Oliver had been told that he should call John donor dad but having. Having a rough time pronouncing that he came up with Joe not down. That story and more coming up next on the Moth Radio Hour from the Public Radio Exchange p r x dot org right after this. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm nor rom the Senate Judiciary Committee now says there will be a public hearing Thursday to hear testimony from Christine blazin Forte although Ford's attorney still wants to negotiate who will question her and who will testify the committee says neither is negotiable Ford has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault in an encounter more than 30 years ago Dick Durbin of Illinois is the number 2 Senate Democrat he told A.B.C.'s This Week Without more witnesses than Ford and Cavanagh it's going to be difficult to thoroughly explore the incident and terms of direct evidence probably not the only alleged to have underlined the alleged eyewitness the smirk judge has said he quote has no recollection no close quote of what occurred that evening and the Republicans refused to even put him on the witness list Cavanagh is also expected to testify he's denied the accusation immigration advocates are decrying a trump administration proposal to limit access to green cards for immigrants who seek public aid N.P.R.'s Mary Kennedy reports the administration says the plan is meant to promote self-sufficiency the potential change could leave many immigrant families with difficult choices between for going public assistance or risking their chances at a green card it's being slammed by advocates like the National Immigration Law Center which sent the plan could make immigrant families afraid to get help it added the change could worsen hunger and leave health problems unaddressed United We Dream Action an immigrant youth led network described as an all out attack on poor working families and the a.c.l.u. Called it a quote new attempt to keep immigrants out of our country and attack people with disabilities the Department of Homeland Security officially announced the proposal on Saturday and said it would help protect American taxpayers American city n.p.r. News Washington d.c. Environmental advocates are raising concerns about coal ash in the Cape Fear River near Wilmington North Carol. China but Jason Dobro end of member station w.n. Save reports and Duke Energy says its tests show the river has not been polluted floodwaters from Hurricane Florence breached dames that hold back waste water reservoirs a Duke Energy sudden power plant on Sunday Duke said water tests were clean we've got quite news to share we have released and national water testing results the 7th straight charges from Aqua one like in Wellington have not on the Cape Fear River but those tests are done at Duke's own facilities environmental advocates and state regulators will report their tests later this week for n.p.r. News I'm Jason dobro and in Wilmington golfer Tiger Woods won the Tour Championship in Atlanta today that is his 1st title in more than 5 years since then he's had 4 surgeries on his lower back that left fans wondering if he'd ever play again this is n.p.r. News from Washington. Swiss voters have rejected legislative proposals that would have ensured food sources were more ethical and sustainable and given more aid to farmers Teri Schultz reports the Swiss government opposed the measures warning that race prices voters rejected the fair food and food sovereignty initiatives by more than 60 percent eat the fair food initiative would have required all Swiss food to come from sustainable sources and ruled out factory farms in g.m. Most it promoted locally grown seasonal produce and aims to reduce waste requiring more detailed labeling for consumers the other measure would have provided more government aid for family farms banning imports of foreign food that do not meet Swiss standards on conditions for both workers and animals it would have imposed higher tariffs on those goods that were imported raising prices this was government maintains the measures could be counterproductive prompting citizens to shop in neighboring countries and ultimately drive down demand for domestic food for n.p.r. News I'm Terry Schultz u.s. Officials are rejecting Iran's claim that a country allied with the United States was responsible for yesterday's attack on an Iranian military parade but killed $25.00 people Iran's President Hassan Rouhani did not identify the country Nikki Haley the u.s. Ambassador to the u.n. Told c.n.n. Rouhani has oppressed his people for a long time and the Iranian people have been protesting the military the u.n. General Assembly meets this week President Trump is a New York to attend he'll speak to the gathering on Tuesday the president is expected to stress his commitment to America 1st I'm sure Rahm and p.r. News in Washington support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include Carnegie Corporation of New York supporting innovations in education democratic and Gage Ment's and the advancements of international peace and security more information is available online at Carnegie dot org. Empirics this is the last radio hour I'm Jay Allison producer of this show and in this hour we present a live Martha vent held for the annual Morfe members show in the Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York City the theme of the night was around the bend stories of coming home the 1st story to be is. When I was a small child my mother used to sometimes say the love you have for your children is unlike any other feeling in the world and people who don't have children never get to know what it's like and I took it is the greatest compliment that she's so loved my brother and me and so love being our mother and that she thought so highly of that emotional experience at the time that I was growing up there was an article in Time magazine about homosexuality which said it is nothing but a pathetic 2nd great substitute for a life pitiable flight from existence and deserves no glorification as anything other than a pernicious sickness reading match and living in that world I was sad as I began to think that I might be gay and when I was a teenager my mother would say the love you have for your children is unlike any other feeling in the world and people who don't have children never get to know what. And it made me intensely anxious I thought I think I'm gay but I want to have children but I think I'm gay but I want to have children and I felt myself back and forth and at some point I decided that children were the primary thing and that I was going to change and I read an ad in the back of New York magazine for sexual surrogacy therapy and I went for a kind of training to change myself into somebody else it was a very peculiar experience it involved women who were not exactly prostitutes but who were also not exactly anything else. My particular favorite was a buxom blonde Southern woman who have entered the admitted to me that she was really a necrophiliac and it taking this job after she got in trouble down at the morgue. When I was in my early twenty's I decided that this had not all gone as planned and that I really was gay and I told people that I was and my mother said the love you had for your children is unlike any other emotion in the world and if you don't have children you'll never know and having 1st been touched and then been made anxious I was now made angry by this statement and I said I'm gay and I'm not going to have children and I am who I am and I want you to stop saying that many years afterwards in 2001 I met John who is the love of my life and he told me shortly after we met that he actually had been the sperm donor for some lesbian friends and I said you have children and he said no they have children and I was the donor afford them. A few weeks later we were out at the Minnesota State Fair and we ran into Tammy and Laura and their toddler Oliver and I looked at them with fascination and I thought how amazing that Tammy and Laura were Carrie and they had children and that John was gay and in some sense at least had a child Oliver had been told that he should call John donor dad but having. Having a rough time pronouncing that he came up with don't not that I. So I looked at that and I thought there's donor there's me who are we all to one another a year later John told me that Tammy and Laura had asked him to be a donor again and they produced Lucy So now there were 2 of these children and we knew them a little bit and saw them from time to time and were warmly disposed towards them and John said he'd promised to be in their lives when they were grown up if they particularly wanted him to be. The idea of having children in some unusual arrangement was not entirely novel to me I had some years earlier been at it dinner with my closest friend from college who lived at the other end of the country and she had recently separated from her husband and when I asked whether she had any regrets she said only about not being a mother and I said and meant it you'd be the best mother in the world and if you ever decided that you wanted to have a child I'd be so honored to be the father I said that assuming since she was beautiful and beloved and had lines of men eager to meet her and be with her I assume that it was just a statement in passing but on my 40th birthday she appeared in New York for a surprise party that John and my father and stepmother had organized and we went out to dinner the next day and realized that we really did want to follow through with this plan I wasn't ready to tell John right away and then when I did tell him he was angry about it and I said John how can you be angry at me you have all of our lives see and now they'll be this other arrangement and he said I was a donor for all of her and Lucy and George setting out to have a child of whom you will be the acknowledged father and you will have your last name and we struggled with it for quite a while and then John whose kindness usually carries the day said if this is what you really need to do then go ahead and do it and soon thereafter he asked me to marry him I had never been a big fan of gay marriage I thought everyone should have the right but it didn't particularly preoccupy me. But after he proposed we began planning a wedding and I thought he had gone along with what I wanted to do and I would go along with what he wanted to do and we ended up getting married in the English countryside and we had a beautiful wedding and I found that there were commitment it seemed to me to be permanent and declared and established before that that the experience of having all of these hundreds of friends gathered together witnessing our love shored up and strengthened it and gave it a new depth and gave it a new residence that I had never imagined or anticipated and I found the fact that we were celebrating that love in a ceremony that echoed in some sense the one my parents would have the and the ones my grandparents had had and the ones that presumably went back generation upon generation exulted the feeling between us and it was very joyful Blain was there 3 months pregnant with our child and John ventured that we had had the 1st gay shotgun wedding. So 6 months later our daughter our little Blaine was born and I was in the room when she was delivered and I was the 1st person to hold her and I had such a disorienting feeling of suddenly of suddenly being changed I thought I'm a father now I'm a father it was as though someone had told me that I was still myself and also a shooting star. And I held her and I then had to go down into the basement of the hospital to sign the certificate for her birth where I was advised to get a paternity test before I signed for any love child and I said you have no idea the planning that was behind this. And John held her and we all I think were enraptured as one is by the birth of children because it's so much stranger than even intergalactic travel that someone wasn't there and now all of a sudden they are but when John and I got back to New York I kept feeling in a way is the way I was being highly supportive of something Blaine had done rather than as though it was something I had done and yet I found myself thinking of this child all the time John fell in love with laning he fell in love with Blaine we were all in love with one another we were trying to understand how everything fit together and some time later I said to John don't you think it would be nice for us to have a child also a sibling for Blaney who she might love to to have in her life and who might grow up in our house all the time John did not think that would be lovely. And so we had a year in which I kept saying how wonderful it would be and acting as the cheerleader for the cause and through that year John kept resisting and being unsure and then finally my birthday rolled around again and he said your present is upstairs and we went up stairs and there was an antique cradle tied up with a bow and he said if it's a boy can we name him George after my grandpa. We then had to figure out how we were going to produce such a child I. So we found an egg donor and we were in the process of trying to find a surrogate and we got together with Tammy and Laura and Oliver and Lucy one night and Laura said to John you gave us our children and I'll never be able to thank you enough for that but I could show you how much you mean to us by being your surrogate and so she offered to carry our child and she got pregnant on the 2nd I.V.'s protocol and 9 months after that George was born and we held him in our arms we called Ling and Laney and everyone else in our circle and we held him and we wondered at him and then we came home and we sent out birth announcements and the birth announcement included a picture of John and me holding George and many friends said I love that picture I hung it on my refrigerator but one of John's cousins wrote back and said Your lifestyle is against our Christian values we wish to have no further contact and I thought that world the Time magazine world of my childhood it was still there and it was still going strong and it made me very sad but in the meanwhile we had spent a lot of time with Tammy and Laura and Oliver and Lucy through that whole process and we had all fallen in love I think again a new more deeply with one another and when Oliver and Lucy learned that little Blaine called us daddy and Papa John they said they'd like to call us daddy and papa too and I suddenly found that in contemplating 2 children we seemed to have 4. In the period that followed that I kept thinking about the angry cousin and what he had said and I thought it's not really a question of our kind of love being as good as or better than or less good than anyone else's love it's simply another kind of love that we found as 5 parents of 4 children in 3 states. And I thought that just as species diversity is essential to keep the to keep the planet in place so there's a need for a diversity of love to sustain the eco spear of kindness and that anyone who rejected any bit of the love in the world was acting in a foolish if we wish way and from a position of falling about 6 months ago we had gone to a park and I climbed up on a stand with George from which you could view some animals below and I held his hand and I said we're going to go back down the steps now go very carefully and I took one step and I slipped and I fell all the way down the flight of stairs pulling him along behind me. And I remember when it happened thinking that I really didn't care whether I had broken my arm or my leg as long as I hadn't injured my child turned out that I hadn't and when I felt that I suddenly thought. The love you have for your children is like no other feeling and until you have children you'll never know and I thought how even in the periods when I mother saying that made me anxious or made me angry that it was her saying it so persistently that had caused me to pursue a family even under such complicated and difficult and elaborate circumstances and that had let me finally to the greatest joys of my life Thank you Farai. Are you that was Solomon thank you Andrew is the author of the books far from the Tree Parents Children and the search for identity and the Noonday Demon which won the 2001 National Book Award. To share any of the stories you hear on the Moth Radio Hour go to the mosque dot org where you can stream the stories for free and send a link to your friends and family. Will be back in a moment with a story about a nightmarish event in Apartment living. Support for them all comes from Home Advisor matching homeowners and Home Improvement professionals for a variety of home projects from minor repairs to major remodels homeowners can read reviews about local pros and book appointments online at Home Advisor dot com The Martha Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole Massachusetts and presented by p.r. X. . 2 2 2 6 this is the Moth Radio Hour from p.r. X m j Allison our next story contains some disturbing subject matter and may not be appropriate for children or squeamish adults from the Great Hall of Cooper Union in New York City here's Rica. Thank you. I was living in the parlor apartment of a beautiful brownstone in Harlem surrounded by all this old grand furniture left to me by my grandmother when she passed away when I realized actually I want to live in Brooklyn. I decided to move to Brooklyn because that's where so many of my friends lived and that's where I found most of my work was I'm a cellist So I went to see the 1st apartment I found and when I walked in I said I'll take it but I won't stay long. It was what a realtor would describe as charming but the only word that came to my mind was tiny. So I decided it might be a good place to live for a little while it might segue into something better down the line so I packed all of my grandmother's things into storage and I took my cello and my music and my books and my bed and I moved into this apartment in Prospect Heights and I loved living there my career was going great touring making records I kind of fell in and out of love and I even managed to have some extraordinary dinner parties in a small small space and then about 2 and a half years into living in this apartment early on a Sunday morning during a terrible heat wave in June I got a call that you hope to never receive the man on the other end of the line called to tell me that my younger brother had just died he was found dead in his bed that morning I don't recall exactly what happened to the phone but I remembered I couldn't get her in or out and I thought I might throw up but the air wasn't coming and I called my best friend to try and tell her what happened but the words wouldn't form I was absolutely devastated. My younger brother lived in England and it was decided that he would be cremated week and a half later on a Friday at 2 pm in England my father and I both New Yorkers realize we wouldn't be able to get there in time for the cremation and we live rather far from each other here in the city but both agreed that we each wanted to be outside and in the elements when this event happened when my brother was cremated and so the Thursday night before this event I was eager to get to bed anticipating a very emotional following day so I fell fast asleep and then suddenly I awoke in the middle of the night because there was a leak from upstairs dripping into my bed and it would hit the mattress and splatter all over and it woke me up and I was so focused on my little brother Nico that I thought it doesn't even matter I rolled over and went right back to sleep but then I was woken again because it was coming down at a faster clip and hitting the bed and getting all over me so finally I thought Ok I better go talk to my neighbor he has this terrible habit of running the bath tub in the middle of the night and forgetting about it so I went up and I knocked on his door and he didn't answer and I thought Ok fine be that way I went back downstairs and protected my match receive was from any further damage and I tried to get the little sleep I could on my small couch it was a restless and fitful sleep and in the morning I woke it was already really hot outside and I was so eager to get outside anticipating this day that I forgot to change my clothes I just went out funky in a sweatpants and t. Shirt I had slept in. The 1st place I thought to go was to the roof of my building my brother and I grew up here in New York and we had spent countless days and Summers summer days actually on what we would call Tar Beach we call the Tar Beach because New York City roofs are full of tar and we would grab towels and friends in a boom box and hang out essentially So I went up to the roof expecting to have a very emotional experience it was 8 am in New York 2 pm in England but in fact I couldn't really feel what I thought I should feel and I was almost fighting the air to feel something I had spent days and days crying but suddenly not a tear so I decided to change locations I went to Prospect Park and I walked around struggling to feel what I thought I should feel except all they really felt was guilt that I didn't feel what I thought I should feel. So I continued walking in my neighborhood and found myself at my local cafe and I got a cup of coffee and I thought let me call my father and check in with him see how he's doing and in our family we're really good at sharing joy and love and happiness but when it comes to emotional hardship and pain and loss and we've had our fair share we're very very private individual ie very stoic and very supportive and that was the tenor of the conversation we had so it was no surprise that I quickly turned the conversation to what I thought was a great distraction from this fitful rest I'd had from this leak in my apartment so my father said Well why don't you go back to your partner and deal with all that business so I went back I put my keys in the kitchen and I went up to knock on my neighbor's door again and he still didn't answer so now I was concerned so I hustled up some neighbors in the building and it turned out other people too were saying well actually we haven't seen him in a while so a collective decision was made to find the extra keys somewhere in the building and to go in and check on him a friend of mine had just arrived we were going to spend the day together so we stood in my kitchen right by the front door with the door wide open while the neighbor who found the keys walked up the stairs and we heard her put the key in the door. Or open the door and walk in his apartment and then we heard her call his name Randy Sproule Randy Sproule. And then she screamed call the coroner he's dead he's decomposing there are maggots and flies everywhere and then she came charging down the stairs to the threshold of my apartment looked me straight in the eye and she said dear you need to take a shower and Lysol that's his dead body all over here. As you can imagine I felt as though the wind had been knocked out of me I fell straight to the ground and I wept and I wept and I didn't know if I was weeping for my brother or for my mother who had died almost 20 years earlier for my grandmother or for this poor old man who had died and nobody even noticed or maybe I was weeping for me I thought poor me there's literally death on me. I don't know if I was down there for 10 seconds or 10 minutes but like that I stood up I looked at my friend and I said I gotta get these clothes off of me and in the shower I ran to the bathroom taking my clothes off as I got in there and I jumped in the shower and I took what I now call the silk would shower I scrubbed my body like I have never scrubbed before it's amazing I didn't draw blood really. When I got out I put a towel on and came out into my apartment only to discover that there were police and e.m.t. And neighbors swarming my apartment right away someone came up to me and said you know dear you probably won't be able to sleep here tonight and I thought Yeah Ok and just trying to keep the towel up and another friend of mine randomly had come by and he looked at me and he said You look like a little girl I could only imagine how bewildered I was in this chaotic scene and then suddenly someone came running in the apartment and said the body is going to fall through the ceiling the body's going to fall to the feeling the floors are compromised so we were suddenly moving everything from one side of my tiny apartment into the kitchen and we were struggling to get around chests and shelves and etc etc and then someone else came up to me and said you know it might be a week or 2 before you can sleep here and all I could think was I need to get some clothes on I was trying to find a place in my apartment where there was nobody was maybe 350 square feet and I found a little corner and I put on some clean clothes took off my towel and then suddenly it hit that stench and steak the sour sour smell of death it had permeated the building at this point so that we were suddenly busy creating little compresses out of cotton swabs soaked in which he's old and lavender oil to protect the cops and the e.m.t. As they walked into this apartment full of the stink of death and then another woman came up to me and she said you know actually Marie it could be over a month before you can stay here again and I thought you know it really doesn't matter because I am a member sleeping here again ever. At this point a number of my friends had showed up and were willing to help me and we were grabbing my cello and my music and clothes and gear I had tons of gigs that week I had to prepare for another friend of mine had called when she heard what happened and said You have my keys out of town my apartment in for green is yours so we jumped in my friend's car and they dropped me off at her apartment and I ran up the stairs and I. Walked in the apartment in the door close behind me and for the 1st time since all this craziness has happened I was alone and suddenly I thought I was going to go mad I felt like I was actually going crazy I started to shake my body was shaking and I had to hold on to the kitchen counter and the kitchen island just to stay steady and I thought I'm cursed I'm cursed my brother in this old man death is literally on me he died on top of me I'm going to go absolutely crazy and I remembered to breathe I tried to take those deep breaths I couldn't take the morning I heard my brother had died and I breathed in and out slowly and in those breaths I thought called that he always makes you feel better just call daddy so I called my dad and I told him I thought I was going crazy and he explained to me no your brother's death and this old man these 2 deaths have nothing to do with each other and nothing to do with you when you're not stained you're not cursed you're going to be Ok and I was glad to have called him because I hung up the phone and I started to feel a little a bit better and realized I need to get outside I need to be around people so I grabbed my bike one of my prized possessions it's covered in flowers on the front banister. Arms and in the back on the basket and I wrote up the hill to Prospect Park to one of my favorite music events in New York celebrate Brooklyn friends of mine were playing there that night as well as had had lots of friends in the audience and right away I started to tell people the tale of what had just happened with the drip and as you may imagine it spread around Brooklyn like wild flowers no sooner had I told someone this story when someone asked me what are you going to do . And without a thought I said I'm going to find a full one bedroom apartment with good light across sprees a window in the bathroom a bath tub and even kitchen in a nice building in a neighborhood I'd like to live in near the train and all on a musician's salary. They laughed too but something. Something inside of me said it's going to be Ok you can find this place and all summer I spent going from couch to couch people were my friends and people I didn't even know were so kind to me I stayed in kids' rooms when they were at camp on people's couches and in houses when people are on vacation about a few weeks after this whole event had taken place I was sitting in a bar with a friend of mine in my old neighborhood and a bass player I know came up to me and he said. I heard what happened to you what are you going to do I said you know I'm not scouring Craigslist I'm not going to knock on supers doors and find out if their apartments in there and I gave in my spiel about what I was hoping to find and he looked at me and he said. My friends just emailed me last night I think they have exactly what you're looking for in a beautiful Victorian house in that Miss Park get in touch Well you know that night at the bar I e-mailed his friends the next day I went to see the apartment and it was everything I had said I wanted except it was 2 bedrooms. So I woke up at the end of the summer on the last couch I had to call home and I took my cello and my suitcase and I went to move into this new apartment and I watched the movers arrive from the storage company as the movers hauled all of this grand old furniture of my grandmother's that I had so missed for the 3 years I lived in that small apartment they brought boxes and grandfather clock and chests and dressers and they left it and the door closed behind them and I stood there and suddenly I started to cry again I was there then surrounded by the love and the memories of my mother and my brother and my grandmother 3 people I had loved more than anyone else on this earth who were no longer here with me but somehow with these things knowing they had touched them and breathed air around these things I started to feel a little bit better I opened a box and I found a photograph of my brother and I from when we were little that I hadn't seen in years and I found a box of journals my mother had kept when she was a woman about my age I didn't even know she had and in this moment I remembered to breathe again I was alone once again in an apartment and I was crying but in those breaths I started to really feel much better and I realized yes this is where I can live. Thank you one. That was a movie could be very good as a cellist who has performed with Whitney Houston Mary j. Blige Sean Lennon and many others to solo C.D.'s of her work released in 2011 this tone is from one of them. All the stories you're hearing in this hour are available at the i Tunes store and you can find photos and Web extras at the mosque dot org We'll be back in a moment with our final story about adventures in space Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media Woods Hole Massachusetts and presented by the Public Radio Exchange p r x dot org. From here x. This is the Moth Radio Hour I'm Jay Allison producer of this radio show The theme of this live storytelling event is around the bend stories of coming home the last storyteller this hour is Michael j. Mass and. In 1984 I was a senior in college and I went to see the movie The Right Stuff. And a couple things really struck me in that movie The 1st was the views out the window John Glenn the space ship the view of the earth how beautiful it was on the big screen I wanted to see that for you and secondly the commodity between the original 7 astronauts depicted in that movie how they were good friends how they stuck up for each other how they would never let each other down I wanted to be part of an organization like that and it rekindled a boyhood dream that I had that had kind of gone dormant over the years and that dream was to grow up to be an astronaut and I just could not ignore this dream I had to pursue it so I decided I wanted to go to graduate school and I was lucky enough to get accepted to mit and I went up to mit with the intention of following this this dream of spaceflight. And while I was at mit I started applying to NASA to become an astronaut and I filled out my application and I received a letter that said they weren't quite interested. So I waited a couple years and I was graduating from mit and I sent in another application a 2nd time few years later and they sent me back pretty much the same weather. So I applied a 3rd time in this time I got an interview so they got to know 'd who I was and then they told me no. And. So I applied of 4th time. And on April 22nd 1906 I knew the call was coming good a bed. And I pick up the phone and it's Dave leads and I'm the head of corroborations at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and I say hello and he says Hey Mike this is Dave Leaks My how you doing this morning and I said I really don't know Dave you're going to have to tell me. And he said Well I think you're going to be pretty good after this phone call because you want to make an astronaut. 13 years after that it's May 17th 2009 and I'm on space shuttle Atlantis about to go out and do a space walk on the Hubble Space Telescope and our task that day was to repair an instrument that had failed and this instrument was used by scientists to detect the atmospheres of far off planets planets in other solar systems could be analyzed using the spectrograph to see if we might find a planet that was earth like or a planet that could support life and just when we got good at doing this that the power supply on this on this instrument failed it blew it wasn't working so the Internet can no longer be used and there was no way really to replace this unit or to repair the instrument because when a launch this thing and they got it ready for space like they really buttoned it up they didn't want anybody to screw with this thing whether you're on the ground or whether you were in space it was buttoned up with a access panel that blocked the power supply that it failed and this access panel had $117.00 small screws with washers and just to play it safe they put glue on the screw threads so they would never come apart you know it could withstand a space launch and is no way we could get in to fix this thing but we really wanted this capability back so we started working and for 5 years we designed a space walk and we designed over 100 new space tools to be you. Great taxpayer expense millions of dollars thousands of people work on us and my buddy Mike Good who we call Bueno he and I were going to go out to do the spacewalk I was going to be the guy actually doing the repair and inside was my friend Drew Feustel one of my best friends he was inside he's going to read me the checklist and we had practiced for years and years for this and they built us our own practice instrument and gave us a or own set of tools we could practice with this practice in our office in our free time during lunch after work on the weekends we became like one mind he would say it I would do it we had our own language and now's the day to go out and do this this task the thing I was most worried about leaving the airlock that day was my path to get to the telescope because it was long the side of the space shuttle and if you kind of look over the edge of the shuttle it's kind of like looking over a cliff at that point with 350 miles to go down to the down to the planet and there were no good handrails were in our own response walking up to grab on to things on our space gloves and be nice and study but I got to this one area along the side of the shuttle and there were no good hand rails to grab I had a grip like a wire holes or a knob or a screw and I'm kind of a big boom and one is no gravity you know you get a lot of momentum built up and I could go spinning off into space and I knew I had a safety tether that would probably hold but I also had a heart that I wasn't so sure about so I knew they would get me back I just wasn't sure what they would get back on the end of the tether with a real b. And so I was really concerned about this and I took my time and I got through the treacherous path and how to the telescope in the 1st thing I had to do was to pull off or remove a handrail from the telescope that was blocking the access panel. And there were 2 screws on the top and they came off easily and there was one screw on the bottom right and that came out easily and the 4th screw is is not moving and my tool is moving but the screw is not and I look close and her realize it's stripped and I realize that that handles not coming off which means I can't get to the access panel with these $117.00 screws it up and we're in about 5 years. Which means I can't get to the power supply that failed which means we're not going to be able to fix the sentiment today which means all the smart scientists can't find life one of the planets and I'm to blame for this. And I could see what they would be saying in the science books of the future this was going to be my legacy I realized that my children my grandchildren would read in their classrooms we would know if there was life on other planets I was. But Gabby and Daniel's dat. I might my children would suffer from him Gabby and Daniel's dead broke the Hubble Space Telescope and we'll never know. And through this nightmare that had just begun I look at my buddy boy know next to me in his spacesuit he's looking at me like go look at me. No way no was a rookie and his job was I'm basically handing tools you know this is my job to fix this thing and then I turn and look into the cabin where my 5 after not friends my crewmates run and I realize nobody has got a space and they can't come out here and help me. And then he actually looked at the earth I looked at our planet and I thought there are billions of people down here but there's no way I'm going to get a house call on this one day they cannot no one can help me and I felt this deep loneliness and it wasn't just a Saturday afternoon with a book alone and I call her. I felt detached from the earth. I felt that I was by myself and everything that I knew and loved and that made me feel comfortable was far away and then it started getting dark and cold because we travel 17500 miles an hour 90 minutes as of one lap around the earth so it's 45 minutes of sunlight and 45 minutes of darkness and when you enter the darkness it is not just darkness it's the darkest black I've ever experienced It's like the absence of light and it gets cold and I could feel that coldness and I could sense the darkness coming down so we were going to enter and it just added to my loneliness and for the next hour or so we tried all kinds of things I was going up and down the space shuttle trying to figure out where you know where I needed to go to get the next tool they want to get to try to fix this problem and nothing was working and then they called up after about an hour and 10 or 15 minutes of this they said they wanted me to go to the front of the shuttle to a tool box and get vice grips and take. And I thought to myself we are running out of ideas. I didn't even know we had tape onboard. I'm going to be the 1st astronaut to use tape in space starring in space. But I follow directions so I get to the front of the space show might open up the tool box and there's the tape and at that point I was very close to the front of the orbiter right by the cabin window and I knew that my best pal was in there trying to help me out and I could not stand to even think of looking at him because I felt so bad about the way this day was going the way turned out not like what we had thought about all the work he and I had put in and I couldn't even stand to even think of looking up at him but I realize that he's actually at the corner of my eye for my helmet you know just a side there I can kind of see that he's trying to get my attention and I look up at him like this and he's you know a little bit above me in the window and he's just cracking up smiling. And give me Ok sign and I'm like Is there another spacewalk going on out here. And I really can't talk to because I same thing the ground will hear you know Houston will hear with the controls and we are so I'm kind of like playing charades with you nuts and I expect I don't want to look because I thought he was going to do is that it can be Ok so I was going to give me the finger because you know I'm thinking he's going to go down in history book with me so but he said no we're Ok you just hang in there a little bit longer we're going to make it through this where in this together you're doing great just hang in there and if there was ever a time in my life that I needed a friend it was at that moment and there was my buddy just like I saw in that movie the commodity those guys sticking together and I didn't believe him at all I figured we were really that we were at a lock but I said at least if I'm going down I'm going down my best pal and as I turned to make my way back over the treacherous path one more time Houston called up and told us what they had in mind they want to use that take it take the bottom of the handrail and then see if I can yank it off the telescope. And he said it was going to take about 60 pounds of force for me to do that and drew answers the call and he goes 60 pounds of force and they call me Mass is short for my lesson because mass I think you got that he knew what do you think and I'm like you better this could get this thing and I get back to the telescope and I put my hand on my hand or l. And the ground calls again and they go Well Drew you know you guys are Ok to do this but right now we don't have any downlink from Mike's helmet camera got these cameras mounted on my helmet so they can see everything I'm doing it's kind of like I'm I'm looking over your shoulder when you doing your homework you know and you go we don't have a down week for another 3 minutes but we know you're running late on time here so if you have to and I'm saying let's do it now well they can't watch because I was the reason the reason I'm taping this thing is there if the any debris gets loose they're going to you know get all worried it's going to be another hour and never fix this thing we've been through enough already so I'm like that's Do it now while mom and dad are home let's have a party so I'm like throughout I think we should do it now appears like go and bam that thing comes right off. And I pull out my power tool and now I've got that access panel with those $117.00 little bitty screws with it washers and glue and I'm ready to get it's one of them and I pull the trigger on my power tool and nothing happens. And I look and I see that the battery is dead. And I turn my head to look at boy knows it his face again looking at me like What else can happen today. And I said Drew the batteries deadness saying I'm going to go back to the airlock I'm going to swap out the battery and I'm going to recharge my oxygen tank because by all this moving around I had was getting low on oxygen I need to get a refill and he said go and I'm going back over that shuttle and I noticed 2 things One was that that treacherous path that I was so scared he kept says he pants about going over it wasn't scary anymore that in the portion of those couple hours of fighting this problem I got up and down at thing about 20 times and my fear of what had gone away because it was no time to be a scaredy cat it was time to get the job done and what we were doing was more important than me being worried and it was actually kind of fun going across that little jungle gym that I had back and forth over there over the shuttle and the other thing I noticed is I could feel the warmth of the sun we were about to come into a day pass and the light in space when you're in the sunlight is the brightest whitest purest light I have ever experienced and it brings with the warmth and I could feel that coming and I actually started feeling optimistic and sure enough the rest of the space walk went well. We pull out all those screws out the new power supply buttoned it up they tried it it going to turn that on from the ground it all was working a power supply was working and the Internet come back to life and at the end of that space walk after about 8 hours I'm inside the airlock and things ready for Bueno and I to come back inside and my commander says hey mass you know you've got about 15 minutes before point is going to be ready to come in once you go outside of the airlock and enjoy the view so I go outside and I take my tether and I clip it on a handrail and I let go and I just look and the earth from our altitude at Hubble we're 350 miles up we can see the curvature we can see the roundness of the of our home of our home planet and it's the most magnificent thing I've ever seen it's like looking into heaven it's like paradise and I thought to myself This is the view that I imagined in a movie theater will those years ago and as I look at the earth I also notice that I could turn my head and I could see the moon and I could see the stars and I could see the Milky Way galaxy and I could see our universe and I could turn back and I could see your beautiful planet and at that moment it changed my relationship with the earth because for me the earth was always a kind of a safe haven you know where I could go to work or be in my home or take my kids to school but I realize it really wasn't that it really is it's own space ship and I had always been a space traveler and all of us here today even tonight we're on the spaceship earth amongst all the chaos of the universe whipping around the sun and around the Milky Way galaxy. A few days later we get back. Our families come to meet us at the airfield and I'm driving home to my house with my wife and my kids in the backseat and she starts telling me of what she was going through during that Sunday that I was spacewalk and how she could tell listening watching the NASA television channel how sad I was that she detected a sadness in my voice that she had never heard from me before and it worried or until she heard me say for the love of Pete and when she heard that she knew everything was going to be Ok. So life a little rascals. So I thought you know I wish I would have known that when I was up there. This is only this that I felt really Carol was thinking about me the whole time and we turned the corner to come down our block and I could see my neighbors are outside and they decorated my house and as American flags everywhere and my neighbor across the street is holding a pepperoni pizza and a 6 pack of beer. 2 things that unfortunately we still cannot get in space. And I get out of the car and Merrill hugging me I'm still might my from I flew flight suit and they're hugging me and saying how happy they ought to have me back in and how great the everything turned out and I realized all my friends many were thinking about me the whole time I you know they're there with me to the next day we have a return ceremony we make these speeches these engineers who had worked all these years with us or trainers the people who work in the control center they start telling me how they were running around crazy while I was up there in my little nightmare all along how they got the solution from the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and how that team that was working on that Sunday figured out what to do and they checked it out and he radioed it up to us and I realized that at the time when I felt so lonely that I felt the test from everyone else literally like I was away from the planet that really I never was alone that my family and my friends and the people they worked with the people that I love the people that cared about me there with me every step of the way. Thank you thank you. That was Michael j. Mass and. He has logged a total of 30 hours and 4 minutes during 4 space walks a graduate of Columbia University and mit Michael is now the executive director of the rice Space Institute at Rice University. Remember you can pictures your own story by visiting thought oh that's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour we hope you'll join us next time and that's the story on them are. The stories this hour were directed by make bowls and Katharine Hepburn's the rest of the most directorial staff include Sarah Habermann Sarah Austin Jeanette and Jennifer Hicks and production support from Brandon actor Laura had and Jenna Weiss . Stories are true is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers motha vents are recorded by Argo studios in New York City supervised by Paul or list or theme music is by the drift of the music in this hour from 10 happy America hues and the soundtrack from the right stuff to modest produced for radio by me Jay Allison at Atlanta Public Media Woods Hole Massachusetts to help them begin marriage this hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting the National Endowment for the Arts and the John d. And Catherine t. MacArthur Foundation committed to building a more just and peaceful world the mall. Of Radio hours presented by the Public Radio Exchange p.r. X. . For more about our podcast for information on pitching your own story and everything else go to our website the Home Office auto or. Me at. Ces Aspen Public Radio broadcasting on j.x. Aspen and k c j x Carbondale.