[FPSPACE] Update on the Portrees

[DSFPortree at aol.com]

Hi, friends:

Thanks to all for their kind words (and other support) in the past month. We 
are intensely grateful, though Samantha, being four and a half, isn't entirely 
clear on the details. You've kept us going.

Life has been difficult of late, making mundane challenges seem 
inconsequential - I've been considering scheduling an appointment to get my wisdom teeth 
cut out as a fun diversion from the new world we're in. I miss Martha terribly - 
she was a wonder. One of the nicest things to come from all this has been the 
knowledge that I was/am not alone in my view of Mrs. Portree.

Martha would have been pleased to know that her daughter has been making 
exceptional progress. Sam suffered two skull fractures and brain swelling in the 
July 7 car crash that killed Martha and three other people. We went in for a 
cognitive evaluation last week. The testing stopped when Sam was solving 
problems used to test 5.5-year-olds. She's definitely her maniacal little self again.

The casts come off tomorrow - less than five weeks after the accident. She 
suffered three fractures in her left arm and two in her right leg. Samantha has 
been walking on her cast for the past week and a half, even though it's not a 
walking cast. The leg cast extends from upper thigh to toes. On Thursday, she 
climbed a rope ladder at preschool before anyone could stop her.

This is all the more amazing when one considers her condition immediately 
after the accident. When I first arrived in her room in the Pediatric ICU, just a 
couple of hours after the accident, she looked like a little lump of 
human-shaped hamburger.

As for me, I have my up days and my down days. Sam's victories keep me going, 
and I find refuge in all the little chores I need to do to keep us afloat. In 
other words, work is good.

My projects have all been on hold; the new edition of HUMANS TO MARS will not 
see print until 2009 now. I'm not sure yet about MSR and HUMANS TO THE MOON, 
though I suspect that there's a very good chance that they'll unfold as 
planned; Martha would demand nothing less. I've been writing my personal blog for 
the past couple of weeks, but have yet to restart my Earth & Sky blog. Last week 
I attended a meeting to prepare for the new year of educational outreach on 
the Navajo and Hopi Reservations; the normalcy of that was hugely refreshing. 

Again, thanks to all for your interest and kindness.

BTW, on the subject of astronaut behavior, it seems to me that if you treat 
astronauts like rock stars/movie stars/star athletes, some are bound to behave 
like rock stars/movie stars/star athletes. Bending the rules was common at JSC 
with regards to astronauts and their families. It's no wonder, then, that 
some behave like Lindsay Lohan. I'm convinced that, if mission considerations 
were the main force behind the astronaut corps, we'd have fewer astronauts and 
different astronauts.

Is there any truth to the notion that Morgan finally got her flight because 
of all the controversy over Nowak and the like?

David

David S. F. Portree
author & educator
dsfportree at aol.com
(928) 226-1427
Flagstaff Arizona USA

DSFP homepage
http://members.aol.com/dsfportree/dsfp.htm

DSFP Altair VI blog
http://altairvi.blogspot.com/

DSFP Earth & Sky blog
http://blogs.earthsky.org/dsfportree/

"It's like when you're a kid, the first time they tell you that the world's 
turning and you just can't quite believe it because everything looks like it's 
standing still. I can feel it - the turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our 
feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, the entire planet is hurtling 
around the Sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We're 
falling through space, you and me. Clinging to the skin of this tiny little 
world, and if we let go..." - The Ninth Doctor








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