In the past few weeks I feel that I have been a part of history in the making. I am filled with pictures that no history book could describe adequately. Stories that are by far better than any scripted series on TV.

Here in Florida our cable channel has two stations that we do not have in Michigan. At least we don’t get them from Comcast.

The channels that have had us engrossed most of the time were NASA-TV and the Imitation to World Heritage, a channel that comes direct from Japan. The NASA Channel was on the air 24/7 and connected directly to the space shuttle and the space station.

At any time of the day or night you could watch and listen as the astronauts worked in the shuttle and the space station. Watching them float through the tunnels of the space station and work in weightless conditions with things floating around them was fascinating.

Along with pictures of the inside of the space station, it was possible to watch the two astronauts walk in space, repairing items and moving large pieces of equipment from one place to another as though they were feathers. Preparing for the space walk and putting on their space suits captivated our attention.

At the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the huge TV screens made it possible to follow the trajectory of the space station as it orbited the earth. When the shuttle blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center, we were able to see the contrails from our front yard.

Then at night we were able to go outside here and watch the space station as it passed overhead. What an amazing accomplishment for our country.

The other important event was the unfortunate earthquake and the following tsunami in Japan, Hawaii and finally in California. Once again our cable service was able to give us a Japanese station reporting live from Japan.

While we couldn’t understand the language, we certainly could understand the devastation that the pictures were showing. That was easy to understand.

We watched as they interviewed people on the streets and with a  language barrier we were still able to understand their frustration and anguish over the events of the days. Watching the water wash away everything in its path was worse than any horror movie.

I am hoping our young people were watching the world news and understand how these events in other parts of the world effect us here at home.

I can compare this to my younger days when I listened with my parents the report of World War II on the radio. I remember hearing President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill discussing the events of the war.

My closest pictures to the reality of the war were the newsreels at the movie theater and the pictures that appeared in Life magazine.

My, how this world has changed in my lifetime.