We’re All Living in the ‘From Now On,’ Now
Watching <em>Apollo 13</em> for the first time, I couldn’t help fixating on how much the world has changed—not in the past half century, but in the past few months.
About this time 50 years ago today, three men launched toward the moon on Apollo 13, oblivious to the harrowing turn their journey would take. It’s a big anniversary, the way the anniversary of Apollo 11, which made the first moon landing, was last summer. But it’s difficult to commemorate the half-century anniversary of this mission in the usual ways.
Like nearly everything else, museums are closed. The Smithsonian could project on the Washington Monument again, but no one would probably come out to see it. So, in the disorienting, social-distancing whirlwind of the past few weeks, I decided to observe the anniversary by engaging in my favorite coping mechanism of the pandemic era: I watched a movie.
