Followers

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

CORRECTION

I received the following e-mail in relation to an earlier post.

Dear Mr. Wells-


I won't presume to post my comment on your Stickpoet site, but I was surprised to see you refer to Dr. Goddard as a German.  He was a Massachusetts boy, born and raised.
Your point about the correspondence between failures in poetry and rocketry, though, is well taken.


With my best regards-

Guy

Well Guy, you are quite correct. As a child I was quite interested in rocketry and read a good deal about the pioneering of the early space program.  Even as I was posting this the other night there was a nagging part of me that was thinking Goddard did not seem especially German in origin, but after more years than I care to admit, that was my recollection.  It was in fact Dr. Wernher von Braun a rocket pioneer as well that I was thinking of. Von Braun was German but later became an American citizen and brought with him a wealth of knowledge that benefited America's early entry into space exploration.  The problem is, that while I can straighten this much out I'm afraid I can no longer be certain to which of these two men this quote belongs. I tend to lean towards Goddard as originally designated, but I will attempt to clarify this in a subsequent post but for now, the matter of Goddard's birth and nationally is settled. As Guy acknowledged he is Massachusetts born and raised. Thus, quite American.

Guy seems content to let my connection to poetry and rocketry stand.

 

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