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COLUMBIA'S MAIDEN VOYAGE
A Personal Remembrance

It was 2:45 in the morning when I pointed my car north on Interstate 5. The directions the NASA PR office had given me were clear, but I wanted to be there in plenty of time. The very first Shuttle ever to fly was in space even as I drove, completing the last of its 36 orbits of Earth. This morning, it would land at Edwards Air Force Base. But not without me watching from a court side seat.

April 1981 was a busy month for me. I'd moved to Los Angeles just sixteen months earlier, giving up my life as a New York journalist to return to my drama roots. Now I was converting my articles about women in the space program into a TV pilot, "Project Athena," auditioning for "Star Trek" films, and performing nightly in Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice."

But part of me would always be a reporter. Unable to sit still when NASA announced its first joint mission with the Russians, I'd gotten a plum Associated Press assignment as the youngest reporter covering the Apollo Soyuz mission. Ever since, I'd maintained my relationship with the NASA PR office, fascinated by the latest developments, writing about them every chance I got.

I'd driven out to Edwards once before—to see Enterprise land. Though she was a Shuttle prototype, she hadn't been space-worthy and had flown to altitude piggy-backed on a 747, then separated to do a test landing. The huge plane with its tiny wings had seemed barely able to fly, but we'd all been filled with a sense of promise that day.
So when I called to arrange press credentials for this first landing from space, I'd been expected. This time, however, there was the matter of my pals who wanted to come with me. Three of my fellow Shakespeareans were not about to miss this moment in history.

NASA would have welcomed then as VIPs, but they were actors unable to resist the opportunity to play parts in this reality show. So I explained the situation to the Press office and asked if they could be credentialed as my photographer and two assistants.
My colleagues were all excellent actors—almost too good. One took his role as would-be photographer so seriously that he dressed the part. When he arrived, cross-gartered with camera straps, and presented his license, the PR woman said, "You're not Perry King." "Hmm," he answered. "I was, the last time I looked." When he'd removed his camera gear, the woman was so excited to meet him, she rushed him past the barrier with a flurry. When the moment came, my sister was too excited by the whole event to pull off the reporter act, but she too was given a celebrity's welcome.

The chill of desert dawn passed like the flick of a road-runner's tail, and by nine a.m. we'd peeled off our jackets and joined the first few reporters in the press area—a section of desert so remote as not to need barricades. About to experience the marvel of aerospace's latest technology, we were now greeted by dry lake bed, three-hundred-sixty degrees of sky, and the few inches of shade our cars afforded. Having expected to see something resembling an airport landing strip, we discovered Shuttle's runway was a stretch of parched earth demarcated by two solid lines of chalk.

Ten a.m. felt like high noon. Lined up with the other spaceniks as close to the chalk as officials would allow, I clicked my ballpoint pen to jot down some "color commentary" in my brand new NASA reporter's notebook, while photographers adjusted their tripods and attached yard-long lenses to their cameras. Each of us in our way used our powers of observation to capture the moments as they ticked by: heat waves danced off the desert floor; VIPs pulled on hats and took their places on bleachers across the runway from us; birds flew by overhead, making us jerk our heads upward.

While photographers fine-tuned their lenses, my sister made ready with preparations of her own. Having inherited the elegance-gene from our mother, she spread a linen table cloth on baked Mojave ground, arranged place settings of crystal goblets and sterling silver for four, then served her perfectly seasoned tuna hero sandwiches. Though it was mid-morning, it was lunch time for us. I wondered what time zone the astronauts used for their meal schedule, and whether my sister's delicious tuna could be squeezed into a tube.

The heat rose. The men took off their shirts. We sank into our 12 inches of shade. My thoughts wandered into a mathematical contemplation. The planet was hurtling itself through its solar orbit at 67,000 miles per hour, encircled by a craft speeding ahead of Earth's own rotation by traveling 17,000 mph. While the moon completed one orbit in 27.3 days, Shuttle's two-day mission would take it around Earth 36 times, and would soon have traveled 933,757 nautical miles. My heart was beating 120 times a minute
Today, two men were gliding on desert currents back to Earth. But someday, women would go into space. And this would be the craft to take them. And African-Americans and Native-Americans would fly. And one day they'd be joined by compatriots from other countries. And someday teachers and scientists would go, and send their images into classrooms and board rooms. And not long after that, journalists would take the ride. My name was on the list.

An unseen explosion cracked the sky, and then cracked it again. The double sonic boom shattered the desert silence, Shuttle's signature salutation heard for the first time. A lone shout, and we all strained our eyes trying to confirm the speck we saw was no mirage. And then the speck grew larger, a flick of silver, a wing, and a prayer.

We could see her, then, more clearly by the second, a magical craft appearing from a cloudless sky, dropped into Earth's atmosphere like an alien visitant. But these were our guys, and they were coming home. Unpremeditated exuberance ripped through the sedate line of reporters and we leapt to our feet like children at a circus who'd waited all day for the artists of the high wire to appear. Photographers who'd been polishing their bumpers now jumped onto the hoods of their cars to get three feet closer to the sky. Tears streaming down our faces, we yelled till we were hoarse, "Go, Baby, Go!"

And then we watched a triangle of brick float gently to Earth, defying rumor, overcoming fear. We clutched one another's arms to keep her on course and pulled our hair to prevent the tires from hitting too hard when she bounced one final time. Self-effacing as astronauts always are, Bob Crippen said in the Press briefing, "I think I landed her twice." Our laughter was in relief, delight, and admiration. Despite his senior status, John Young looked both boyishly joyful, and unsurprised at the day's grand accomplishment.

One hundred million Americans were watching the images transmitted that day. Hundreds of millions more watched around the world and joined us in spirit. But they couldn't feel the heat, or sense the sheer wonder of a friendly spaceship landed safely in the neighborhood.

Columbia was to have twenty-seven more missions in her twenty-three-year history. She set the tone for her many successes that first day: none of her 31,000 heat-shielding tiles were dislodged as they glowed red-hot at 2,700 degrees of her descent through the atmosphere. Seven months from today I'd be here in the Mojave again watching Columbia land with this first mission's back-up crew at her helm. Time and again, she would repeat her journey, until her missions were so incident-free that journalists stopped filing reports.

It's 2003, now, and Columbia is a memory. Finishing my midnight notes, I tear off the last page in the slender spiral notebook I keep on my bedside table. It's been there for so many years, I'm sorry to see the last page used up. I'll have to find a store that sells these. Where did I get this one, anyway? I flip the cover to see. "Reporter's Space Flight Note Pad." In the center of its cover the notebook has a logo. A picture of the prototype Shuttle is landing safely, its tires spewing smoke and runway dust. Around the circular photo is the slogan, "Our Spaceship Landed On Earth."

The Columbia landed in my heart many years ago. Here, she will always be safe.

Mara Purl was a junior member of the Associated Press team that covered the Apollo Soyuz mission. She attended Columbia's inaugural landing with actors Linda Purl, Perry King and Simon MacCorkindale.

©2003 by Mara Purl

SNOW ANGELS

Waking before dawn, I lay in our darkened room sensing a change had taken place over night. A special light seemed to be coming through the windows. It wasn't the moon—she was in her dark phase. There was still no glimmer from the sun's first rays. Yet a soft glow emanated from an unseen source. Tiptoeing to the window, I looked out and smiled. A foot of fresh powder had fallen silently and was waiting to bounce sunlight brilliantly across the landscape.

Filled with a childlike wonder, I imagined dashing out the back door, leaping from the deck, twisting gracefully through the air and landing on my back. Then I'd slide my arms and legs in arcs to form the imprint of an angel in the snow.

In reality, the making of snow angels was always a more cumbersome affair. I remembered being five years old. Barely able to move in the layers of clothing my mother bundled me into, I marched stiff-legged out the front door, a miniature abominable snowman. Choosing my spot, I'd turn my back on it, and let myself fall in a delicious thrill of daring. And a parental hand was there to pull me back onto my small feet.

As the years went by, nothing much changed, except that I had further to fall. Choosing where to plant my rear end, I'd force myself to land fanny first, hoping a big rock wasn't lurking under the snow. Feeling foolish, I'd waggle my arms and legs as quickly as the heavy, wet snow would allow. Then there was the matter of getting up. No friendly hand was there to yank me from my self-appointed seat. The dilemma was how to stand and not ruin the angel? I developed a technique of sliding my seat towards my heels, then using all my powers of Tai Chi to rise without poking a hand through the angel's skirt.
How many angels had I made through the years? It would be impossible to count. There were the Kindergarten angels in Connecticut; there were the High School angels in Japan where I grew up; there were the ceremonial angels no one but me ever saw in remote camp grounds above Los Angeles. There was the joy of flopping in the snow with my nephew, inaugurating him into the tradition. There was the romantic snow angel commemorated in love notes to my husband. There was the memorial snow angel for departed friends and heroes.

A scraping interrupted my reverie and I went to the front door to determine what was making the sound. Peering out the window, I couldn't quite believe what I saw at first. Three well-bundled figures wielding large, flat shovels were scooping snow from my neighbor's drive way. While they worked, a small plow cleared the street, and the shovel-meisters put the finishing touches on corners and edges. A few minutes later, their task completed, they headed toward our house. Like elves, they resolutely worked their magic, leaving pristine snow to decorate our front yard, clearing the driveway so we could get to work without difficulty.

Who were these intrepid souls who braved the sub-zero temperatures while we were cozy in our jammies? Did they have special snow-alarms that told them to wake three hours early on white mornings? To what nether regions did they fade away when the snow melted?

I wanted to throw on a coat, jump into boots and dash outside to thank them. But I was afraid if I acknowledged they were there, they'd disappear. One doesn't disturb the elves at their work. One thanks them silently, and trusts that Spirit will provide them when they're again needed.

Next time I flopped in the snow to create an angel, I knew what I'd be commemorating. Now I knew who the real snow angels were.

©2003 by Mara Purl

SLEEPING WITH ANGELS

My bed is gloriously huge and flat. So firm I'm sometimes tempted to use it for a desk, somehow it mysteriously allows me to float for hours on its foam core as though drifting away on clouds. And then there's the perfection of pillows. Down-envelopes of varying firmness and size surround my tired limbs, cushioning my fall into the subconscious depths. When the whole arrangement is topped with a down comforter, I'm enveloped in faerie-feathers as I'm spirited away from the known world. Masking all but the loudest of the big city noises, from my night stand an electronic brook gurgles in my stream of consciousness.

For many years, I had the privilege of sleeping with Kitty. Sometimes she'd curl around my outstretched arm and I'd fall asleep with my hand in a purring fur hat. Sometimes she was a fur collar, and on occasion she'd wedge herself between my legs, pinning me to the mattress for the duration. My favorite visits were those when she'd drape herself along my upturned shoulder and purr into my ear.

But sleeping alone has its charms. As I burrow into my nightly magic carpet, my last thoughts are of gratitude to the Goddess of Beds who obviously influenced all the manufacturers involved with foam and down. And I thank Her for such perfect guidance during my shopping forays.

It's in the middle of the night that the magic really works. When the Muse taps my shoulder at two a.m. my foam releases me just enough to let me reach pad and pencil, then ushers me back into the theatre for the remainder of the evening's program. When it's the Night of the Wild Leg, the expanse of uninhabited mattress is unperturbed alike by arabesque or karate kick. And the sorting and sifting of the past day's events is transformed alchemically into texts of silver, images of gold.

I can't say it was wonderful to wake alone that morning in January of 1994. As the Northridge Quake hurled a lamp at my head and ejected my grandmother's crystal from the not-so-distance kitchen cabinet, there wasn't enough light to see my own hand, nor was there any comfort as I rode aftershocks in the dark hours till dawn.

When I married, my husband and I shopped for the appropriate down and foam. We came up with a close approximation and the configuration seemed correct. In the first weeks of cohabiting, his movements startled and his snores snatched me from slumber. With our commuting marriage, I began to dream of my distant bed, longing for its solitary comforts never more than two weeks away.

But then there was the night I watched a late movie, a tale of nuclear war. Terrified, I couldn't stop shivering. My husband held me through the gloom, the finest comfort in life. When we've read our books till our heads are nodding, we turn off lamps and snuggle limb to limb, matched shapes listening to the night sounds. We reach for one another's hands before dawn. As though we're on a first high school date, we clutch fingers furtively, or boldly dance palm-to-palm.

It's a gift, those nights of drifting alone on clouds. But nothing compares to sleeping with angels.

Mara Purl is a script writer and novelist who commutes between Los Angeles and Colorado.

©2003 by Mara Purl

SMALL TOWN MUSINGS

THE CAMBRIAN
(Knight Ridder, The Tribune News, San Luis Obispo, California)
November 1, 2001

November 11 will be the two month anniversary of the world's most devastating terrorist attack. It will also be Veteran's Day, and America has a new war, with new vets, both here and abroad, to prove it.

Like most Americans, and many other world citizens, I've been struggling these past two months to rediscover the relevance of my life. It was sunny before, or at worst, partly cloudy. Now, a shadow has fallen across the sun. It's the smoke pluming toward satellites, rising from the stricken towers. It's the ash of time lines torn asunder raining the debris of lost lives into mine. I think, pray, and write about them, honoring them if I can.

And there, a crack in the black clouds lets in a little light again. Each of the people lost had a context—a family, a circle of friends, a personal internet touching many other lives. It's those lives—the lives of strangers who become friends—I write about in my story.

Milford-Haven began as a tribute—specifically, to Cambria, where I spent a summer performing at the Pewter Plough Playhouse long ago and became a permanent resident emotionally, if not physically; and a tribute generally, to small towns, which I see as the microcosm of the American Dream.

In my little fictitious town of Milford-Haven, the issues of the day foment: care of the environment is weighed in the balance with employment and competition; ancient grudges grind on their bearers till they surface and must be faced; romances bloom and transform natures; war heros grapple with losses and reach deep for the courage to love again. As the story continues to progress through (so far) five novels, themes emerge: being honest with oneself yields character transformation; forgiving old ills restores faith; facing challenges produces strength and foresight; humility opens hearts. As Cambria-native and NASA astro-physicist Laurance Doyle put it, my "books are about how to solve the problems of life."

For a while it seemed these were the issues of peace, and that my story was now dated, becoming overnight a comprehensive picture of how life used to be. And yet as I've gradually been able to return to work, I realize these stories may have increased in relevance. Now, more than ever, don't we need to cherish our way of life? Each time we have a triumph in business or in scientific discovery, haven't we added to the collective awareness by proving the impossible to be possible after all? Wouldn't we want this sense of freedom and opportunity to be available to anyone ready to cherish it? If we had world peace, isn't this what we'd be doing with it?

Perhaps, after all, my mission is intact and my work is laid out for me, because life in a small town is what it's all about.

Mara Purl has been a frequent visitor to Cambria since 1984. Her radio drama Milford-Haven debuted in Cambria in 1987 and was broadcast on the BBC in 1992. The Milford-Haven Novels, with cover art by Cambria artist Ron Covert, are sold at the Cambria Book Company.

FLOATING MIRROR

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
February 1, 1983

In the logs of sailing ships that plied the pacific a hundred years ago, we are told never a day went by without mention of a whale. Whales were to the sea what clouds are to the sky -- it was a rare day when one didn't seem them. They seem by all accounts to have been creatures of great innocence. They cavorted through the waves and plumbed the depths with a vigor that reveled in their enormous strength. Their great weight was translated into weightless muscle tone, and their big warm eyes spotted each other in the depths. Sometimes their "sounding" was for food. Other times they seemed fairly to explode out of the water for sheer joy.

I have read these accounts -- those of the ancestral captains, and those of the contemporary whale-watchers. Unfortunately my own encounter with the mammoth cetaceans was not so joyful, nor so innocent. We were leaving the California coast full of enthusiasm and determination, the fourth pacific Greenpeace voyage. At first we indulged our reveries, drawing whale cartoons, writing whale poetry, and rushing topside to look for the genuine article.

Days went by. We cling to the rail and squinted through our binoculars. Not a single spout. Not a fluke, not a dark shape in the water. We tried the crow's next, and posted a permanent watch around the clock, desperate to see any sign of the leviathan.

It was in our fifth week at sea that we finally caught sight of our first whale. We didn't spot it by a fluke or a spray of water as we had expected. We spotted it by the marker that had been left protruding from its back. It had been suspended at the surface for some time. Fortunately, it was dead. Suddenly our crew went from a friendly family group to tightly drawn organization with a mission. We grabbed our life jackets; we slipped over the side into three-person motorboats, we sped toward the huge mechanical whaling ship, rising ten stories out of the water, and looming six hundred feet in length.

It wasn't the red water, staining our boats, and our memories. It wasn't the carcasses tugged to the flensing deck by ragged ropes. It wasn't the gentle eyes silently imploring us for some last-minute reprieve. These images and smells and sounds are now only part of the mental movie.

It was the single human face, filling a lower porthole, in the mammoth mother whaling ship,. It was looked cheerfully out at the foreigners in their attempt to save the fellow creatures. "Come join us!" the man had seemed to say as he beckoned with a gesture. "Come join us!" we had replied in his native tongue. How could it be that we were at odds with this single sailor? How could we have steamed sic thousand miles and spent $80,000 in donations to confront a smiling face?

And here we found our lesson. We hadn't come to confront any man at all. We had come to confront that mind which is enmity against life. We had come to confront it in ourselves. After all, that smiling face was us. We had come not to save the whales, but to learn from their gentle surrender how to save ourselves.

OF GRANDMOTHERS AND FAVORITE THINGS

I was privileged to have three grandmothers. The first, so to speak, was my paternal grandmother. I was too young to actually meet her, but family legend has it that she met me. We were two ships that passed in this mortal realm. Or rather, two trains.

Beatrice Savelle was a well-known actress of her day. It is because of her that my sister and I can say we're the third generation of our family to be in the theatre. One of the founding members of the Chicago branch of Actors' Equity, she criss-crossed the country by rail, often touring with Melvyn Hesselburg, who later became (the well-known actor and) our God-father Melvyn Douglas.

Once I had an important script meeting in northern California, and had to make it back to Los Angeles for an evening performance. I was traveling by train, and it was as I stood nervously waiting on the platform that I felt Grandmother Beatrice Savelle Purl standing beside me, her costumes carefully packed in her trunk, and a small boy by her side who would later become my father.

The second was my maternal grandmother. She was married to the tall and elegant mayor of a small town, and raised three daughters and five adopted sons. She kept her large home immaculately clean and humming with activity, but it is the fragrances I remember best. As a three-year-old I awoke to the aroma of her freshly baked biscuits; I explored the mysterious record player cabinet, the smell of which still conjures up slightly scratchy versions of Beethoven and Duke Ellington; I delved into the depths of the cool cellar where her homemade applesauce waited to be jarred; and I never went to sleep in her house without the fragrance of the Cashmere Bouquet which Mamaw always wore.

The third was my paternal step-grandmother. She came into my life when I was five. I had the honor of serving as the flower girl for my grandparents' wedding -- something not everyone can claim. My parents had long since become aware of my penchant for performing. They could scarcely avoid the performances I gave nightly on the hearth, which I assumed was the family stage. But it was Grandma Dorothy who discovered my proclivity for writing in blank notebooks ( I wrote constantly: plays, poems, and stories); and it was she who introduced me to the wonders of the attic. She had a lovely home which, with its purple drapes and vivid floral print sofas, looked like Spring no matter the time of year. But by far the most interesting place to explore was her attic. Dress-up was one great game to play up there: my feet were half the length of the open-toed high heels, and WWII silk dresses dragged along the floor, but I admired myself in the antique mirror just the same. But best of all was the note-book hunting. No matter how many I filled with my stories and poems, there were somehow magically always more notebooks, tucked in old purses, slipped into dusty folded umbrellas, and hiding in deep drawers. It wasn't until I was fifteen that she told me she'd planted the notebooks for me. It had been her secret joy, and it has always been mine.

To this day I count among my favorite things trains, biscuits, and blank notebooks.

©1998 By Mara Purl

OF TREEHOUSES AND KITTY CATS

I love trees. The very first thing I insisted on having my father do whenever we moved, was to build me a treehouse. Bless him, he always obliged eventually.

In Connecticut, it wasn't exactly in a tree, but it was real house: a door that opened, windows to look out (covered with clear plastic, rather than glass), and just enough room for sleeping bags for me, my sister, and our neighbors who lived just through the woods. My Dad and I worked very hard on it. I stood there and held the nails and later my Mom helped me lay bricks and plant flowers along a little path leading to the front door, which I painted red (with help.)

When we moved to Tokyo we had the best one, believe it or not. We had an old ramshackle house on a half acre of land -- Tokyo was laid out much like Los Angeles: a major city, but with lawns and trees. And there was a Three-Tree, as I called it, three trees sprouting from one base. It formed perfect resting place for two platforms, the higher one larger, connected by a ladder. Once it was finished I used to spend hours out there, dreaming up stories and acting out marvelous adventures. Mom would have to bribe me back into the house with refrigerator cookies, or Tamako-san our Nanny would promised to make home made sukiyaki, my sister's and my favorite dish.

We had kitty cats in Tokyo, and the front of the house had a large outside balcony. One summer I contrived to build a pulley system from balcony to tree house (again, with help) and I attached old Easter baskets to it. I transported sandwiches, dollies, all kinds of necessary things to the tree house. One day I decided to transport my cat, whose name, in spite of his regal bearing, was Fluffy, no doubt because of his snow white fur. He did not like the idea of gong anywhere in an Easter basket, particularly one hanging from a string, but was such a devoted pet he endured is ride solemnly all the long way to the tree house. With mournful expression, he sat calmly as the basket jerked along, suspended high above the driveway, until he leapt into the tree from as close a distance as he dared. Once in the tree house, he liked it as much as I did, so he forgave me this unseemly mode of transport.

What I wish for every child is his or her own secret place, be it fortress or castle, cave or treehouse, and of course a special friend like a sister and Fluffy to share the big adventures.

©1999 by Mara Purl

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