A Bob's Life: Monday Musings

Monday, May 5, 2025

Monday Musings - May 5, 2025

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

1. Welcome to the first Monday of the month of May 2025. Yup--it is time for the May flowers. There are 34 Mondays remaining in the year.

Sandhill Cranes with Chicks
Riverbend Golf Club, Tequesta, FL
May 4, 2025

2. Yesterday, I played golf on a Sunday for the first time in a long time. It was good to be back on the course whacking my frustrations at the little white ball. I had some great shots, but more not-so-great ones. It was fun and there were lots of animals on the course. I saw a family go Sandhill Cranes, and a family of Egyptian Geese as well as a large turtle.

3. Well, I thought the Orioles had found some answers after taking a series from the Yankees, but they only raised more questions after getting crushed by the Royals yesterday and losing that series. Can we buy some pitching, please?

4. The government's deportation mess is embarrassing. Too many of the deportees do not strike me as "very bad people." Read the article about the Mom being deported which I linked in the news section and decide for yourself. Oh, and remember the words on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” What have we become?

5. Today in History. On May 5, 1961, Navy Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. is launched into space aboard the Freedom 7 space capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to travel into space. The suborbital flight, which lasted 15 minutes and reached a height of 116 miles into the atmosphere, was a major triumph for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

NASA was established in 1958 to keep U.S. space efforts abreast of recent Soviet achievements, such as the launching of the world’s first artificial satellite—_Sputnik 1—_in 1957. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the two superpowers raced to become the first country to put a man in space and return him to Earth. On April 12, 1961, the Soviet space program won the race when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was launched into space, put in orbit around the planet, and safely returned to Earth. One month later, Shepard’s suborbital flight restored faith in the U.S. space program.