Dialann | Issue 4, October 2011

ISSUE 4 OCTOBER 2011

Start spreading the news Our family moves to New York, New York* * Bushwick, Brooklyn, to be exact

ISSUE 4 OCTOBER 2011

table of contents 8

OPENING THOUGHTS

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Greetings from New York

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April–September 2011

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Life—especially at age 1— should be a beach

By Susan | How we got to our new home.

HERE & THERE

COLOPHON Our family Susan Jane Hibdon Joyce Dustin Tyler Joyce Fiona Claire Joyce

TRAVELOG

By Susan | Virginia Beach, 15–16 July 2011

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5.8 earthquake rocks D.C. and our home

By Dustin | We were all surprised when the ground shook on 23 August 2011.

10 Taking the Coca-Cola Freestyle for a spin

By Dustin | Giving this newfangled marvel of 21st-century engineering a try.

FOCUS ON FIONA

13 Going round, getting merry 20

By Fiona | Fiona reviews three of New York City’s carousels.

THE DAY THE WORLD CHANGED SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

14 Where we were 18 Ten years later: New York remembers OUR TIMES

20 End of an era

By Alan Boyle, science editor | msnbc.com When Atlantis landed on 21 July, America’s space-shuttle program drew to a close.

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On the cover Front: Susan and Fiona in the pedestrian plaza on Broadway at 23rd Street in Manhattan, just east of the Flatiron Building, with the Empire State Building in the background, 10 October 2011.

Back: Dustin and Fiona on the Central Park Carousel, 14 September 2011.

Sans serif text is set in Hypatia Sans Pro. Serif text is set in Adobe Text Pro. The motif color used in this issue is C=75, M=100, Y=0, K=40 This issue was designed on a Dell Inspiron ONE2305 desktop, with 4 GB of RAM, a 1 TB hard drive, and an AMD Athlon II X2 240e processor with a speed of 2.8 GHz. The software used includes InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator in Adobe Creative Suite 5.5, as well as Microsoft Word 2010.

The operating system was Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

Dialann is published quarterly, in January, April, July, and October.

WE BELIEVE IN CHRIST

dialann@seoighe.net http://www.youtube.com/DialannTV

By Dustin | Remembering the Savior means upholding our covenants with him.

Published by Seoighe 202.643.0403 | http://seoighe.net

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Printed by Blurb http://www.blurb.com

24 To always remember Him

28 The top 10 things I miss about Washington, D.C.

By Dustin | I’m grateful to be in New York, but part of my heart will always be in D.C.

Did you know? Central Park’s Carousel—the park’s third and one of America’s largest—opened at its current location in 1951.

Its 58 hand-carved horses and 2 chariots were made in 1908. It originally operated at Coney Island, Brooklyn. SEE PAGE 13

OPENING THOUGHTS

By SUSAN

The big news: we moved to New York City.

Greetings from New York To New York City, Where we’ve come to seek our fortune, Not of gold, or silver, or material things, But of adventure, and seeing things we’ve never seen, And discovering things we’ve never considered, And of always staying near to each other.

—Dustin

Inspired by Jane Jacobs’s dedication of her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities

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O C TO B E R 2 0 1 1

his August, we completed our first move as a family. The last time any of us moved was about three and a half years ago—Dustin and I moved most of our stuff into our apartment in Dorchester House about a week before we got married. This time, we were all in it together as an actual family.

When we found out we might be moving to Brooklyn, we started investigating things: Where to live? How to actually find an apartment? How to get our stuff there? When it became official, we sort of went into high gear. We looked at apartments online while we were at Donner Lake. Then, a few days after coming home from vacation, we went to New York to check things out. Finding an apartment in New York is a very different experience. There are large apartment buildings, but not in the area we wanted to live.

So, apparently, the best way to find an apartment is to go to a broker. This concept was very foreign, and a little uncomfortable, for us.

Our first morning in Brooklyn, we went to a Rapid Realty office and announced that we needed to find an apartment. Our broker talked to us for a little while about what kind of place we wanted, and then he took us to four apartments.

One of them was very nice, but I was not at all thrilled about the neighborhood. But it’s New York, and if we didn’t sign the lease, someone else would have the same day. So we went for it.

Next step: the actual move. We decided to use moving containers that would be forklifted into place on the street where we could pack them in a few days, then picked up and dropped

off in front of our apartment in Brooklyn two days later. We discovered it’s quite difficult to estimate how much stuff we have. The moving company said that based on our apartment size, we should get two cubes. But that didn’t seem like enough to us, so we ordered three.

Then we had to find a place for them. We put up “Emergency No Parking” signs on the street where the cubes were supposed to go, but...then a hurricane came (see page 9 of this magazine) and blew our signs, which were duct taped, away.

So there were cars there and we had to get new signs, call for the cars to be towed, and finally get our cubes parked.

Packing wasn’t fun. We decided that we have too much stuff, and we are in the process of getting rid of some of it. Fiona did not enjoy packing at all, because she wasn’t allowed to help, and we were so busy that she didn’t have a playmate for a few days. Fortunately, Karen came over at one point and packed one box and then played with Fiona. We managed to get all our stuff into boxes, and then all the boxes into the moving cubes, with the help of some members of our ward.

Mr. Pantone, my car, was sort of an issue.

We knew he needed to be sold, but that’s kind of a pain, especially since I was not willing to send him off with some faceless corporation that didn’t even think he was good enough to be resold on their lot. I advertised on Craigslist and got far more responses than I’ve ever gotten for anything on Craigslist. Most of them were rather gruff—one person sent me an email that just said “miles?” I was not selling my faithful car to someone like that. Fortunately, someone who lived just a few blocks away emailed me and said that Pantone sounded like just the kind of car she and her husband were looking for. Excellent!

They took a look at him, went for a test drive, and seemed to understand my attachment. The transaction couldn’t take place for a few weeks after we moved, so we left the car—trunk full of stuff that we had forgotten to put in the cubes— on the street.

Since we are train people, that’s how we got to New York. On the afternoon of Thursday, 1 September, we hopped on a train. We arrived at Penn Station at about 20.00, and we were

City of the world! (for all races are here, ■ All the lands of the earth make contributions here;) ■ City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides!

City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in and out with eddies and foam! ■ City of wharves and stores—city of tall façades of marble and iron!

Proud and passionate city— mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!

WALT WHITMAN “CITY OF SHIPS” (EXCERPT)

starving, so we paused for some pizza slices and let Fiona run around a little. We finally got to our new apartment sometime around 22.00. It was, of course, completely empty, and since the apartment itself was brand new, we were very nervous about damaging the floors. Since it was late, we didn’t spend a lot of time exploring.

We just inflated our borrowed air bed and tried to sleep. Fiona had the hardest time, since she doesn’t understand sleeping when she’s not in a confined space. But eventually we all settled down and got some rest.

The next day, our cubes arrived at about 13.00. Our branch president’s wife, offered to come pick up Fiona so that she could play with her kids and be safely out of the way while we unpacked. She was not at all sad to climb into the car and drive away. Dustin had arranged for the missionaries in our branch to help us unload.

Before they arrived, we met a man with some iguanas on the sidewalk—he was hanging around in front of the hair salon two doors down. When Dustin was inspecting the cubes, the man came over and asked if we needed any help. “Oh, no thanks, we have some people coming.”

When those people—elders wearing suits and nametags—arrived, the man came over and said, “Wait, you’re Mormon? I’m Mormon, too!”

It turned out that he had not been to church since he lived in the Dominican Republic, about nine years ago. Dustin and the missionaries invited him to church, and he came that Sunday. It was

nice to know that, just by moving, we had already helped find someone who wanted to come back to church.

We had only a four-hour window to unload our cubes, and since it had taken hours to load them, we were a little worried. We didn’t need to be: the four elders, senior couple, and Relief Society president had everything unloaded and into our apartment in an hour and a half. It was amazing.

Once our diligent helpers had left, we set to work on Fiona’s room—her very first room, all to herself! By the time the branch president's wife brought her (and our dinner) home, her room was all set up. She walked in and seemed quite happy to see all of her things there. Our first dinner in our new home was eaten, naturally, in Fiona’s room.

The next few weeks were difficult, since Fiona’s room was the only one without any boxes.

It was frustrating that we couldn’t walk across any room without climbing over something, and that in order to get to the thing we wanted, we had to move twelve other things. But with some time and patience, we got (almost) everything unpacked and organized. Now we all love our little apartment, with its cozy rooms (officially, there are five rooms, but we consider it to be at least a seven-room apartment) and quiet neighborhood. We’re happy we’re here and that we have the things we have: mostly, a happy and healthy family with a safe, comfortable home. d

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HERE & THERE

April–September 2011

Tidbits from around the world over the past six months.

Judging by the scope of these articles, it appears that approximately half of the important stuff that has occurred in the world over the past six months happened in Salt Lake City. the editors

Joseph Smith Memorial Building celebrates 100 years SALT LAKE CITY | 9 JUNE 2011

Information and images on these pages came from KSL-TV, ldschurchtemples. com, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, The Salt Lake Tribune, Think Progress, and Wikipedia. Some of the text in the paragraph about President Monson’s remarks at the celebration of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building’s 100th anniversary came from newsroom.lds.org.

O C TO B E R 2 0 1 1

President Thomas S. Monson, Utah governor Gary Herbert, Salt Lake City mayor Ralph Becker, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and others gathered at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building to celebrate 100 years of this landmark at the corner of Main and South Temple streets in downtown Salt Lake City. It opened in 1911 as the grand Hotel Utah and for 76 years hosted guests and dignitaries from around the United States and the world, including several U.S. presidents.

(Susan’s sister Karen even worked at the hotel for a time.)

The hotel closed in 1987. In his remarks, President Monson recalled that some people wanted to tear the building down, but in the end sentiment won the day. “Those who wanted it preserved were driven by the power of memory,” he said.

The building was renovated and reopened in 1993 as part of the Church headquarters campus.

Today it houses a number of Church offices, a chapel for several downtown wards, and three restaurants. Visitors are drawn by the stunning and ornate lobby, the FamilySearch Center, and the Legacy Theater where Church films such as Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration are shown. There was formerly a Distribution Center in the basement, where Dustin worked as a Church-service missionary from July 2003 to January 2004.

 The lobby of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building at Temple Square in Salt Lake City.

old  See the difference?

new

THINGS WE MISSED

Utah’s state flag gets a makeover.

Sort of. And it’s still ugly SALT LAKE CITY | 9 MARCH 2011

The Utah State Legislature—always focusing on the important things first—moved to correct a mistake apparently made on Utah’s state flag 89 years earlier that had been duplicated ever since.

In 1922, Dollie McGonegal, who had been asked to stitch a copy of the state flag for a “Parade of States” in New York City, put “1847” below the shield rather than on it. The legislature put the date back in the place specified by a 1913 statute.

They also tweaked the design of the eagle, beehive, and sego lilies and changed the color of the shield from blue to white.

Oh, and they proclaimed 9 March the annual Utah State Flag Day. Whereupon all other states proclaimed 9 March Boring Blue Bedsheet Day.

UNQUOTABLE

Sarah Palin on Paul Revere BOSTON | 2 JUNE 2011

Is-she-or-isn’t-she-running-for-president former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin hitched her horse up to the ol’ gaffe wagon while speaking to a reporter about Paul Revere’s midnight ride: He who warned, uh, the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringing those bells, and um, makin’ sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed.

QUOTABLE | DAVID BROOKS, COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES Speaking of those Republicans and others who think that maybe the United States’ defaulting on just a bit of debt wouldn’t be a bad thing:

“The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency. A nation makes a sacred pledge to pay the money back when it borrows money. But the members of this movement talk blandly of default and are willing to stain their nation’s honor.”

The New York Times, 4 July 2011

Church issues statement on immigration-reform debate

Afterwards, historians and the public debated SALT LAKE CITY | 10 JUNE 2011 whether she had really gotten the story wrong.

One of the hottest political topics in the United But the most important outcome of this episode?

States right now is immigration and how to It signaled that Wikipedia has officially become reform a system that just about everyone agrees the final arbiter of truth in America: Mrs. Palin’s is broken. Even in our increasingly polarized supporters, taking advantage of the ability political discourse, the immigration Wikipedia offers all users to edit articles, debate stands out for its highly We just revised the article on Paul Revere to partisan tone and both sides’ failure couldn’t resist reflect Mrs. Palin’s version of the events. putting Sarah Palin to consider other perspectives. More importantly, many in the debate are right next to neglecting the needs of children and Katie Couric.

THE EDITORS families who may be torn apart by an exacting application of immigration law and deportation.

It is on this latter point that the Church seems most concerned:

Temples update AS OF 31 OCTOBER 2011

Operating 135 Under construction 15 Announced 16 Announced 1 OCTOBER 2011

Provo Utah “Tabernacle” Barranquilla Colombia Durban South Africa Kinshasa Democratic Republic of Congo Star Valley Wyoming Paris France Ground broken Phoenix Arizona 4 JUNE 2011

 Katie Couric’s debut as anchor of the CBS Evening News on 5 September 2006.

BECAUSE DUSTIN’S A NEWS JUNKIE

Katie Couric leaves the anchor chair at the CBS Evening News NEW YORK CITY | 19 MAY 2011

Katie Couric, the first solo woman anchor of a major network’s nightly newscast, presented the CBS Evening News for the last time. Though she made history, she could never make the ratings the network sought. She was replaced by Scott Pelley.

There is still one major network evening newscast presented by a woman: ABC World News. Diane Sawyer, following the trail blazed by Ms. Couric, assumed the anchor’s chair there on 21 December 2009.

… The bedrock moral issue for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is how we treat each other as children of God.

The history of mass expulsion or mistreatment of individuals or families is cause for concern especially where race, culture, or religion are involved. This should give pause to any policy that contemplates targeting any one group, particularly if that group comes mostly from one heritage. …

The Church supports an approach where undocumented immigrants are allowed to square themselves with the law and continue to work without this necessarily leading to citizenship.

In another statement on the subject, the Church also noted, “We recognize an ever-present need to strengthen families. Families are meant to be together. Forced separation of working parents from their children weakens families and damages society.”

Fort Lauderdale Florida 18 JUNE 2011

Trujillo Perú

14 SEPTEMBER 2011

Philadelphia Pennsylvania 17 SEPTEMBER 2011

Payson Utah 8 OCTOBER 2011

Sapporo Japan 22 OCTOBER 2011

Dedicated

San Salvador El Salvador 21 AUGUST 2011

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TRAVELOG

By SUSAN

Life—especially at age 1— should be a beach

Virginia Beach, Virginia

HOME

15–16 JULY 2011

MAP BY BING MAPS, http://maps.bing.com

Virginia Beach 15–16 JULY

Distance from Washington, D.C. Approximately 211 miles 340 kilometers Our itinerary friday, 15 july Amtrak train 67, Northeast Regional depart Washington 7.30 arrive Newport News 11.50 Amtrak Thruway Bus 6067 depart Newport News 12.05 arrive Virginia Beach 13.30 saturday, 16 july Amtrak Thruway Bus 6066 depart Virginia Beach 14.15 arrive Newport News 16.00 Amtrak train 66, Northeast Regional depart Newport News 16.55 arrive Washington 20.58 Where we stayed Springhill Suites by Marriott Virginia Beach Oceanfront 901 Atlantic Avenue Virginia Beach

O C TO B E R 2 0 1 1

O

n Friday, 15 July 2011, Fiona turned one year old. It was a cause for much celebration. We decided that a regular birthday party wasn’t quite enough and elected to take her on her first trip to the beach instead.

That morning, we got on a 1 train to Newport News. When we arrived there, we transferred to a bus that took us to Virginia Beach. Fiona did a great job on the journey—as I recall, she slept a fair bit.

When we got to Virginia Beach, one of the first things we noticed was a 2 sign attached to a street light pole. It read @$!#, surrounded by a red circle with a red slash through it. We thought surely that can’t be real. But they were everywhere. It turns out, Virginia Beach has a noswearing ordinance on downtown streets.

Then we proceeded to our hotel—and what a hotel it was! We had made a reservation on hotels.com, and all the nice hotels were extremely expensive. So we booked a room at a Super 8 that was, at least, close to the beach.

About a month after making the reservation, we got a call saying that the hotel had closed, and hotels.com would be booking us a room in the hotel of our choice for no extra charge.

Awesome! We ended up staying in a beachfront Marriott Springhill Suites, with two double beds, a balcony, and a little kitchen. When we got to our 3 room, we discovered my favorite part of the hotel: a 4 chaise lounge.

After acquainting ourselves with Virginia Beach—I had never been before, and Dustin had been only once, and briefly—and grabbing some

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lunch, it was time to prepare for our party. We hopped on a circulator bus and rode to Harris Teeter, where we bought some 5 cupcakes.

Fiona seemed to know what they were, which was strange, because she had certainly never had one before. She may just have recognized them as food, and thought that any food with bright yellow and electric blue frosting must be particularly good. Those food marketers sure know what they’re doing.

Then it was time to hit the 6 beach. Fiona loved 7 playing in the sand. In fact, she loved it so much that she cried when we picked her up to show her the 8 water (she recovered quickly when she saw how the waves splashed on her feet). I held on to her wrists so tight that her hands started to turn purple. Then Dustin sat down with her and wrapped his arm around her waist to keep her from getting washed away. She loved it, at least until a particularly large wave washed over her head.

Soon, Fiona was freezing, and the sun was going down, so we went back to our beach blanket and wrapped Fiona up in a towel. Time to commence celebrating! Then she spotted the cupcakes and started crying. We put a candle in a cupcake for her and she started 9 crying harder.

We tried lighting the candle but had forgotten matches and couldn’t find a lighter. By now Fiona was furious. We had sort of been thinking she was crying because she was cold, but finally we realized she wanted a cupcake. Sure enough, we handed her one, and she shoved it into her face and stopped crying. I’ve never seen anyone eat a cupcake like that—she never removed it from her face; she just swallowed whatever was in her mouth and refilled immediately. What a 10 mess!

Poor Fiona was exhausted at this point, so we took her back to our hotel, 11 opened some presents, and put her to bed. Then we waited for 12 our friends who were joining us with their baby. Our friend’s birthday is on 17 July, so we gave him a gift: one of those no-cursing signs.

After that, we started our traditional Americanstyle hedonism, complete with pizza delivery, soda, and TV (three things we never do at home). It was pretty late, so we finally went to bed.

In the morning, we enjoyed our free hot breakfast and hit the 13 beach. Fiona got all messy again, so we made sure we left in time to go back to our hotel and get 14 cleaned up.

After checking out, we explored Virginia Beach some more, buying some amazing chocolatedrizzled toffee popcorn and listening to a Beach Boys-style band in an outdoor plaza.

The bus and train ride home were uneventful, as we were all pretty tired. We’re pretty sure Fiona loved her birthday, even though she still doesn’t know what a birthday actually is. d

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5.8 earthquake rocks D.C. and our home

By DUSTIN

23 August 2011 A rare earthquake shakes the D.C. region and much of the East Coast at 13.51 EDT, causing mostly minor damage and giving me a good scare.

Epicenter In Louisa County, Virginia, 38 miles (61 kilometers) northwest of Richmond and 5 miles (8 kilometers) southsouthwest of Mineral Casualties No fatalities; only minor injuries reported Damage Estimated $200–300 million; minor damage widespread Social media & the Internet Twitter users in cities such as New York and Boston reported reading tweets about the quake from users in Washington, D.C., and Richmond 15 to 30 seconds before feeling the temblor itself; Wikipedia had an article dedicated to the earthquake by 14.03 EDT, 12 minutes after the event, and it was mentioned in two other Wikipedia articles even earlier 8

I

t was a warm, sunny Tuesday—a perfect summer day. Since Susan was at new-teacher orientation in New York City, I was working from home so I could look after Fiona. Fiona was taking a nap in her crib, which was in our bedroom at the time.

As I was sitting at our dining-room table, working on a laptop, I heard a rumbling noise.

It seemed a bit unusual, but nothing too extraordinary. Dorchester House, the apartment building we lived in at the time, had been undergoing renovation almost nonstop the entire time we had lived there, and I was used to construction sounds making their way to our apartment in the middle of the day.

But this one got louder and louder. Then, suddenly, the walls of our apartment started shaking. I’ll admit: it scared me. I had no idea what it was. Assuming that the construction work was the cause of whatever was happening to our apartment building, I figured I needed to get out as fast as possible. I went into our bedroom, grabbed Fiona from her crib, and ran out of our apartment, barefoot.

As I was quickly walking/running down the corridor, the building shook again. (Interestingly, both times I only saw the shaking; I didn’t really feel it.) I was scared enough that I actually let out an audible yell. I ran to the stairway at the core of the building, because I figured, rightly or wrongly, that if there really was a major problem with the building the core would be the safest place to be.

In the stairway we were joined by other residents, which wasn’t surprising: I figured other people in the building must have felt what I felt. But I still didn’t think it had been an earthquake.

It was only once Fiona and I got to the street that I began to realize what actually happened.

People were pouring out of buildings all over the neighborhood. And there I was without shoes, a wallet, keys, or a phone.

Alone was the last thing I wanted to be right then, so I walked a few blocks to an apartment

 The most significant damage in our apartment was sustained by our Chinese terra-cotta warrior (top), but we figure the experience just made him more authentic. Other effects were minor, such as this frame frame that fell on top of Dustin’s Schloss Neuschwanstein (bottom).

WASHINGTON NATIONAL CATHEDRAL’S FACEBOOK PAGE

building on Columbia Road NW, where friends from our ward lived. (She was the Relief Society president; he was an instructor in the elders quorum and our home teacher.) I found them in their lobby. Chatting with them and confirming that, yes, it was an earthquake calmed my nerves.

(I know: it seems strange that learning that an earthquake just occurred would calm me down. But when you go from thinking that your apartment building is about to collapse to realizing it was just an earthquake, it’s sort of soothing.)

I then carried Fiona back home. Since I didn’t have my keys, I stopped by the front desk in our apartment building to get a spare set.

Embarrassingly, it was the second time that day that I thought I had locked myself out.

When I got to our corridor, I could look all the way down to our front door, which was the last one and looked lengthwise down the hallway rather than across to the opposite wall like the other front doors did. It was wide open. That’s how quickly I left: not only did I not bring shoes, my wallet, keys, or a phone, but I had left the front door wide open.

I sent Susan a text message to let her know that we had just had an earthquake. (Never thought I would be able to send her a text message like that.) As it turns out, she felt it, too, but not quite like we had in D.C.

That was the second text message I had sent her that day. That morning Fiona knocked over the floor lamp in our dining room and caused the compact fluorescent light bulb in it to shatter. (CFLs, because of the tiny amount of mercury vapor they contain, have to be cleaned up a special way.) My text message began, “First disaster of the day ….” Little did I know that there would end up being a second disaster that day.

This was the largest earthquake in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains since a 5.8-magnitude temblor in 1944 on the New York-Ontario border and an 1897 quake with an estimated magnitude of 5.8 or 5.9 quake in Giles County, Virginia. d

 Washington National Cathedral’s master mason, Joe Alonso, surveys some of the damage to the church. While most of the damage caused by the earthquake was minor, the cathedral and the Washington Monument sustained significant damage. It is estimated that repairs to the cathedral will cost millions of dollars and take nearly a decade to complete.

APPARENTLY, ONE NATURAL DISASTER IN A WEEK WASN’T ENOUGH …

The Saturday after the earthquake, 27 August, hurricane Irene moved past Washington, D.C., after making landfall over the Outer Banks that morning. Irene mostly dumped rain on the D.C. area, though it caused significant damage elsewhere and 56 fatalities as it churned its way from the Caribbean and up North America’s east coast. We could see some of Irene’s receding floodwaters as we rode the train from Washington to New York in our move on 1 September.

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USIN G THE CO C A- COL A FREEST YLE

Step-by-step instructions

T WO

ONE

Position your drinking instrument.

Behold.

first, begin your Freestyle experiencing by beholding the marvel of 21st-century technology and ingenuity this machine is.

7 July 2011 This is a print version, so to speak, of a video we made for our YouTube channel, http://www.youtube. com/DialannTV.

By DUSTIN

I

second, carefully position your disposable Coca-Cola–brand drinking instrument in the dispensing zone.

didn’t used to like Coca-Cola. In fact, I generally avoided soft drinks when I was younger. The fact that my mom never bought any helped. But even if she had bought them, I probably wouldn’t have drunk them much. It was something about the fizz. I can remember a period of time when I would take cans of root beer—one of the few sodas I did drink on occasion—and shake them to get rid of the fizz before I opened them. (Now, admittedly, root beer without the fizz sounds unappetizing.)

So I would have root beer on occasion, especially in the form of a root beer float. I guess I would also have Sprite from time to time, especially with Mexican or other spicy foods, which is still the case today. And I would have ginger ale, which was and is my beverage of

Select your soda.

third, select the type of soda you want. In this case, as in most cases, I choose Coke.

choice on airplanes.

But I would never have Coca-Cola, or any type of “cola” for that matter. It wasn’t just the fizz. It was the taste, too. Something about the flavor of those dark soft drinks that I just didn’t like.

That’s why even I found it surprising when I was teaching English in Italy in summer 2005 that I had a sudden fondness for Coke. I’m not sure what it was. Some people say Coke tastes better in Europe because there it’s made with sugar instead of corn syrup. I’m not sure about that. First of all, I never checked the label to see if they really did use sugar instead of corn syrup.

But, even if they had, I’m of the opinion that there’s no discernible difference in taste between products sweetened with sugar and those

Taking the Coca-Cola Freestyle for a spin 10

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FIVE

Select your flavor.

fourth, select the flavor you want.

In this case, I choose orange.

Push push.

fifth, push the button that reads push.

sweetened with corn syrup.

Rather, my guess is that it had something more to do with having a familiar object. Now, I love Italy and the other places I’ve been in Europe, and I don’t feel terribly out of place or homesick when I’m there. But, as comfortable as I am and as much as they may feel like home, they are still foreign countries. And I think in that context it’s nice to have something more familiar every once in a while, at the very least to provide a respite from the mental exhaustion of so many new and unfamiliar things at once.

That was sort of like the previous summer, 2004, when I studied in Tours, France, and traveled some in the United Kingdom and Switzerland, I suddenly started going to McDonald’s all the time. The food was familiar. And it was reliable—I knew I could afford it, I knew how much I needed to eat to feel full, and I knew I would like it. Well, I knew I would be able to tolerate it, at least. Even in 2005 I turned to McDonald’s more than I ever would have in the United States. I recall having a Big Mac for the first time ever at a McDonald’s joint overlooking the Piazza Castello in Turin.

(For the record, I have never actually had a Big

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Enjoy.

sixth, enjoy your customized CocaCola beverage. You deserve it.

Mac in the United States. And I probably never will, since I have now completely disavowed McDonald’s.)

So, back to Coca-Cola. My newfound love for Coke was among the many things I brought back with me to the United States. And while working in Washington, D.C., I found more reasons to continue drinking Coke. I learned that much of the work in the nation’s capital—at least the networking that leads to dealmaking that leads to “accomplishment” and “success”—occurs at receptions.

Receptions take place all the time and all over the place. They happen before major events. They happen after major events. They happen before and after formal dinners.

They happen before and after other receptions. It’s just the way the city works.

The organization sponsoring the reception finds a suitable place for it. It is often a hotel ballroom, though other venues are also likely hosts, such as congressional office buildings or particularly ornate or dramatic lobbies and atriums.

And they always have an open bar, so attendees can drink, for free, as much alcohol as they can hold down. See, that’s the secret to the

11

USIN G THE CO C A- COL A FREEST YLE

Types of soda & flavors available 3 SODA

4 FLAVOR

CHERRY

GRAPE

LEMON

LIME

ORANGE

PEACH

RASPBERRY

STRAWBERRY

VANILLA

Other varieties & flavors available

cherry-vanilla

caffeine-free

cherry-vanilla Zero cherry-lime grape-cherry

Red Vault

diet

Sensations Zero fruit punch orange-vanilla raspberry-lime

light Zero fruit punch editor’s note Coca-Cola Freestyle machines—at least one that we’ve used—also serve Mello Yello in various flavors, but it wasn’t on The Coca-Cola Company’s official Freestyle brand list that we used to create this chart.

12

success of these receptions: you get everyone liquored up so they’ll actually talk to each other.

Otherwise, with all their senses and faculties intact, they’d never get out of their comfort zones. Which is how I usually was, teetotaler that I am.

But a Coca-Cola in hand gave me something to hold on to. I would drink it slower than I would drink water, and when everyone else had their drink I had mine, alcohol-free and tasty.

All of which leads me to the subject at

hand, the Coca-Cola Freestyle. On Wednesday, 6 July 2011, I ran across an article—I don’t even remember where now, but probably MSNBC. com or CNN.com—about this newfangled soda fountain. The article promised that it could deliver over 100 combinations of sodas and flavors, all from a sleek machine operated by a touchscreen. When I read that one of those combinations was Coca-Cola with orange, I knew I had to try it. So I did, and fell in love with Coca-Cola all over again. d

Going round, getting merry

S

ince moving to New York, I’ve had the opportunity to become better acquainted with a toy I experienced only once in Washington, D.C.: the carousel. I rode the carousel on the Mall one time, and, as I recall, I enjoyed it quietly. Here in New York, there are all sorts of carousels for me to try out. Whenever I ride a carousel, I try to focus on the experience and make note of anything that sets this particular ride apart from the others. Because of my careful study, I’m prepared to offer a review for this issue of our magazine.

The most famous carousel in New York is the one in Central Park.

Daddy took me there a few weeks after we moved here. It was a hot day during the week, so it wasn’t too crowded—excellent! I got my choice of horses. They are brightly colored, not old and dingy-looking; and they run four across. The best part is that they all move up and down, which makes it nearly impossible to make a disappointing choice. The music was sort of standard. I can’t say it was bad music, but it’s not the major selling point. One of my favorite things about the Central Park Carousel was the fact that a photographer walked around and took our picture before the ride started, and Daddy bought a copy of the picture.* Now I can look at it any time, and it always makes me smile.

We also spotted a carousel near the Brooklyn Bridge: Jane’s Carousel, which just opened a little while ago. It’s old, but very nicely restored. The horses are not as brightly colored, but they do have a lot of interesting details, like flowers in their manes and big teeth. They have very nice tickets with pictures of different horses on them. But the best part of Jane’s is its environs. They built a house with glass walls for the carousel, so it’s always well-lit, and since it’s right next to the river, there’s a pretty view. I could see birds flying around outside and boats going up and down the river.

I have ridden the Bryant Park Carousel a few times now, because they sell a ten-ride pass—perfect for a carousel aficionado like myself. This one is interesting because, along with the usual horses, there are other animals to ride as well: a rabbit, a frog, a cat, and some other animals that I don’t remember. They also play French cabaret music during the ride. Before and after riding, you can relax or play at some little tables and chairs—the ambiance is great. Even though it’s a small carousel, it’s quite a nice experience.

There are more carousels for me to check out, and I’m sure I’ll approach them with the same excitement I’ve approached the others. So far, though, my vote goes to Jane’s, and I don’t think I’m the only one—it seems pretty popular with other kids, too. I’m glad I live in a city with so many options for horse (or rabbit or cat) riding. d

FOCUS ON FIONA

By FIONA

With all the carousels in this town, it’s obvious New Yorkers like going around in circles. Fortunately, I do, too.

 A beautiful ticket from Jane’s Carousel here in Brooklyn.

* This photo can be seen on the back cover of this magazine.

O C TO B E R 2 0 1 1

THE DAY THE WORLD CHANGED SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

Where we were It was one of those thankfully rare moments that engrain in the minds of those who experience them the memory of the exact place and time they heard the news.

O C TO B E R 2 0 1 1

Dustin

S

eptember 11, 2001, was a Tuesday. In the Utah Salt Lake City South Mission, where I was a missionary at the time, that meant it was preparation day. It was a beautiful late summer day in Salt Lake. The intense heat of summer had made way for more moderate temperatures, and the day was going to be clear and rainless. My companion, Elder Busenbark, and I didn’t have any big plans for the day; other than our usual grocery shopping and other errands, we also planned to attend an endowment session at the Jordan River Utah Temple.

I woke up that morning to the sound of a TV playing loudly a floor above me. That wasn’t really anything unusual. After all, from our apartment in the basement of 2361 East 10225 South in Sandy, Utah, we were used to hearing all sorts of noise from the family upstairs: late-night vacuuming, late-night piano practice, latenight arguments. Okay, so I guess it was sort of unusual that the noise was happening early in the morning rather than late at night.

What was also unusual was that I was hearing Tom Brokaw’s voice. (I’m a bit of a news junkie, so I recognize these sorts of things.) Mr. Brokaw was the anchor of NBC Nightly News— essentially the network’s main news man. Since he was speaking on The Today Show, which usually carried lighter fare than NBC’s evening newscast, I knew something serious must be happening. But I had no idea how serious.

A short time later, as Elder Busenbark and I were getting ready for the day, we got a call from our district leader, Elder Barnes. He said that something major was happening in Washington, D.C., and that our mission president, President Carpenter, had instructed all the missionaries the go watch the news. (President Carpenter, before being called as our mission president, had been the stake president in Annandale, Virginia, a suburb of D.C., and had had a career with the Navy. I believe he worked for a time in the Pentagon before he came to our mission.)

Being told by our mission president and district leader to watch TV was definitely an unusual instruction.

It would be some time before we would be able to watch a TV—we didn’t have one in our apartment, of course—and, not realizing the gravity of what was happening, we were in no rush to find one. But I did have a small stereo that a family in my area had given me. (Before they gave it to me, I had nothing to play the CDs that we were allowed to listen to as missionaries.)

It happened to have a radio, so I turned it on and found a news or public radio station. The announcer said, “The World Trade Center in New York is now a pile of rubble.” I was wondering what part of the World Trade Center she was talking about. It must have been a smaller nearby tower that was part of the complex. Yes, that’s it—the Twin Towers are just too big to collapse like that.

Still not realizing the importance of what was happening, we went about our preplanned activities. The person who gave us a ride to the Jordan River temple mentioned it to us.

But not seeing these images play out in real time—the World Trade Center towers burning, the Pentagon burning, people jumping, people fleeing the collapse—we were a bit oblivious, really. We didn’t realize what the rest of the country and the rest of the world were going through.

It turned out to be a perfect day to go to the temple. And it was good we went in the morning.

The Church—which, like everyone else, truly had no idea what was happening or what else could happen after seeing passenger planes crash into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and a fourth one crash in a random field outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—closed its temples along the Wasatch Front that afternoon. (Utah and the Church also tend to overestimate their stature as terrorist targets.)

As we returned to our neighborhood on Salt Lake’s East Bench (our apartment was actually

well outside our area), neighborhood streets began to be lined with American flags. The were placed by Boy Scouts, who, as a fundraiser, normally set the flags in paying families’ front yards on major holidays. I guess they decided that they should be out on this day, too. They were right.

We went to the home of a nearby family to do our laundry. It was there that we saw the images for the first time. As video of Lower Manhattan displayed on the screen, the father pointed to a column of smoke and said, “This is where the Twin Towers were.”

That evening we went to a home in our area to watch President George W. Bush’s televised address. As we left, we heard someone in the neighborhood play “Amazing Grace” on bagpipes. Later that evening, we met the person who played it. He was a high-school student in our stake, and he said that his mother had requested it. In fulfilling his mother’s request, he expressed what all of us were feeling; after witnessing that day’s unprecedented events, we were all in need of a little more grace.

When the first plane hit the North Tower, we weren’t sure what was happening. It could have simply been an accident—a really bad one, but nonetheless an accident. When the second plane hit the South Tower, we knew it was terrorism. When the plane hit the Pentagon, we knew our country was under attack, and we didn’t know where the enemy—whoever he/ they/it was—would strike next.

In the ten years since that day, no terrorist attacks have been carried out in the United States. There have been some attempts—the “underwear bomber” subdued by a fellow passenger on Northwest Airlines flight 253 as it landed at Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, or the attempted car bombing of New York’s Times Square on 1 May 2010—but, thankfully, no successes. In that sense, America has won the “war on terror.”

But if the terrorists’ mission was to change Americans’ worldview—there probably isn’t anyone who lived through the events of that day and their aftermath who hasn’t longed for the world of 10 September 2001. d

Susan

O

n the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I got in my car at about 8.00 to drive to the central office of San Antonio’s Northeast Independent School District, where I would be working on curriculum planning with other members of my 9th-grade team. It was my first year teaching at Lee High School and, truth be told, I was sort of glad not to be in my classroom. I hadn’t really bonded with my 9th graders yet, and I was feeling kind of bad about it. But the prospect of spending a day planning interdisciplinary curriculum with like-minded teachers seemed welcome.

As I drove down Shook Avenue to turn left onto Hildebrand, NPR was playing a story about President George W. Bush’s visit to a school in Florida. As I recall, it wasn’t “news,” exactly; it was a bit more of a human-interest story combined with a general political story.

Suddenly, in the middle of the story, the NPR anchor broke in—that was the first sign to me that something serious was up, because I had never heard them interrupt any story—and announced that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center. Even though I knew that the interruption was a bad sign, I still thought it

couldn’t possibly be that big a thing. I thought there must have been something wrong with the first plane, or with the navigation systems, and that the second one had to be a little plane, a Cessna flying around nearby, and the pilot hadn’t been able to see for all the smoke from the first crash. I didn’t know that much about New York or the World Trade Center, so I didn’t really have a picture in my mind of what could be happening.

I went into the building and found my fellow teachers in a meeting room. I wasn’t sure they would have heard about it, especially since I was still convinced that it couldn’t be that big a thing.

They had all heard. That was all they were talking about. When I saw that everyone else was shaken up, it started to sink in. We still didn’t know what was happening, of course, but it was clear that this wasn’t an accident. I think we decided to try to get to work.

We talked for about half and hour, maybe; I imagine we were just checking in. Then someone walked into the room we were working in and announced that another plane had just hit the Pentagon. My first thought was that whoever was doing this was going to crash a plane into a building every hour until they got what they

15

THE DAY THE WORLD CHANGED SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

16

wanted. It was a scary feeling to realize that someone—we didn’t know who—was trying to kill us, and we didn’t know where or when they would try again. Another teacher started cursing about George W. Bush, and how this was all his fault because he makes so many enemies.

I thought that was a pretty terrible reaction. I reminded myself that people deal with stress in different ways, but for me anger makes a stressful situation even worse. And I thought it was pretty unreasonable to blame our own president—even a president who wasn’t all that popular with many people and who sometimes committed some ridiculous gaffes—for an attack on our own country. It later turned out that someone should have known that the attacks were being planned, but I still think it’s outrageous to say that it’s George W. Bush’s fault that someone planned them in the first place.

The rest of the events of the day are not completely clear in my mind. At some point, we went into someone’s office and watched news footage—maybe CNN—on their computer.

We saw at least one of the towers fall, but I’m not sure whether we saw it live, or whether we had already heard about it. I sort of think it was probably live, now that I think about it. They weren’t doing much replaying that day, because the news was still happening. They wouldn’t have broken away from live coverage to replay the awful moments when the towers fell, partially because of the utter shock of the event (it was too raw to replay so soon afterwards), and partially because there was still so much chaos. But I might be wrong about all that.

At some other point, we heard that another plane had crashed into a field in Pennsylvania; we also heard some things that later turned out not to be true. I don’t remember exactly what they were, since reality was so much more significant that my memory didn’t make much space for the rumors of the day. The only one I do remember was some people saying that “they” were trying to kill George W. Bush with the fourth plane.

When I heard that, I thought, Well, duh, that’s obviously not true—George Bush was in Florida this morning. Even I knew that, and I’m not even trying!

We heard that all the planes in the country were grounded. My department chair, Kelly Taylor, was on a plane that day, flying to the Washington, D.C., area to pick up a car from a relative so she could drive it back to San Antonio for her daughter. Later, we found out that they had to make an unplanned landing in Little Rock. Of course, the people on the plane

didn’t know what was happening until they got off. A few days later, Kelly managed to rent a car and drive to D.C., since planes still weren’t flying. I remember thinking that this was huge.

Every plane in the country was on the ground.

No planes were allowed to fly anywhere in U.S. airspace. Somehow, that really added to the gravity of the events—it was a sign that things were never going to be the same. At the time, we didn’t know how long planes would be grounded.

Given how shaken up we all were, we probably wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that planes would never be allowed to fly again. Obviously that didn’t happen, but I think it’s an example of how our worldview was shattered.

At lunchtime, we decided to go eat at a place called the 410 Diner. I had never been there before, and I haven’t been back since, although it seemed like a cool place. I remember the waitress asking, “How are ya’ll doing?” and Steve Magadance, a teacher whose birthday happened to be that day, saying, “Oh, fine; about as well as we can be.” I tried to call Karen to make sure everyone there was okay, since they lived near D.C. No calls could get through because everyone in the country was calling D.C. I didn’t worry too much, because I knew there would be no reason for anyone in the family to be near the Pentagon.

At the end of the day, I went to my school to drop something off. One of my students was still there and she asked me, “Miss, did you hear what happened?” It seemed like a really bizarre question—how could I not have heard what happened? Then I got called on the intercom to come down to the main office and talk to the principal. They had just gotten a letter saying that the school would have to notify the parents of all my students that I wasn’t certified to teach them. My principal was freaking out. I couldn’t believe that they were going to talk to me about that now. I reminded them that I hadn’t taken the Composite Social Studies certification exam yet, because I wasn’t allowed to until after I had taken the Government certification exam; and that I had told them all of this when they interviewed me. Finally the assistant principal said okay, whatever, we’ll deal with it.

I eventually went home. I got the TV out of my closet (that’s where I stored it, because I didn’t want it to be the center of my living room, and I didn’t want it to be in a place where I could easily watch it all the time) and watched it for a while. There were no ads on any station. There were no regular TV shows.

It was just news. They showed hundreds of thousands of people walking home across the

Brooklyn Bridge, and people covered in white dust, and people putting up pictures of family members that they couldn’t find. They showed firefighters trying to do anything they could, which wasn’t much. They encouraged people to give blood, saying it could be shipped to New York to help all the injured people; and they showed people all over the country lining up because giving blood was the only thing they could do. It didn’t help much, since it turned out there weren’t many injured people. Members of Congress went out on the Capitol steps for a press conference that was clearly not planned or organized. They spontaneously started singing “God Bless America,” and many of them were crying. I remember the sound of that song—it didn’t sound that great, because they hadn’t set up microphones for that kind of thing, and they hadn’t rehearsed, and they didn’t all start at the same time, and I’m sure some of them were off key. But it was a beautiful song because of all that. They sounded scared, overwhelmed, and resolute. That song still makes me cry a little because when I hear it, I hear those people on the steps of the Capitol Building.

What strikes me about the news that day is that it really was news. It wasn’t cooked up by the news broadcasters, trying to convince people

that there was news and they needed to watch it. I think it was probably the sincerest news broadcasting there has ever been. I’ve never had the impression that reporters were out there just trying to get the scoop that day—they stopped people on the street and talked to them because they, the reporters, were in shock just like the rest of us, and they, the reporters, really wanted to hear these people just like the rest of us.

I called a few friends and my visiting teachees to make sure they were okay. I got a hold of my family. I finally went to sleep, probably around midnight. At 3.00, I woke up to the sound of planes overhead. It was terrifying until I realized they were military planes from the air-force bases in San Antonio. I went to school on Wednesday and had my students write me a letter about what happened and how they felt.

We talked about who it was and why it was, and what terrorism means and what terrorists want.

Friday is football day in Texas. There was talk of canceling the games, but everyone knew we had to go on with our lives and not be scared.

So I went to Lee versus Alamo Heights, an away game. Partway through the game, a plane flew by.

The ban had been lifted. People stared at it and commented on how strange it was to see a plane. d

 Still missing, ten years later: New York’s beloved Twin Towers.

17

THE DAY THE WORLD CHANGED SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

TEN YEARS LATER

New York remembers 11 September 2011 Photos from Lower Manhattan on the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

 Images of the new 9/11 Memorial and victims’ parents and loved ones reading their names display on a large screen in Zuccotti Park.

Liberty Street and Broadway

Battery Park

Battery Park

Battery Park  The “Flag of Honor” contains the names of the nearly 3,000 victims of the attacks. A flag for each victim was displayed in the “Field of Honor” in Battery Park. far right  This sculpture, The Sphere, stood in the plaza between the Twin Towers.

O C TO B E R 2 0 1 1

1 World Trade Center from Battery Park

The Sphere, Battery Park

St. Paul’s Chapel

Cortlandt Street at Trinity Place  The new 1 World Trade Center, under construction, aglow in red, white, and blue.

From the corner of Church and Dey streets.  Passersby were invited to write thoughts and memories of September 11, 2001, on white ribbons and tie the ribbons to the wrought-iron fence of St. Paul’s Chapel.

 The Tribute in Light from across the Hudson River in Jersey City. The new 1 World Trade Center, bathed in red, white, and blue, is on the left side of this photo.

19

OUR TIMES

End of an era As Atlantis lands, America’s space-shuttle program draws to a close.

By ALAN BOYLE SCIENCE EDITOR

O C TO B E R 2 0 1 1

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA he shuttle Atlantis touched down before dawn on Thursday, 21 July 2011, marking the sunset of NASA’s 30-year space-shuttle program.

Landing came at 5.57 EDT, less than an hour before sunrise at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the last operating space shuttle will make its home in retirement.

Atlantis commander Chris Ferguson said the shuttle’s final touchdown would be emotional, and he was true to his word. “After serving the world for over 30 years, the space shuttle’s earned its place in history. And it’s come to a final stop,” he said.

“Job well done, America,” Mission Control

T

communicator Barry Wilmore replied.

Ferguson went on to say that the shuttle program “has changed the way we view the world, and it’s changed the way we view our universe.”

“There are a lot of emotions today, but one thing’s indisputable: America’s not going to stop exploring,” he vowed.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden voiced a similar sentiment in remarks released after the landing: “This final shuttle flight marks the end of an era, but today, we recommit ourselves to continuing human spaceflight and taking the necessary—and difficult—steps to ensure America’s leadership in human spaceflight for years to come.”

Hundreds turned out at Kennedy Space

Center to witness the last-ever landing of a space shuttle. An estimated 4,000 shuttle program workers, many of whom will be losing their jobs due to the fleet’s retirement, gathered to watch TV coverage at Johnson Space Center in Texas.

Inside Mission Control, team members and VIPs shook hands, hugged, and took pictures of each other to document the occasion.

“Right now, at this moment, it’s a celebratory mood,” shuttle systems instructor Michael Grabois said via telephone from Mission Control. “We all know it’s the end of the program … but we’re all here to savor the moment.”

Grabois is due to be laid off next month.

NASA and the White House decided years ago, in the wake of the shuttle Columbia’s tragic BACKGROUND PHOTO: NASA/KIM SHIFLETT

breakup in 2003, to retire the space shuttle fleet once it finished its work on the International Space Station. At the time, the plan called for NASA to shift its attention to sending astronauts to the moon. Since then, the Obama administration has revised NASA’s vision to focus on asteroids and Mars rather than the moon, but the plan for retirement remained.

Thursday was the day that the retirement plan took full effect.

Last visit to space station During Atlantis’s 13-day mission, astronauts delivered enough supplies to keep the space station going through the end of 2012, dropped off an experiment aimed at testing NASA’s

 The space shuttle Atlantis lands at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, in the early morning hours of Thursday, 21 July 2011.

The shuttle’s crew had just completed the 135th and final mission of America’s space-shuttle program.

21

NASA/KIM SHIFLETT, 21 JULY 2011

 The final crew of the Atlantis pauses for a moment in front of the craft after an employee appreciation event at Orbiter Processing Center-2 at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, following the completion of the space shuttle’s last mission in space. They are, left to right, commander Chris Ferguson, mission specialist Sandy Magnus, pilot Doug Hurley, and mission specialist Rex Walheim.

robotic capability to refuel satellites in orbit, loaded up a broken coolant pump module and deployed an experimental mini-satellite. Its cargo included thousands of flags and patches— souvenirs to be distributed when the shuttle era goes into the history books.

“It felt like about a two-month mission crammed into 13 days,” pilot Doug Hurley said.

The job was made more challenging by the fact that Atlantis’s quartet—Ferguson, Hurley and mission specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim—made up the smallest shuttle crew since 1983. That was because if anything went wrong with Atlantis during its trip, NASA would have had to rely on a series of Russian Soyuz capsules to rescue the astronauts over the course of nearly a year.

Fortunately, nothing went wrong. Except for

22

a launch-pad hiccup at T-minus-31 seconds and a couple of computer problems, Atlantis’s mission ranked as one of the shuttle fleet’s smoothest space journeys ever. That good fortune continued on Thursday. During the descent, Atlantis “performed absolutely wonderfully—not a glitch,” Ferguson said.

Red-white-and-blue sentiment The crew was awakened for the final day by the strains of “God Bless America,” as sung by the legendary Kate Smith. Mission communicator Shannon Lucid told Ferguson that the tune was played “for the entire crew and for all the men and women who have put their heart and soul into the shuttle program for all these years.”

“What a classic patriotic song,” Ferguson said. “So appropriate for what will likely be

the shuttle’s final day in orbit. … Thank you to America for supporting this program.”

The 26-year-old Atlantis finished its 33rd and last space mission with 5,284,862 miles (8,505,161 kilometers) on its trip meter, adding up to a total flown distance of 125,935,769 miles (202,673,974 kilometers). The space-shuttle fleet has flown 135 missions in all, rolling up more than 542 million miles (872 million kilometers) of flight.

Among the shuttle program’s top achievements are the orbital deployment of 180 spacecraft, including the Magellan probe to Venus, the Galileo probe to Jupiter and the Hubble Space Telescope; repair missions that saved Hubble from the trash bin of space history; and the 12-year construction effort leading to the completion of the International Space Station.

Entry flight director Tony Ceccacci celebrated the shuttle program’s legacy in closing remarks to his team at Mission Control in Houston: “I believe that the accomplishments of the shuttle program will become the next set of shoulders of giants for the future programs to stand on. Hold your heads up with pride as we close out the space shuttle program. You have earned it.”

The sentiment was similarly strong at Kennedy Space Center. “I saw grown men and grown women crying today—tears of joy, to be sure,” launch director Mike Leinbach told reporters. “Human emotions came out on the runway today. You couldn’t suppress them.”

Wave of layoffs The landing was bittersweet, and not just for sentimental reasons: Atlantis’s touchdown signals the beginning of a fresh wave of layoffs for the shuttle program, which has already been hard hit by workforce reductions.

About 3,200 shuttle program contractors are getting pink slips soon after landing, NASA program manager John Shannon said last month.

By mid-August, only 1,000 contractors will remain to help with the transition to shuttle retirement, he said. About 1,000 NASA civil servants will be shifted to other duties at the space agency.

Atlantis’s sister shuttles, Discovery and Endeavour, are already being prepared for museum display. Discovery is to go to the UdvarHazy Center, an annex of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum near Washington, D.C. Endeavour is destined for the California Science Center in Los Angeles. And Atlantis will be exhibited at Kennedy Space Center’s visitors complex.

The prototype shuttle Enterprise, which was

used for atmospheric testing but never flew in orbit, will be moved from its display space at the Smithsonian to New York’s Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, to make room for Discovery.

Fergusoln said he hoped the shuttles would continue to inspire long after their retirement: “I want that picture of a young 6-year-old boy looking up at a space shuttle in a museum and saying, ‘Daddy, I want to do something like that when I grow up,’” he said.

What lies ahead in space For the next few years, NASA will have to rely on the Russians to ferry astronauts to the space station and back, at a cost of up to $63 million per seat. NASA is also spending hundreds of millions of dollars to support the development of new private-sector spaceships that could carry astronauts starting around 2015.

One of the companies receiving NASA funding, California-based SpaceX, could start taking supplies to the space station by the end of this year. Another company, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corporation, is on track to start unmanned cargo trips within the next year or two. Other companies hoping to build spaceships for NASA include Blue Origin, the Boeing Company, and Sierra Nevada Corporation.

Meanwhile, NASA is proceeding with a multibillion-dollar effort to develop a new crew vehicle called Orion and a new heavy-lift rocket currently known as the Space Launch System.

The space agency’s current timetable calls for sending astronauts beyond Earth orbit, to a nearEarth asteroid by the mid-2020s and to Mars by the mid-2030s. That timetable, however, is heavily dependent on funding levels over the next decade.

Ironically, the end of the shuttle era came 42 years and a day after what was arguably NASA’s greatest success: the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Thursday also marked exactly 50 years since Mercury astronaut Gus Grissom made America’s second spaceflight.

NASA mission managers vowed to keep the spirit of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo—and the shuttle program—alive during the coming transitional years.

“We know there’s going to be a rough spot for a while,” Ceccacci told journalists on the eve of the landing. “But we hope that when we do get a good plan, a good direction, a good mission, that we can come back in here and do what we’ve been doing for the past 30 years for the shuttle and the years before that with Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.” d

The space shuttle Six shuttles were constructed. Their names, dates of first launch, and final homes are: OV-101 Enterprise Used for atmospheric tests; not suitable for space flight Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum Complex, New York City OV-102 Columbia 12 April 1981 Disintegrated during reentry, 1 February 2003 OV-099 Challenger 4 April 1983 Exploded shortly after launch, 28 January 1986 OV-103 Discovery 30 August 1984 Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Chantilly, Virginia OV-104 Atlantis 3 October 1985 Kennedy Space Center, Florida OV-105 Endeavour 7 May 1992 California Science Center, Los Angeles Throughout the program’s history, 355 individuals from 16 countries flew 852 times aboard the shuttle. The five shuttles traveled more than 542 million miles (872 million kilometers) and hosted more than 2,000 experiments in the fields of earth, astronomy, biological, and materials sciences.

23

WE BELIEVE IN CHRIST

By DUSTIN

Really remembering our Savior means more than simply not forgetting him.

It means upholding the covenants we have made with him.

This text is adapted from a talk Dustin gave in the sacrament meeting of the Washington DC 3rd Ward on 10 July 2011.

O C TO B E R 2 0 1 1

To always remember Him

B

efore I moved to Washington, D.C., in 2006, I was studying in Aix-en-Provence, France. After I secured an internship in D.C., I bought a ticket for a flight from Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris to Baltimore via Reykjavik, Iceland. (I was really excited about the layover in Iceland. After all, who has had a layover in Reykjavik?) That meant that I needed to get from Aix-en-Provence to CDG airport.

Aix is in the south of the country, approximately 500 miles (800 kilometers) from Paris. Driving wasn’t an option; it would have taken about nine hours, and I didn’t have a car anyway. Flying could have been a possibility, but it’s expensive, and any time savings is eaten up at security. That left my preferred mode as the best option: the Train à Grande Vitesse, or TGV, one of the world’s fastest trains. It would allow me to get from Aix to Charles de Gaulle in about three and a half hours, in plenty of time to catch my flight without much stress.

All I needed was a ride to the TGV station.

Aix’s TGV station is separate from its main train station, about 9.5 miles (15 kilometers) from the center of Aix. There is a bus that travels to the TGV station, but with all the luggage I had, I thought a ride would be the better choice. So I asked an American man in my ward if he would give me a ride to the train station. He agreed and we settled on a place and time for him to pick me up.

At the appointed hour I left my modest dorm room in the Cité Universitaire de Cuques on Aix’s southside and waited for him at the place we had said we would meet. And I waited. And waited. And waited. Then I started sweating.

Surely he hadn’t forgotten. Had he?

I finally used some of the few minutes remaining on my mobile phone to call his house.

At first, there was no answer. (It was early. My train was to depart at 7.55.) So I tried again.

Sleepily, his wife answered the phone. I asked, “Was your husband planning on taking me to the train station this morning?” Her response was one of those gasps created by inhaling rather than exhaling.

Yes, he had forgotten.

He jumped into the car and raced over to pick me up. He said he was fortunate that no

traffic signals stopped him along the way. We threw my things into his trunk and off we went.

Our journey to the train station went fairly smoothly. We hit some very, very light traffic along the way, but the train was still there when we got to the station.

Now, let me pause to explain the layout of the drop-off area at the Aix-en-Provence TGV station. The sidewalk leads directly onto the platform, with only a glass wall and automatic door separating the outside of the station from the inside. From the car to the train it was literally just a matter steps.

So we quickly got my luggage out of the car.

I thanked him for the ride, made sure I had a firm grip on my bags, and started running to catch the train.

Just then the train left.

Long story short, I had to wait about an hour for the next train. I ultimately caught my flight and got to enjoy my layover in Reykjavik.

But it definitely wasn’t the stress-free experience I had expected.

Fast forward to 29 February 2008. Susan and I had just gotten married in the Manhattan New York Temple, and we were having a luncheon with friends and family in the meetinghouse portion of the building. Shortly after we started eating, a couple of our guests asked me to introduce everyone at the table. My initial thought was, It’s my wedding. Why don’t you ask Susan to do it? But, being a good sport, I obliged.

I began at my left and introduced my family and Susan’s brother and his wife, and then Susan’s sister and her family, and one of Susan’s friends, and two of my friends, and another of Susan’s friends. So far so good.

Then I got to … those people in the corner.

Who are those people? What are their names?

Oh, no, I’ve completely forgotten their names!

Fortunately, I was somewhat quick on my feet and blurted out their relationship to me: “And those are my new mother- and father-in-law.”

That’s right: I had completely forgotten the names of Susan’s parents. No one really noticed my blunder; I was never disowned or anything.

And I now know their names very well.

THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS

Think about other examples from your own life. Have you ever forgotten your bank card’s PIN or the password for an online account? Isn’t that frustrating? You know how some Web sites give you only three tries and then lock you out?

So you completely blow it and end up having to call customer service—always open at the most inconvenient times—to regain access to your account.

Youth, have you ever studied long and hard for a test only to forget much of what you studied when you’re taking the actual test?

Have you ever forgotten an appointment, or a loved one’s birthday, or—the proverbial example—your wedding anniversary?

The point is, forgetting is easy; remembering is hard.

And yet, what did we do just a few moments ago? By partaking of the sacrament, we renewed our baptismal covenant. The sacrament prayers remind us that a portion of that covenant is to “always remember him,” our Savior, Jesus Christ, and his atoning sacrifice for us. Indeed, of the three elements of the baptismal covenant referred to in the sacrament—taking his name upon us, keeping his commandments, and always remembering him—it’s the only one repeated

in both sacramental prayers. I think that says something of the importance of that element of the covenant.

So, what does it mean to remember? To get the definition of a word, we have dictionaries. In this case, it means, more or less, not to forget.

But what does it really mean to us in our lives to remember him? To teach us that, we have modern-day prophets and Apostles.

In this case, we are fortunate that on 27 January 2009 Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve delivered a devotional address at Brigham Young University–Idaho entitled “To Always Remember Him”. In this address, Elder Christofferson spoke of three ways in which the covenant to remember our Savior is meaningful in our lives.

 The Savior instituted the sacrament at the Last Supper (see Matthew 26:26–29; Mark 14:22–25; Luke 22:15–20; see also 3 Nephi 18:1–11; Doctrine and Covenants 20:75–79).

Follow the Lord’s will Elder Christofferson states that the first way we should remember the Lord is to “seek to know and follow the will of Christ just as He sought the will of the Father.” Elder Christofferson explains: In the same way, you and I can put Christ at the center of our lives and become one with Him as He is one with the Father (see

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John 17:20–23). We can begin by stripping everything out of our lives and then putting it back together in priority order with the Savior at the center. We should first put in place the things that make it possible to always remember Him—frequent prayer and scripture study, thoughtful study of [Church leaders’] teachings, weekly preparation to partake of the sacrament worthily, Sunday worship, and recording and remembering what the Spirit and experience teach us about discipleship.

Other things may come to your mind particularly suited to you at this point in your life. Once we make adequate time and means for these matters in centering our lives in Christ, we can begin to add other responsibilities and things of value, such as education and family responsibilities. In this way the essential will not be crowded out of our lives by the merely good, and things of lesser value will take a lower priority or fall away altogether.

As we remember Jesus Christ, our obedience of the commandments—that other part of the baptismal covenant—will transform from rote actions to an integral part of who we are. We will obey his commandments not simply because we’re told to but because our wills have transformed to match his will.

Know you’re accountable—and that the Atonement is real Next, Elder Christofferson states that we should “prepare to answer to Christ for every thought, word, and action.” Here, Elder Christofferson makes reference to Alma 12:14–15: For our words will condemn us, yea, all our works will condemn us; we shall not be found spotless; and our thoughts will also condemn us; and in this awful state we shall not dare to look up to our God; and we would fain be glad if we could command the rocks and the mountains to fall upon us to hide us from his presence.

But this cannot be; we must come forth and stand before him in his glory, and in his power, and in his might, majesty, and dominion, and acknowledge to our everlasting shame that all his judgments are just; that he is just in all his works, and that he is merciful unto the children of men, and that he has all power to save every man that believeth on his name and bringeth forth

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fruit meet for repentance.

Elder Christofferson continues: That judgment, He states, is based on our works. The especially ‘good news’ of His gospel is that He offers the gift of forgiveness conditioned on our repentance.

Therefore, if our works include the works of repentance, He forgives our sins and errors.

If we reject the gift of pardon, refusing to repent, then the penalties of justice that He now represents are imposed. He said, ‘For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; but if they would not repent they must suffer even as I’ (D&C 19:16–17).

What Elder Christofferson is talking about here is two sides of the same doctrinal coin. One side is expressed in James 2:17: Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.

The other is stated in Ephesians 2:8–9: For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

Not of works, lest any man should boast.

It is clear that the Lord expects us to work for our salvation, and that his judgment of us will be based to some degree on our obedience of his commandments. After all, part of this same sacramental and baptismal covenants is to “keep his commandments which he has given [us]” (Doctrine and Covenants 20:77).

At the same time, it is obvious that we will continually fall short. In those cases we must turn to the Atonement and the Lord’s grace.

However, even in the other cases—when we are doing pretty well, when we’re obeying the commandments—we are still dependent upon the Lord’s grace. After all, it is he who gave us life, it is he who organized his Church and called and inspired prophets and Apostles to teach us the commandments, it is he who gives us the strength and the ability to obey. Even if we perfectly obeyed all the commandments our entirely lives, we would have done so only thanks

to the Lord’s grace.

That realization certainly casts the commandment to “always remember him” in a different light.

Have courage Elder Christofferson states that the final way in which we should always remember Jesus Christ is to “fear not and look to the Savior for help.” He explains: In short, to ‘always remember him’ means that we do not live our lives in fear. We know that challenges, disappointments, and sorrows will come to each of us in different ways, but we also know that in the end, because of our divine Advocate [ Jesus Christ], all things can be made to work together for our good (see D&C 90:24; 98:3). It is the faith expressed so simply by President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) when he would say, ‘Things will work out.’

When we always remember the Savior, we can ‘cheerfully do all things that lie in our power,’ confident that His power and love for us will see us through.

Susan and I are learning what this means in our lives right now. We don’t know what the future holds. We don’t know where we’ll be working and how we will support ourselves and our family. We are looking for new jobs.

As many of you know, a job search can be a long and difficult process. We are trying our hardest to remember our Savior and, as Elder Christofferson directs, turn to him for help.

All of us in this ward likewise have profound experience with this principle. Whether it is financial difficulties, problems with family members and loved ones, struggles with addiction and other behavior, each of us in this room has had experience with letting go of our fear and turning to the Lord for help. Indeed, it is what has brought most of us here today.

Conclusion Once again, here are Elder Christofferson’s three principles in review.

•

•

Seek to know and follow the will of Christ just as He sought the will of the Father.

Prepare to answer to Christ for every thought, word, and action.

Fear not and look to the Savior for help.

Each sacramental prayer carries the

•

promise that we’ll have his Spirit as we uphold our baptismal covenants. Yet as you explore the sacramental prayers more deeply, you’ll find that the Lord reciprocates each individual promise we make.

He asks us to be “willing to take upon [us] the name of [his] Son.” Through the Atonement, Jesus Christ took upon himself each of our names, individually.

He asks us to “keep his commandments.”

In Doctrine and Covenants 82:10 we learn that the Lord binds himself when we obey his commandments: “I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.”

“We should first put in place the things that make it possible to always remember Him—frequent prayer and scripture study, thoughtful study of [Church leaders’] teachings, weekly preparation to partake of the sacrament worthily, Sunday worship, and recording and remembering what the Spirit and experience teach us about discipleship.”

ELDER D. TODD CHRISTOFFERSON QUORUM OF THE TWELVE

He asks us to “always remember him.” He always remembers us. Luke 12:6–7 records the Savior’s words: Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?

But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.

I know that the Lord is there. He lived and died for us, and he has restored his Church in the latter days to help us realize the peace and joy that only his gospel can bring. As we strive to always remember him and uphold the covenants we have made with him, we will gain a deeper understanding of his Atonement and make it effective in our lives. Always remembering our Savior is key to obtaining the great and many blessings he has in store for us, including the crowning blessings of exaltation and eternal families. In short, as we remember him, we will become like him. d

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CLOSING THOUGHTS

By DUSTIN

I’m thankful for the opportunity we’ve had to move to New York, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss Washington, D.C. Here are the things I miss most about our former home.

The top 10 things I miss about Washington, D.C. 10 The lack of a death penalty Currently, the District of Columbia joins 14 states—Alaska, Hawai‘i, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin—in completely abolishing the death penalty. Fortunately, New York is among the states that effectively have no death penalty. New York’s last execution took place in 1963, and though a 1995 statute establishing lethal injection as the state’s method of execution remains on the books, the New York Court of Appeals—the state’s highest—ruled it unconstitutional in 2004. Subsequent attempts to “fix” or replace the statute and thereby reinstate capital punishment have failed, and in 2008 thengovernor David Patterson issued an executive order disestablishing the state’s death row and requiring the removal of the state’s execution equipment.

9 Bike lanes and so many bike commuters Like the death penalty, this is an area where D.C. doesn’t have an absolute edge over New York, but the scales tip in the District’s favor, at least for the time being. New Yorkers have hotly debated bike lanes, and the city’s government has been forced to remove some bike lanes because of neighborhood opposition. Washington is clearly past that point, with widespread support for bike lanes throughout the city.

The nation’s capital is years ahead of New York in establishing a bike-sharing system. Bike racks are also provided on all Metrobus and Circulator vehicles in D.C., whereas New York City buses don’t allow bikes. And in the five years I lived in the District of Columbia, I definitely saw a noticeable increase in the number of bike commuters. All in all, while New York is making progress in establishing bicycling as a viable travel option in the city, District of Columbia residents have the advantage for now.

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8 The height limit I love Manhattan’s skyscrapers. But I also love Washington’s low Europesque profile.

Architecture there relies on more than just height to impress. The height limit gives the city a skyline of stability and permanence, not one that

changes over the years, and I think that reflects what we want in our government (whether or not that is actually the reality). Washington’s skyline is dominated not by corporate headquarters but by the buildings where laws are made and where we come together as a nation to plot our common future. Its pinnacles are monuments to our nation’s heroes—the temples of our civic religion to which many Americans make a pilgrimage at some point in their lives. We were blessed to live among them.

These buildings and structures belong to all of us as Americans, and not just to wealthy shareholders. They are not mere office towers whose corporate names (which you never knew to begin with) change with the most recent round of mergers. When you see a photo of Washington’s skyline, you recognize it and you recognize the individual structures. You see it as the national capital, a city that belongs to all of us, not simply as some other city that’s not your home. It’s really a wonderful, fitting thing for the capital of the world’s greatest democracy.

7 Metro I love the New York City Subway. But Washington’s Metro was the first heavy-rail rapid-transit system I used on a daily basis for an extended period of time. For that reason, among the world’s subways it will always have a special place in my heart. I love its subtle, indirect—albeit at times too dim—lighting and coffered vaults, especially the intersecting vaults at Metro Center. I miss seeing the flashing lights at the platform’s edge as a train enters a station, and I can still hear the whir of the electric motors as a train begins to leave. Those who fought for Metro’s construction and those who designed it had incredible foresight, even if they did design Shady Grove with way too few exits for today’s evening rush hours, or Columbia Heights with half as many exits as it should have. More than America’s Subway, as some signs above station exits in downtown Washington proclaim, I will always consider it my subway.

6 Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s design It is probably safe to say that Washington is one of the most beautifully designed cities in

MR. T IN DC, 27 OCTOBER 2007 VIA FLICKR, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

the world. Its grid of north-south numbered streets crisscrossed by east-west lettered and alphabetically named streets, all overlain by broad avenues running diagonally at 15-, 30-, and 45-degree angles, connecting monuments and grand civic buildings and circles and squares and parks and fountains. Whenever I crossed Pennsylvania Avenue, I always had to pause and take a moment to look at the view down to the Capitol. And I will always remember days spent in Dupont Circle with Fiona, reading with her on a bench or splashing in the fountain. All of us who have ever experienced Washington’s beauty and grandeur are indebted to L’Enfant for enriching our lives in such a simple and yet profound and beautiful way.

5 Places with so many memories Especially places that I so strongly associate with Susan: Union Station, where we went on our first date; the Strathmore Music Center, witness to our first kiss; and the Jefferson Memorial and the Tidal Basin, where I proposed to her.

4 The streets I just realized writing this how much I will miss particular streets, especially those in our neighborhood and nearby areas. I will miss 16th Street, with its impressive churches and the view down the hill to the White House and the Washington Monument from in front of Dorchester House (our old apartment building).

I will miss the gentle uphill curve of Crescent Street and the alleys behind 17th Street. I will miss the eclectic shops and restaurants of 18th Street. I will miss the charm of Mintwood Place and the beautiful scale of the apartment buildings at Kalorama Road at 20th Street. I will miss the historic rowhouses of Lanier Place and its Spanish Revival firehouse. I will miss the stairways to Quarry Road. I will miss sunset bike rides on the streets of Mount Pleasant and Saturday morning walks to the farmers’ market at the end of Mount Pleasant Street. I will miss …

3 Being able to take Fiona’s stroller on the Circulator without removing her and folding it up You can’t do that on any bus in New York City. ’Nuff said.

2 Our apartment and our neighborhood I loved our apartment in Washington, D.C. It was the first home that was truly mine, and the first home Susan and I shared as a married couple. I will miss our sweeping view of the nation’s capital

 I’ll miss D.C.’s flag, too. It’s better than New York’s (both the state and the city).

from Washington National Cathedral to the Washington Monument and across the Potomac to Arlington National Cemetery and the office and residential towers of Arlington. I will miss living so close to a nice, large grocery store. I will miss our neighborhood and Meridian Hill Park and its fountain and Sunday drum circle. And I am saddened to realize that I will probably never again set foot in that wonderful, beautiful, safe, cozy apartment.

1 The Washington Post I have always loved newspapers. And I love just about any newspaper that tries to be decent. But some local newspapers are clearly better than others, especially these days. The first time it hit me just how good a newspaper The Washington Post is occurred in 2008, when we went to Utah for Christmas. The Salt Lake Tribune is an excellent local newspaper—certainly better than the Deseret News, Salt Lake’s other daily—and, visually, one of the best designed in the country.

But there’s nothing to it. You can read the entire newspaper in about 20 minutes. It practically floats to the ground. I really missed the daily thud that accompanied the Post’s delivery at our front door and how it could keep me engaged for hours.

Now, The New York Times is also an excellent newspaper—really, it’s the highest calibre of newspaper, the gold standard against which all others can be measured (and it’s all downhill from the Times). But with a subscription cost that is double that of the Post, it’s a bit out of our price range for the time being. So, the #1 thing I miss about D.C.: the hefty, affordable, engaging, and wonderful Washington Post. d

The top 10 things I will not miss about Washington, D.C. In no particular order (and with maybe a little hyperbole):  Bikers flaunting the law, safety, and consideration for others.  Metrobus’s inane bus routing.  Not having skyscrapers.  Lack of regional rail service on weekends. Or evenings. Or the middle of the day.  Having to use your SmarTrip card or farecard to exit the subway.  Lack of transit passes.  Overuse of honorifics and postnominals.  The Washington Times and The Examiner.  Politics nonstop everywhere all the time no matter the situation.  Competitive know-italls who have all sorts of college degrees and yet not one iota of common courtesy.

Honorable mentions  Free museums, especially a free zoo ■ The architecture, especially federal architecture ■ Living a 10-minute walk from Target ■ WAMU 88.5 FM, especially The Kojo Nnamdi Show ■ Having a laundry room in our building

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LAST LOOK

2 1 J U LY 2 0 1 1

Space shuttle Atlantis In this photo, taken by the Expedition 28 crew of the International Space Station, Atlantis has undocked from the ISS for the last time. It appears, like a meteor, as a glowing streak as it re-enters earth’s atmosphere on its way home.

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SEE “GOING ROUND, GETTING MERRY”, PAGE 13

IMAGE IN COLOR BAR ON NAMEPLATE: DANIEL SCHWEN, 26 APRIL 2007 VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, CC BY-SA 2.5

Moving from a city of 600,000 people to a city of nearly 8.5 million means that there’s more of everything. More subways, buses, and trains. More pizzerias.

More playgrounds. And more carousels.

Fiona reviews the three carousels she’s ridden so far in New York City.