Eternal Flames

When I worked for Lockheed for NASA Life Sciences in the early 90s, I sometimes escort-interpreted for visiting Soviet space physicians or cosmonauts. 

One time there was a Space Convention and the chief Soviet cosmonaut was going to speak at it. His wife came for four days, too, and I was asked to help her get around town.

MUCH more fun than word processing which was my main job,

She loved art and knew more about the art museums that she wanted to visit in DC than I did.  I looked through boxes of old stuff from college and found a pamphlet-like book that had a lot of chapters with stuff like how to go to the Laundromat or the post office or the movies or to museums.

Luckily.

At that time I hadn't really spoken Russian very much for a long time so I was rusty.

The cosmonaut's wife read English OK, but couldn't speak English at all, really.  We went to the Phillips Gallery, the Corcoran . . . the National Gallery of Art . . . the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art.  And she said she also wanted to go to the National Cathedral and she wanted to visit President Kennedy's grave.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6O-ALFitpw

I am writing this because we happened to get the DVD of the documentary about McNamara, "The Fog of War," and Robert Strange McNamara was just in tears telling about how he and Robert Kennedy chose the site of JFK's grave because JFK had been there with him and told him he thought it was the most beautiful place in the DC area.

It is.

And when I lived in DC whenever I was missing my friends who had died in plane crashes or my uncles who had come home from WWII but had passed away when I was an adult . . . I would find my way to Arlington and walk up the hill to JFK's grave and contemplate the Eternal Flame . . . and walk over to sit where I could watch the river and the city and listen to the cadence of the guards of the Tombs of the Unknown Military Members . . . and watch middle schoolers or whoever put wreaths there.

And if it was raining that was OK because tears blend well with rain water.

And when I was there with the cosmonaut's wife I had run out of taxi cab money that I had been given so she said, "Why don't we go on the Metro?"

So we did  . . . but in Moscow there is a train about every few of minutes, but at noontime in DC there trains are sometimes 12 minutes apart.  And we waited and waited and she said with a modicum of discuss, "This ISN'T a Metro."

And not having been to Moscow yet, I had to agree with her anyway . . . but she held up well.



And one day no one had told me that her husband was supposed to be at a cocktail party, so when he joined us late in the day I asked them if they wanted to see "The Blue Planet" at the Air and Space Museum's IMAX Theater.

So I sat between the man who at that time had spent the 2nd longest time in space (the first was also a Soviet cosmonaut) . . . they had resided in the Salyut Space Station.  And the point of the movie was how you can see the effects of pollution even from low Earth orbit -- muddiness coming out of the mouth of the Amazon River, etc.

And there would be views of different parts of the Earth and I would try to say what it was faster than the cosmonaut.

("HAH!  That's the Horn of Africa!!")

But the only one he didn't know right away was Cuba.  (The Soviet Earth trace might not have been that way much or something -- or maybe he was just being nice.)

And if anyone asked him if he was going into space again and his wife was listening, she said, "NO!"

And when I picked them up to take them to the airport to go back to Moscow on an Aeroflot flight, they said, "We would like to stop at the National Cathedral and at a store where we can get a color TV with the right kind of electrical system for the Soviet Union."

I replied, "We don't have enough time -- we will miss the plane!"

But the cosmonaut laughed and said, "No we won't."

And I was very happy to point out the moon rock in the Creation Window . . . as I had been to point out the one at the Air and Space Museum that you can touch . . .

Stop me if I have told you all this before . . .

And the other Eternal Flames I have seen are in front of memorials for the soldiers from the Soviet Kazakh Republic lost in the ten years the Soviets were in Afghanistan . . . and for the people and soldiers who died and were starved to death in the 900 day siege of Leningrad . . . and for all the soldiers of all Russian Wars outside the Kremlin Wall . . . and for Great Patriotic War military members in Sergeev Posad outside of Moscow.

But also we all can be eternal flames of light and love and life . . .

"You are the light of the world." 

But if you don't have any light, ask someone to light your fire . . . and then pass it on, OK?

Thanks!


Kathleen Ware Harris  © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com