It’s 2012 people.

The apocalypse is drawing near–no, not the Mayan one in December, the one that’s going to rain down on all of us if Tebow somehow manages to pull out a victory against the Steelers on Sunday. If that happens, I can only assume the rapture will soon follow (an event I look forward to if only because the world will be relieved of short-sighted ill-informed right wing fanatics so the rest of us can stop denying the existence of dinosaurs and get down to business cleaning up our planet so that we can have a place to carry out our sins for the rest of eternity).

With the imminent possibility of a total end to the world as we know it, I’ve decided to forgo the traditional New Year’s Resolutions and instead invoke three new credos I plan to live by in 2012 (yes, that’s right, I said credo, because it sounds way cooler and more Karate Kid-ish than those icky new age words like philosophy, goal or plan):

1. Be Honest: This applies to many facets of my life and is not intended to imply that I am a liar. My honesty focus in 2012 is not so much about being honest with others (I’m pretty sure my dad would still take off his belt and whip me today if he caught me lying to someone, that lesson will not soon be forgotten), but about being honest with myself; about who I am, what I am capable of, and what I really want out of life. To all my excuses, I advise that you lace up your sneakers and take a hike.

2. Be Positive: Too often lately I’ve found myself wrapped in a heavy, sticky coating of negativity. Whether it’s getting absorbed in a friend’s drama or sulking over the state of my life (job, living arrangements, relationships, etc.), I’ve had enough of it. Life is too damn short to be angry all the time. I’m donning the rose colored glasses and on the days when they get clouded I’ll find rose colored wine glasses, fill them up, and rediscover my positive attitude. Act happy and you’ll be happy.

3. Be Pro-Active: Last November I began contemplating a major change in the direction of my career (and subsequently my life). I asked the universe for some guidance and shortly thereafter came across the card on the right. This is going to be the primary theme of 2012 for me–I’m going to get in the driver’s seat and start moving myself toward my goals instead of waiting for the universe or fate or chance or coincidence to take care of the hard work for me. I’m packing up, I’ll let you know when I’ve reached my destination.

Sidenote: What’s with the title of this blog?

Today I witnessed a woman who could have been a cast member of Real Housewives of St. Augustine: Senior Edition forget to put her Mercedes in park in front of Chili’s, leaving her husband seated helplessly in the passenger seat as their powder blue, ridiculously expensive vehicle rolled across the parking lot and slammed into another (cheaper) car.

Rather than reacting like a normal person would have–ashamed, embarrassed, apologetic, etc., this woman argued with her husband (after he re-parked the car while waiting for the cops to arrive), ripped her knee-length mink coat from its hanger in the backseat with a flourish and donned her priceless warm dead animal fur (which, now that I think about it, might have been rabbit or monkey or whatever other kind of fur they make coats out of, how the hell should I know? My coats are made out of synthetic fabrics and sold at Ross.) After the ten foot walk from her car to the restaurant’s entrance (she would have frozen to death were it not for that coat I tell you), sat down at a table by herself and ordered a vodka tonic (it was her lucky day–Chili’s serves two for one drinks all day, score!).

No joke.

That happened.

I am not making up even one small detail of that story. There was an accident with no driver, a mink coat in 40 degree Florida weather and a woman drinking alcohol at 1:00 p.m. while her husband exchanged information with a Flagler College student (who I can only hope will sue Mr. and Mrs. Mercedes for enough money to pay off all of her student loans) in the parking lot.

This incident led my friends and I to contemplate a series of important questions that we will never have answers to including (but not limited to):

- Why didn’t the husband pull the emergency brake as the car began to roll backward?

- Do Mercedes Benzes (Benzi?) not have emergency brakes? (For all we know they might have replaced them in the design plan long ago in favor of a mini bar, it IS a Mercedes, come on).

- Did she order the vodka tonic so she could cover up for the fact that she’d already been drinking?

- Can you get a DUI if you are not technically behind the wheel of your vehicle when it gets into an accident?

On the whole, it was a delightful experience that I was happy to witness (I’m allowed to say that, nobody got hurt) and will most definitely use in a future novel.

Alas, I am now off to locate my iPhone which I can hear but can’t seem to find…

Later days,

- Shannon

There is a brass plaque bound tightly to a moment in time–8:45 a.m.–on September 11, 2001. What came before that moment belongs in a separate column, in a separate world, than what has come after. It’s a simple fact.

In the world that was:

Labor Day Weekend 2000, some friends and I signed up to be extras in a Hallmark TV movie called “Flamingo Rising.” It was an excellent book that turned out to be an abysmal movie, but we were excited nonetheless. Decked out in itchy 60′s wardrobe, hair and make-up we took our spots on the set of an enormous drive-in movie set built just outside of St. Augustine. In the scene, the theater owner’s wife is supposed to be flying over the theater dragging a promotional banner behind her. Then, as her children look on from outside the snack stand below, the plane explodes.

Of course, as we filmed it, there was no exploding plane in the sky–only a camera mounted high on a crane that we were all supposed to focus on. Over a loudspeaker, the director told us to imagine a deep sadness, “Like what we felt on the day JFK was shot…” This instruction was met with blank stares from the teenagers below. “The Challenger explosion?” More blank stares. Finally, he realized that our generation had no point of reference for unilateral sadness and fear.

A year later, that would not be the case.

In the world that is:

Maybe this year’s anniversary will be just a teeny, tiny bit less difficult than the last nine, if only because some semblance of justice was served on May 1st of this year. After a long and painful decade, we extinguished the flame that ignited a horrific time in our nation’s history. But the embers and scorch marks remain.

One day, decades from now, September 11th will be another day on the calendar–like Pearl Harbor Day. People will know historically what happened that day, but they will not have a dark place in their minds reserved for memories they wish they could give away. They will not hear the sounds of those planes hitting the towers or know the shock at watching a massive steel building filled with people disintegrating in a blink. And then another.

Much has been written and said about that day, but what I find the most appropriate is a song that was actually written twenty years earlier about the assassination of John Lennon by his good friend, Sting. One day, light years from now, when my children ask me what it was like on that day. This is what I will share with them.

If blood will flow, when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the colors of the evening sun
Tomorrow’s rains will wash the stains away
But something  in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime’s argument
That nothing comes from violence
And nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are
On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star, like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are
How fragile we are

I stood motionless in the conference room watching the final launch of the space shuttle program and all I could think was…

…we built that.

We, as a collective group of people, put our most brilliant minds in a room and together we envisioned, planned and constructed a vehicle that could transport human beings from this world into the next.

We didn’t do it once.

We didn’t do it twice.

We didn’t do it three times.

We built four different types of rocket ships (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the Space Shuttle) that could safely transport people to space and back–all within less than 20 years (Gemini began in 1962, the first space shuttle was launched in 1981) and all of this during a time when no one had ever heard of a thing called the Internet.

So what happened? Why has it been 30 years since we created a new vehicle for space flight? How could we–with the access we now have to technology and communications resources that no one dreamed of thirty, twenty or even ten years ago–have stalled out on our dreams to explore the great beyond?

Obviously, the financial support required to run a space program is substantial, even when we’re not in a recession. It’s understandable that budget constraints have held us back from advancements, but I think it’s something more than that.

Somewhere along the way, between 1980 and 2011, we forgot what we are capable of when we work together.

In my twenty-six years I’ve spent many a night, early morning or afternoon standing in the front yard, on the beach or at the playground, watching in awe as an orange arc trailed behind a silver bullet as it streaked across the Florida sky. With my head back and my eyes turned up to the Heavens, I remember having the same thought with each viewing of that magnificent shuttle–we can do anything.

To me, the space program is not just about exploring the world beyond our atmosphere. It’s about the hope, gumption, failure and elbow grease that goes into achieving something bigger than yourself.

My view of Discovery's last flight in February 2011.

I never dreamed of being an astronaut–well, maybe for a moment or two, but only until my sense of reason kicked in and kindly reminded me that I was (and still am) unwilling to ride most roller coasters–but the conquered impossibilities of the space program did give me license to dream of things beyond my own horizons.

Last year, I had the great fortune of seeing renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson give a lecture at UNF. During a Q&A session afterward, someone asked him to justify the need for our space program. Instead of pointing to the scientific advances made by the program, Tyson said that we needed the space program to inspire our youth to work hard and study in order to become the best that they could be. He pointed out that many of the people who have given us our biggest advances in science and technology came of age during the era of Sputnik and the Space Race. People like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking and Tyson himself were all inspired to seek greatness at least in part because of the space program.

I hope with every inch of my heart that we will continue the space program. Not for myself, but for the next generation. I want my niece and nephew and any children that I have to grow up in a world where the only constraints on their dreams are the limits of their own imaginations.

I want them to believe that we can do anything when we work together, because we can.

We did it four times before.

And we will do it again.

Godspeed to the crew aboard the Atlantis, to the men and women who dedicated their lives to the space shuttle program and to those of us who have spent the last thirty years looking up at the night sky with the knowledge that it belongs to us. All of us.

Later days,

- Shannon