Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson for July 09, 2022

The final frontier!

Sometimes I feel like the world itself is taunting me.

Let’s put it this way. The number of atoms in the thickness of an apple’s skin, is the same as the number of whole apples in the thickness of the atmosphere.

After Google-ing Clark County, Washington to Graham County, Arizona, it is 1,435.4 miles between me and my maternal grandparents. As for Clark County to Park County, Wyoming when it comes to my paternal grandparents, it is 946.1 miles.

Orientation matters. 100 miles down is equally unreachable. Maybe even less reachable.

Not much gravity to fight against going to granny’s.

It’s taunting me too. When I was Phoebe’s age, we were promised moon bases and big wheel-shaped space stations.

Sometimes I sit and stare at the moon and wonder that I’m looking at something more than 200,000 miles away. (I know the sun and stars are further, but the sun is harder to stare at and the stars are harder to comprehend :) )

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages to grandma’s house…

“Boldly going where no one has gone before!”

Poor Phoebe doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation.

Endless taunting…

If you got $250,000 lying around you can hitch a ride on one of Elon Musk’s spaceships…

Can unicorns go into space, like Anne McCaffrey’s dragons?

No.

No, Phoebe. It’s beckoning you.

One of the last scenes in the movie Zulu (1964) showed Zulu warriors chanting toward the British soldiers. A lieutenant exclaimed angrily that the Zulus were taunting the Brits, but another man, familiar with Zulu culture, said they were instead saluting the soldiers’ courage.

Space is overrated. After all, some of the worst people go their, like rich trashbags.

When C.S. Lewis needed a simile to illustrate different types of closeness, he could have chosen an example…closer to home.

Just for perspective: Driving at highway speeds, you’d need about an hour to reach space- but about half a year to reach the moon.

All because of a thing called “escape velocity.”

Yep. Space is an annoying guy.

Space is also taunting Marigold with its sparkly stars!

You tell ’im, Marigold! True friendship.

That made me think of an anime titled A Place Further than the Universe. In that case it was referring to the distance from Japan to Antarctica, but the sentiment that space is a mere 100 miles away while Antarctica was thousands is the same.