Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.
Kittinger's Jump
Sometimes pagans not only have different answers. Sometimes even our questions are different.
In 1960, Col. Joseph Kittinger leapt from a hot air balloon some 20 miles above Earth's surface.
“I said a prayer and jumped,” he told NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro.
Kittinger was part of the US Air Force's pre-NASA studies of upper-atmosphere flight. At the end of the interview about that historic jump, Garcia-Navarro started the set-up for the question I wanted to ask myself.
“So, just before you jumped, you stood on the edge and said a prayer.”
“Yes,” said Kittinger.
“What did you say?” she asked.
I was surprised. That's not the question I would have asked at all.
You're about to jump out of a hot air balloon 20 miles above Earth, hoping that your parachutes work as they're supposed to. The nature of your prayer seems pretty clear to me.
What I really wanted to know was:
Who did you pray to?
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