Well are in great distress and a pair of unconventional fathers all of our had been told that he should call John Boehner dad but having. Having a rough time pronouncing that he came up with Joe Not dad I 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 sure Rahm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is denying a report published in The New Yorker in which a 2nd woman has come forward to accuse him of sexual abuse the alleged incident took place when Cavanagh was a freshman at Yale University in a statement Cavanaugh said it did not happen Meanwhile the Senate Judiciary Committee says it plans to overhaul the open hearing on Thursday for testimony from Christine blazin fort was accused of sexual assault when they were in high school N.P.R.'s Kelsey Snell has more both Kevin of and Ford will appear but they will not be in the room at the same time and they've also agreed to limited press access in a smaller here room that they say will kind of help manage the spectacle that they saw in the earlier part of his confirmation process they also want to give breaks so that forward if she this is expected to be a really emotional time for her and so the committee has agreed to give her breaks as she needs and they've agreed to give equal time to every senator who wants to talk for also getting heightened security because both Cavanagh and Ford have been receiving death threats N.P.R.'s Kelsey Snell reporting President Trump is in New York ahead of the United Nations General Assembly it will be his 2nd time attending the gathering last year Trump delivered a forceful speech on North Korea and as American 1st agenda N.P.R.'s Shannon Vincent reports President Trump will meet later in the week with French President Emmanuel not gone and the heads of South Korea Egypt Israel and the u.k. World leaders are bracing for his Tuesday speech to the General Assembly and last year's address Trump threatened to totally destroy a North Korea and called the country's leader Rocket Man Trump is expected again to lay out his foreign policy accomplishments and goals on Wednesday trouble chair meeting of the u.n. Security Council the topic at the meeting was originally supposed to be a Ron but has been brought into focus on nonproliferation of nuclear weapons Shannon and sent n.p.r. News rivers in North Carolina and South Carolina. Continued to rise more than a week after Hurricane Florence South Carolina Public Radio's Victoria Hansen reports the National Guard is building a floating bridge in one coastal community in South Carolina the Sampedro river runs through Georgetown just about an hour south of Myrtle Beach the concern is the bridges spans it could wash out so the National Guard is using a folding floating sections of makeshift bridges as a back up boats will push the bridge as necessary Staff Sergeant Jared Styron explains what all this will do is we will ferry bridge and put employees on the ramp or boat landing and then arced soldiers will then load try to try those or see beauties what Flat Rock was applause all of the temporary bridge is only for emergency personnel and supplies for n.p.r. News object Toria Hansen in Georgetown this is n.p.r. News from Washington. Tomorrow the u.s. Isn't home Poe's new tariffs of 10 percent and $200000000000.00 in Chinese goods the new terrace will cover roughly half the goods China sells to the u.s. Chinese officials say they retaliated by adding tariffs to another $60000000000.00 of u.s. Products the Trump administration is proposing rules that would deny immigrants green cards the right to stay in this country if they use public assistance such as Medicaid food stamps and housing vouchers the Department of Homeland Security says those seeking green cards must show that they will not be a financial burden golfer Tiger Woods has won his 1st professional tournament in more than 5 years today he won the season ending tour championship in Atlanta by 2 strokes a Cavs remarkable comeback for the man who once Danis the sport N.P.R.'s Tom Goldman reports Tiger Woods led this tournament from start to finish his steady dominating place seemed like a throwback to the early 2000 when he ruled the game but the moment of victory in Atlanta was different he didn't throw one of his trademark uppercuts Instead the 42 year old Woods raised his arms and teared up to build a computer and play again yes when that's another level dinars under the skin in recent years his back was so bad he says he couldn't sit or walk without pain last year he had a 4th back surgery a fusion procedure and it worked he gradually progressed the season as he pieced together a less taxing swing and now he has 80 p.g.a. Victories only 2 behind all time leader Sam Snead Tom Goldman n.p.r. News and I'm nor rom n.p.r. News in Washington support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include e.c. Mc Foundation working to improve post-secondary educational outcomes for under-served students through evidence based enervation learn more at e.c. Mc Foundation dot org. This is the radio our. Producer of the show. Held for the members show in the Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York City. Of coming home the 1st story. I. 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 so loved my brother and me and so love being our mother and that she thought so highly of that evolutional 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 rate substitute for a life. From existence and deserves no glorification as anything other than a pernicious sickness. Reading and living in that world I was. 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 banging 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 that involved women who were not exactly prostitutes but who were also not exactly anything else. Particular favorite was a buxom blonde Southern woman who eventually admitted to me that she was really a necrophiliac and it taken 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 touch and then the need 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 for 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 work day and they had children and that John was gay and in some sense at least had a child. 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 dad. 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 toward them and John said he 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 added to an er 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 Oliver and Lucy and now they'll be this other arrangement and he said I was a donor for all of our 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 his kindness usually carries the day said if this is what you really need to do then go ahead and do other 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 preoccupied 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 had 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. Blaine was there 3 months pregnant with our child and John ventured that we have had the 1st gay shotgun wedding. Our daughter 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. 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. 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 as though 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 planing 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. And who might grow up in our household . 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 Jong kept resisting and being unsure and then finally my birthday rolled around again and he said your present is up stairs and we went up stairs and there was an antique cradle tied up with a bow and he said if it's a boy too we named him George after my grandpa. We then had to figure out how we were going to produce such a child. So we found an egg donor and we were in the process of trying to find it. 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. 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 call laying 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 and knew 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'd 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 I. 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 kind ness and that anyone who rejected any bit of the love in the world was acting in a foolish. Position of falling. About 6 months ago we had gone to a park and I had 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 stat 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 happened and when I felt 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 led me finally to the greatest joys of my life thank you if. That was. Andrew is the author of the books for from the Tree Parents Children and the search for identity. Which won the 2001 National Book Award. To share any of the stories you hear in the most radio hour go to. Stories for free and send a link to your friends and family. Will be back in a moment with the story of a. A nightmarish event in apartment living. Support for the moth 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 more the radio hours produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole Massachusetts and presented by p.r. X. My name is can't cope and I support public radio k.c.b. X. Because it is a 1st line defense of our 1st Amendment rights case c.b.x. Embodies our freedom of the press and free speech their broadcasts are unrestrained by government politics or corporate influence as we have seen these freedoms are precious and rare many would like to see these rights taken away from us please join me in supporting k c b x. And we're in the midst of our fall pledge drive we're having what we call our quiet campaign on Sunday but volunteers and staff will be back tomorrow and today we're asking you to go online and k.c.b. X. Dot org and make your. Thank you gift to k.c.b. X. For the program in the you love that's org And thank you. I 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 Homer Cooper Union in New York City here's a Reka. 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 air 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 realised 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 mattress it 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 the sweat pants 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 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 to 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 be 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 felt 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 and put my keys in the kitchen and I went. 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 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 from my grandmother or for this poor 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've got to 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 Silkwood 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 party's going to fall through the ceiling the body is going to fall to the ceiling the floors are compromised so we were suddenly moving everything from one side of my tiny apartment into this 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 staying the sour sour smell of death it had permeated the building at this point so then 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 stank 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. Never 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 I'm out of town my apartment in Fort Greene 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 closed 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 and 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 call daddy he always makes you feel better just call daddy so I called my dad and told him I thought I was going crazy and he explained to me no your brother's death and this old man and these 2 deaths have nothing to do with each other and nothing to do with you and 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 start to feel a little 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 rode 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 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 bathtub and eat in kitchen and 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 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. Rick 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 super stores and find out if their apartments in there and I gave them 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 and didn't 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 at 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 breathe the air around these things I started to feel a little bit better I opened a box and I found photographs 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 of 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 for the with me with that was believed if you were if it was a cellist it was performed with Whitney Houston Mary j. Blige Sean Lennon and many others to solo C.D.'s of her work were released in 2011 this tone is from one of them. All the stories you're hearing in this hour 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 the Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media and Woods Hole Massachusetts and presented by the Public Radio Exchange p r x dot org This is Terry Gross the host of Fresh Air I'm guessing that you listen to k.c. B.s. For the same reasons I listen to public radio in-depth news sharp analysis long form interviews that keep me entertained and informed and you probably know as well as I do that k.c. B.x. Depends on listeners support so I urge you to do what you probably already know needs to be done so please support k c b x Now here's how can we ask you today on Sunday where in what we call our quiet campaign our volunteers and staff will be back in full force tomorrow morning but we're asking you this evening to. Go online to be x. Dot org and make your contribution all the time or 638 You're listening to the moth Coming up global spin and the zinc is in the house for 2 hours a great world music coming your way at 7 o'clock this evening then speak low at 9 citizen citizen sound at 11 still lots going on at your public radio station x. Help us out or. From their acts 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 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's a 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 trait 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 what. So I applied a 3rd time in this time I got an interview so they got to know who I was and then they told me no. So I applied of 4th time. And on April 22nd 1906 I knew the call was coming good abed and I pick up the phone and it's Dave Leeson on the head of flight crew operations 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 I'm going to be pretty good after this phone call because we want to make a national. 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 they got good at doing this that the power supply on this on this instrument failed it blew it wasn't working so the issuer could no longer be used and there was no way really to replace this unit or to repair the the instrument because when a launch this thing and they got it ready for spaceflight they really buttoned it up they didn't want anybody to screw it 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 disprove threads so they would never come apart you know it could withstand the 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 $100.00 new space tools to be used great taxpayer expense millions of dollars thousands of people work on us and my buddy my good week old boy you know he and I were going to go out to do the space walk 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 in the. Years for this and they built us our own practice instrument and gave us a more 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 it would no good handrails and we're in our own response we're going 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 holds or the 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 beer so I was really concerned about this and I took my time and I got through the treacherous path and how to the telescope and the 1st thing I had to do was to pull off or remove a handrail from the telescope that was blocking the axis panels. 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 closer to 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 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 sentient today which means all the smart scientists can't find life on other 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 realize that my children my grandchildren would read in their classrooms we would know if there was life on other planets. But Gabby and Daniel's dad. My children would suffer from it was 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 Bueno next to me in his spacesuit he's looking at me like go look at me. No way No as 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 astronaut friends my crewmates run and I realize nobody has got a spacesuit they can't come out here and help me and I 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 you know they 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. I felt. 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 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. 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 during a space. But I follow directions so I get to the front of the space shuttle I 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 the air. 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 it 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 core of my 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. I really can't talk to because I same thing to ground will here you know Houston we're here with the controls and we're so I'm kind of like playing charades with you nuts and I expect I don't want to look because I thought what he was going to do is set a good deal case that I was going to give me the finger because you don't think 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 we're 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 that can together and I didn't believe him at all I figured we were really good 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 wanted me to use that take to take the bottom of the handrail and then see if I could 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 mess for my lesson because mass I think you got that he knew what do you think but I'm like you better look at this thing and I get back to the telescope and I put my hand on my hand rail 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. I don't like your mom looking over your shoulder when you don't your homework you know and you know we don't have any downtime 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. That's the reason the reason I'm taping this thing is there if any debris gets loose they're going to you know get all worried it's going to be another hour 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 the party so I'll make sure what I think we should do it now and it's like go 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 washers and glue and I'm ready to get each 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 in his face again looking at me like What else can happen today. And I said Drew the batteries dead in a 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 cats to see 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 the 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 a 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 spacewalk went well we pull out all those screws out the new power supply button did up they tried it they going to turn that on from the ground it all was working a power supply was working to the interim come back to life and at the end of that spacewalk after about 8 hours I'm inside the airlock and things ready for boy you know not 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 why don't 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 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 that movie theater all 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 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 they could see our beautiful planet and at that moment it changed my relationship with the earth who should 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 realized 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. 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 back seat and she starts telling me of what she was going through during that Sunday that I was space walking 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 I'm from Little Rascals. So I thought you know I wish I would have known when I was up there because this is only this that I felt really Carol was thinking about me the whole time and we turned the corner to come down a block and I could see my neighbors are outside and they decorated my house and it is American flags everywhere and my neighbor across the street is holding a pepperoni pizza in a 6 pack of beer. 2 things that unfortunately we still cannot get in space. And I get out of the car and there'll hugging me and still might my life Blue flight suit and they're hugging me and saying how happy ought to have me back in and how great the everything turned out and I realized all my friends they were thinking about me the whole time and you know they're there with me to the next day we have a return ceremony we make these speeches these engineers who would work all these years with us or trainers the people working 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. All that my family and my friends and the people I worked with the people that I love the people that cared about me there with me every step of the way. Thank you thank. That was Michael j. Madison. His lawyer a total of 30 hours and 4 minutes during 4 spacewalks a graduate of Columbia University an mit Michael is now the executive director of the rice Space Institute at Rice University. Remember you can pictures your own story by visiting dot org 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 Meg Bowles and Catherine Burns 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 not the bents or 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 half Reka hues and the soundtrack from the right stuff to Moses produced for radio by me Jay Allison at Atlanta Public Media Woods Hole Massachusetts and help them to get married 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 burdened and peaceful world the most Radio Hour is presented by the Public Radio Exchange p.r. X. Doddle for more about our podcast for information on pitching your own story and everything else go to our website film off auto or. This is k c b x h t one San Luis Obispo k n b x h d one San Ardo n k s p x Santa Barbara we're streaming a k.c.b. X. Dot au argy support comes from the Clark center in a row ground a presenting these so what oh gospel choir at $730.00 on October 5th they will honor Nelson Mandela his 100th birthday with African gospel music freedom songs and international classics tickets are at Clark Center dot au argy and join Rob Kimball every Wednesday evening from 8 o'clock to 10 for classical showcase the bringing music of the 20th and 21st centuries as well there's a silver screen that's classical showcase on Central Coast public radio k.c.b. X. Or on demand anytime a k.c.b. X. Dot o.-r. G. . At 7 o'clock on a beautiful Sunday evening here on the Central Coast My name's Andy's ink and it's time for global spin 2 hours of international music be playing the featured album of the week sorry of Vora got a new album for orchestra. And it's got a lot of other stuff be some surprises openings on the on the playlist so if you're listening and you want to make a request the number heard stations 54988558 is pledge drive 2 so if you're sure making a pledge you can go online o.-r. G. .