: Romulan Science Vessel

Commentary: To the best of my knowledge, I now have every Romulan vessel in the Eaglemoss line.

Miscellany
Star Trek: The Next Generation P.A.D.D. journal
Star Trek stickers
Fountains of Wayne sticker

The Rebel Black Dot Song o' the Day: SKAfter Party

Operation AXIOM
Ich Bin Ein Berliner, "Fifties Girl" from In Ska We Trust (The Last Angry Rude Boy)

Skammentary: Fifty-six years ago to the day, 26 June 1963, United States president John F. Kennedy delivered the famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, proclaiming the solidarity of all free men with the besieged denizens of West Berlin. One must recall that the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin has attempted to starve West Berlin into submission just fifteen years earlier with the Berlin Blockade of 1948-1949. The equivalent from right now is 2004-2005, which doesn't seem that long ago, reminding us how near 1948-1949 was to 1963. J.F.K. gave the "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, 26 June 1963, fifty-six year ago today.

Operation AXIOM: Black Ribbon Day

'Tis Black Ribbon Day, the American observance of the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism & Nazism. Seventy-eight years ago to the day, 23 August 1939, the foreign ministers of Nazi Germany & the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a neutrality agreement that divided Eastern Europe into "spheres of influence." For the next fifty-two years, 'til the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, first Nazi & then Communist totalitarian repression would blight the face of Europe, slaughtering tens of millions outright & grinding hundreds of millions of terrorized survivors under an iron boot. We dare never forget how close absolutely tyranny was, how acceptable it was in even polite company. We American fought the good fight against both Nazism & Soviet Communism, but very few of us ever saw the oppression close up, even lived in such fear societies. Never forget & never again.

"First They Came…"
by Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

The Wayback Machine Tour of Black Ribbon Day
Black Ribbon Day '16
Black Ribbon Day '15
Black Ribbon Day '14

'Tis also the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade & its Abolition. The slave trade may no longer be legal, but we should never mistake abolition from elimination. Slavery continues today, & we are all in chains so long as anyone is in chains.

While I dislike the tenor of much of our current sociopolitical discourse, I must say I am greatly encouraged by the recent movement to remove statues of Confederate "heroes" & to rename buildings & institutions that had honored that vile conglomeration of slavers & traitors. The Confederates lost the war, but in all too many ways they won the peace; it is high time we recognize treason as treason, & debunk & denounce the myth of the "Lost Cause of the Confederacy."

Operation AXIOM | Atlanticism

Sixty-seven years ago to the day, 4 April 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington, D.C., forming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, better known by the acronym N.A.T.O. The original twelve signatories were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, & the United States. N.A.T.O. was formed to defend the Western liberal democracies & allied authoritarian regimes against the expansionist ambitions of the Soviet Union.

N.A.T.O. succeeded in this purpose throughout the Cold War, serving as a key component of European peace & integration. Think the last seventy-one years of peace in Europe aren't that impressive? Think about the wars that raged in the heart of Europe seventy-one years from 1878-1949, & you might have to rethink your position. Despite the absurd claims of the odious & staggeringly ignorant Donald Trump that N.A.T.O. has outlasted its mission & thus serves no useful purpose today, the threats of jihadist terrorism—Daesh (I.S.I.S./I.S.I.L.), al-Qaeda, & others—& an again expansionist Russia—this time the post-Soviet Russian Federation—prove that N.A.T.O. is still vital to the peace of Europe & the whole world. The North Atlantic Treaty was signed, 4 April 1949, sixty-seven years ago today.

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day

"Weird Al" Yankovic, "Happy Birthday" from "Weird Al" Yankovic (Mike Papa Whiskey)

Commentary: I'm as big a fan of chipper doomsaying as they next fellow—after all, I'm an ardent fan of Reel Big Fish—but "Happy Birthday" indulges in the type of Cold War doom & gloom that was so in vogue in 1983, as if President Reagan was attempting to spark "World War III" while the valiant New Soviet Men were trying to save us from ourselves. I confess that I have the benefit of hindsight, but even accounting for this I find the self-hating paranoia of the early '80s "peace movement" particularly irksome in its baselessness. I know, one should never take "Weird Al" this seriously. I like "Happy Birthday," otherwise it would not be the R.B.D.S.O.T.D.

"Well, what's the matter, little thing, you think this party is the pits?
Enjoy it while you can, we'll soon be blown to bits!
The monkeys in the Pentagon are gonna cook our goose,
Their finger's on the button, all they need is an excuse!
Doesn't take a military genius to see
We'll all be crispy critters after World War III!
There's nowhere you can run to, nowhere you can hide,
When they drop the Big One we all get fried!…"

This same Zeitgeist is on appropriate display in the new German spy-thriller television series Deutschland 83, which I invite you to watch on SundanceTV, if you are able.

A delightful quote from the motion picture The Russia House—screenplay by Tom Stoppard, based on the novel of the same name by John le Carré—spoken by an American in the company of four Britons:

Proud to know you, Barley. I'm the odd man out here. I work for the Central Intelligence Agency, which as you probably know is based in Langley in the state of Virginia. Let's have some fun. Let's do some good.

I've not read The Russia House, but look forward to doing so as I enjoyed all of the other le Carré novels I've read. I've seen the motion picture several times; I have a keen interest in spy fiction, both cinematic & literary, & it is a fine example of the genre.