The Moon, "Queer Eye", and the Buddhists

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It's fascinating how quickly things that once seemed so remarkable become commonplace, occurring virtually unnoticed in our daily lives. Part of the furniture. Like the fact that I'm writing this on my phone, which I also use to tell time, take photos, buy shoes and watch movies. Just part of the daily routine.

Or like waking up to an Easter morning profanity-laden diatribe by the American president, probably sent on his phone, threatening the annihilation of a foreign nation because he doesn't want people to see the proof that he raped young girls. Routine. Headline-grabbing. Yes, insane, but remarkably commonplace.

Yet while that president was threatening war crimes, four astronauts (three Americans, one Canadian) were doing something that hasn't been done in 58 years -- flying around the moon. Remarkable. Still. But not quite headline-grabbing today.

It's that way with a lot of inspirational or heart-warming events these days. Sometimes it's hard to find the good news buried under all the depressingly bad news emanating daily from the White House, shouting to be heard and too often dutifully reported without question by a news media co-opted by owners more interested in wealth than the First Amendment.

I started to write a column a few weeks ago about what I considered to be two uplifting, yes, heartwarming events that made life just a little softer, more livable for a while.

I wrote: "Thank God for Queer Eye and the Buddhists.

"No, that's not a new spinoff show on Netflix, although the thought is intriguing. What it is is a huge thank you to two recent events that reminded me, in the midst of the daily dose of anger, lies and cruelty emanating from the White House, that there is still love, caring and humanity in the world. That decency still exists. That people can also shed tears of joy.

"Remember?"

That's as far as I got before the Trumpian insanity overwhelmed the news again. I'll finish it now.

Queer Eye, which began on TV as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, morphed into straight Queer Eye on Netflix, where its tenth and too-short final season dropped recently. Sad to see it go.

It's hard to find shows on TV these days that offer real people expressing genuine feelings of gratitude and love and hope and shedding real tears of joy. Queer Eye does all that unfailingly, whether the recipient of the Fab Five's attention is queer, straight or Jonathan. And it's often funny in the process.

At about the same time, 25 Buddhist monks were on their 109-day, 2,300-mile walk from Fort Worth, Texas, to the Peace Monument and then the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.. A spiritual walk for peace that gained momentum and support and, eventually, even media attention, as it was followed by more than 5 million people on social media. Heart-warming, encouraging, connecting and simply amazing all at once.

Which brings me back to the moon. As I write this, the four astronauts are preparing to swing around to the dark side of the moon where they will see and record previously unseen features, with a solar eclipse thrown in as a bonus.

I witnessed the moon landing - Neil Armstrong's "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." - with a large crowd on a TV at the Little Venice Restaurant in Binghamton, N.Y. 600 million watched worldwide. It was July 20, 1969. I was city editor of The Sun-Bulletin at the time, a daily paper whose offices were conveniently located just down the block from the restaurant. Yes, the moon landing was the front page story the following morning. And yes, everyone seemed to be happy that President Kennedy's goal of putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade was realized.

This morning, as the astronauts aboard Artemis II traveled farther from Earth than any other humans ever have, the American president was threatening to bomb another country back to the Stone Age. And no one was surprised.

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