Political Quotes

“when I was growing up in the Eastern Plains of Colorado, one of the things I was hoping to do after graduating from college and entering the workforce was to work in the space program. I desperately wanted to be an engineer--an astronaut. I wanted to live that dream that was played on the television when I was growing up and when there were movies such as ``The Right Stuff.'' When I was growing up in the mid-1980s, the movies they showed idealized the world of space exploration. I grew up idolizing the astronauts. I can remember as a child writing a letter to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, and basically telling them that I was really interested in becoming an astronaut and how I could someday do that. Little did I know that my mom, all these years later, kept the response from NASA, and the letter had the old ``worm'' NASA logo on top. The response came with a picture of the most recent space shuttle mission, which included Sally Ride. Of course we know Sally Ride, the first female in the space shuttle program. I remember how excited I was to get that letter back. Years later, I looked at the actual content of the letter and noted that they weren't necessarily quite as kind in confirming my aspirations when they laid out how difficult it would be to become a rocket scientist--to become an aerospace engineer and to go on and pursue that dream. Lo and behold, they were right.…”