I'm performing at the I ❤ Pluto Festival on Feb. 18, 93 years after Pluto was discovered from Flagstaff's Lowell Observator

I'm honored that Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff has asked me to perform the poems "To the Planet Formerly Known as Pluto" and "Clyde Tombaugh" at the 2023 I ❤ Pluto Festival at the Orpheum Theater on Feb. 18.

I'll be sharing the stage with Lowell Observatory Historian Kevin Schindler, who will relive Clyde Tombaugh’s day of discovering Pluto, 93 years ago.

The keynote is Astronaut Nicole Stott, who flew with the space shuttle Discovery on missions STS-128 and STS-133, space shuttle Atlantis on STS-129 and twice to the Internation Space Station on Expedition 20 and Expedition 21. Stott will talk about her career and wrote a book "Back to Earth: What Life in Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet – And Our Mission to Protect It."

She creatively combines the awe and wonder of her spaceflight experience with her artwork to inspire everyone’s appreciation of our role as crewmates here on Spaceship Earth.

She is a veteran NASA Astronaut with two spaceflights and 104 days as a crewmember on both the International Space Station (ISS) and the Space Shuttle. Personal highlights of her time in space include performing a spacewalk (10th woman to do so), flying the robotic arm to capture the first free-flying HTV, painting a watercolor (now on display at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum), working with her international crew on science that is all about improving life on Earth, and of course the life changing view of our home planet. She is also a NASA Aquanaut. In preparation for spaceflight she was a crew member on an 18-day saturation dive mission at the Aquarius undersea laboratory.

Nicole believes that the international model of peaceful and successful cooperation we have experienced in the extreme environments of space and sea holds the key to the same kind of peaceful and successful cooperation for all of humanity here on Earth.

On her post-NASA mission, Nicole is a co-founder of the Space for Art Foundation — uniting a planetary community of children through the awe and wonder of space exploration and the healing power of art.

"Dear Pluto"

By Christopher Fox Graham

April 20, 2012

To the planet formerly known as Pluto,

Though we will never meet

I think I know you

I am a speck of organic matter

standing on the surface of your sister

my people and I

are converted from ice and dust

electrified into existence

by the mere circumstances

of your sister Earth and nephew Moon

dancing with tide pools

when they were still in their infancy

mere molecules slammed together

and held onto each other in strings

which took billions of years

to mistake themselves in their reproduction

to form this all-too-young boy

sending you this letter

forgive my impetuousness, dear Pluto

but compared to you,

I only have a second

before this organic matter caves in on itself

becomes dust and water to form something new

all I have is my voice

and I beg you to listen

because although we will never meet

I think I know you

I’m not sure if you will receive this letter

In the time it takes to reach you,

I could bounce between here and the sun 16 times

measured on your timescale

my country is not even a year old yet

You’re farther away from the sun

than any of your siblings

and while the rest of those planets circulate in lockstep

in the same elliptical orbit

yours is full of highs and lows

as you rise above the plane

and drop beneath it

because you’re either bipolar

of just refuse to conform

be glad you’ve been able to do it so long

here, those who are different

either by choice or accident

wind up getting bullied, brutalized or crucified

and while I could explain what those words mean

let’s hope that by the time one of us stands on your surface

we’ve forgotten what they mean, too

At Lowell Observatory in the hills overlooking Flagstaff

astronomer Clyde Tombaugh picked you out from the black

he watched you wander at the edge of the solar system

and noted how you keep your distance

from everyone else like you

I know what it feels like to be alone, too

there are times when people here

believe the sun is so far away they don’t feel warm anymore

and they stare out into the black

and wonder what’s like to just let go

I’m glad you’ve stayed with us, dear Pluto

you show us that even when the universe is terrifying cold

there’s some light to hold on to

some reason to keep moving

and even out there you and your moon Charon

prove you can find love anywhere

since we began to worship stars

we have followed your siblings

the rocky worlds, the gas giants

to us, if they were bigger than an asteroid or moon

and weren’t furnaces like the sun,

they were a planet

deserving the name of a god

an astrological house

and a certain amount of inexplicable reverence

you were nine children of a yellow sun

on the rural edge of the galaxy

but now because your size doesn’t fit new rules

the International Astronomical Union on my world

has decided you are no longer a planet

you don’t meet the qualifications anymore

you no longer govern an astrological house

they took you away from you were to us

because some ink on paper said you didn’t matter anymore

they put you a box labeled “dwarf planets” or “Plutoids”

only to be ostracized from your brothers and sisters

by faceless strangers at the stroke of pen

here, we label people too,

segregate them into boxes

based on the color of their skins

or which one of those gods they called out to while dying

or whether they love someone with the same or different parts

or in what way they their throats make noises to communicate

or even by where they were born

as if point of origin means anything

on a planet spinning 1,600 kilometers per second,

where specks like me have wandered to every part of it

tell me, dear Pluto

can you see the borders of our nations from out there?

it seems that’s all we can see down here sometimes

can you tell us apart?

if we one day reach you

dig our fingers into your dirt

would you care about what language we used

to tell each other 

how beautiful the moment was?

Dear Pluto,

I know what it feels like to be small

I’m still a little boy, too

playing grown-up games

wondering what happens

when there’s nothing left to orbit anymore

Though we will never meet

you don’t have to answer this letter if it ever reaches you

but I think you know me,

I am a tiny voice on your sister Earth

and you are Pluto, the ninth planet of the sun

"Clyde Tombaugh"

A companion poem to "Dear Pluto"

January 27, 2016

The Kansas boy stares into the sky

counting stars with his fingers

pretending he can touch each one

playing piano keys with constellations

the spheres make music most us will never hear

but he orchestrates symphonies

oboes in Orion

clarinets in Cancer

violins in Virgo

percussion rumbling off supernova timpanies

snare drums on the skin of black holes

while spinning quasars keep perfect rhythm

the boy, now a teen measures stars with his telescopes

built from leftover parts

shaping steel and mirrors

to bend the light down into his hands

he wants to hold the weight of stardust 

in his palm

the boy, now a man,

works on Mars Hill

the evening shift at Lowell Observatory

scouring the images for differences

one single speck out of place

but these were skies he could paint from memory

on a night like tonight

a cold February

the man became a boy again

when he found a spot 

hide-and-seeking with him

telling him the stars and planets were looking back at us

an undiscovered instrument 

making music he was the first to hear

a ninth symphony he held for a moment

heard alone, echoing in solitary discovery

before he shared it with the world

76 years later,

nine years after his death

mankind's ship in a bottle

broke the bonds of earth to reach out

and find New Horizons

in the cold dark of space

in a case no bigger than heart of a boy

now 2.97 billion miles from Kansas

from Mars Hill

from our entire history

are the ashes of the man who first heard the music

after six years alone in the dark

he traveled farther than anyone in history

to visit a world unseen by human eyes

and last July, the man became a boy again

matching his imagination to the globe in front of him

visiting an undiscovered country held for a moment

a solitary discovery

before he shared it with the world

at that distance, signals and light take 4 and half hours to reach home

in those hours, 

Clyde Tombaugh,

you had a world captivated in the silence

waiting 4 billion years

for someone to visit

what did you talk about?

did she ask 

what the sun feels like 

when so much closer?

how it warms your skin in summer?

did she tell you her story?

what it’s like to be so far away, alone in night?

how her years pass in centuries?

did you tell her about us?

about Kansas

about Mars Hill

about what it feels like to hold stardust in your palm?

did you tell her there were 7 billion boys and girls back home

waiting to see her for the first time?

was she eager to meet you since she first saw you

playing hide and seek with your telescopes

or counting stars with your fingers

or did she just sing a song?

one half of an unfinished duet

a harmony you already knew

something slow and beautiful

a secret 

only two lovers 

can understand

Astronaut Nicole Stott, from right; Alden Tombaugh, son of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh; Alden's wife Cherylee Tombaugh; poet Christopher Fox Graham; Athena Zelda Nebula Skye Sylvia Diana Fox Graham; and Kevin Schindler, historian of Lowell Observatory, who organized the Night of Discovery event at the Orpheum Theater in Flagstaff.
I was honored to perform poems about Pluto and Clyde Tombaugh. Alden was very complimentary and asked for copies (which I had pre-printed and shared with Kevin, Alden and Nicole).

Athena had a great time and ate loads of food. Lowell's senior astronomer also announced a 2,430-km diameter asteroid between Jupiter and Mars is now officially called (28724) Stott.

On the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing

Photojournalist Tom Hood and I were invited by Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff to cover a speech by astronaut Neil Armstrong related to the unveiling of the first images recorded by the Discovery Channel Telescope on July 20, 2012, on the 43rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon.

The recording of Neil Armstrong's speech has some funny lines and beautiful imagery:
“Almost a half-century ago, some astronomers designed an experiment. The idea was deceptively simple: Compute the distance between the Earth and the moon based on the time it would take for a beam of light to travel up to a mirror located on the surface of the moon and to reflect it back to Earth.”
“I wasn’t one of the scientists on this project — I was sort of technician. My job in the experiment was to install the mirror."
“It may not be obvious why anyone would want to measure the distance to the Sea of Tranquility within 11 inches, but we had to have some way of confirming our mileage for our expense account.”
“The mirrors are expected to be busy for many years to come, which gives me enormous satisfaction as a technician on the project.” 

“From the Sea of Tranquility, the Earth hung above me 23 degrees west of the zenith, a turquoise pendant against a black velvet sky.”
“The home of the human species is not inherently restricted to Earth alone. The universe around us is our challenge and our destiny.”

“Thanks to everyone here for being a part in this civilization.”

Neil Armstrong on the moon

It turned out to be Armstrong's last public speech [and second-to-last interview; his last being with an Italian radio station] gave before his death on Aug. 25, 2012.

The video to which he referred at another speech in Australia in 2011:

Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong also left behind an American Flag, a plaque, an olive branch-shaped gold pin, messages from 73 world leaders, a patch from the Apollo 1 mission that, during a training exercise, combusted and killed three American astronauts, and medals in honor of two of the first Soviet astronauts who had died in flight.

Digitally remastered footage of the 1969 Apollo 11 moonwalk:


The video highlights of the three-hour moonwalk include a clearer picture of Neil Armstrong's descent down the stairs of the lunar module, which was taken from the Parkes Radio Observatory and the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station outside Canberra on 21 July 1969 (Australian time).
The long-forgotten video footage was uncovered during a decade-long search for the original recordings of the moonwalk, and involved lengthy detective work and clandestine meetings, says astronomer and telescope operator John Sarkissian from the CSIRO at Parkes, who headed up the search.
At the time of the Moon landing, three stations - Goldstone in California, Honeysuckle Creek in Canberra, and Parkes in New South Wales - simultaneously recorded the events onto magnetic data tape. The direct recordings were not of broadcast quality, says John, so they had to set up a regular TV camera pointed at a small black-and-white TV screen in the observatory to obtain higher-quality images that could be relayed to television stations around the world.
"Original signals weren't HD quality TV. They weren't even broadcast quality, even by 1969 standards," he says. "They were better than what was broadcast to the world; that's why we went looking for them ...".

Buzz Aldrin on the moon

The Goldstone camera settings to convert Neil's descent down the stairs were not correct and showed an image too dark to see. So the decision was made to switch to the Honeysuckle Creek footage, and after eight minutes, to the Parkes footage, which was used for the rest of the moonwalk.

 It was this clearer footage, which had not been seen since 1969, that John and his search team were hoping to recover from the NASA archives, where the tapes had been sent.
Unfortunately, they hit a roadblock. "We discovered, to our horror, that in the 1970s and 80s NASA had taken the tapes in the national archive and erased them all to record other missions."
About 250,000 tapes from the Apollo era, likely including the 45 tapes of the moonwalk, are likely lost forever.

The Apollo 11 Plaque left on the lander on the moon

After some digging, they found that in the 1980s someone made a VHS tape of the Honeysuckle Creek magnetic tape, "a bootleg copy if you like, that was severely degraded," John says. A copy of that copy was given to an Apollo enthusiast who was tracked down to Sydney by the search team. This footage included a brighter and clearer version of Apollo 11 mission commander Neil Armstrong's descent to the lunar surface and was used to replace the darker Goldstone images at the start of the broadcast.
At the awards ceremony, select scenes from the entire restored video will show Neil's first step on the Moon's surface, Buzz Aldrin's decent of the lunar module ladder, the plaque reading and the raising of the U.S. flag.

Had the Apollo 11 mission failed, the White House had planned for President Richard Nixon to give this speech, which remained quietly in government archieves. The speech is heart-wrenching, even if it was never needed:

On the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing

Photojournalist Tom Hood and I were invited by Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff to cover a speech by astronaut Neil Armstrong related to the unveiling of the first images recorded by the Discovery Channel Telescope on July 20, 2012, on the 43rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon.

The recording of Neil Armstrong's speech has some funny lines and beautiful imagery:
“Almost a half-century ago, some astronomers designed an experiment. The idea was deceptively simple: Compute the distance between the Earth and the moon based on the time it would take for a beam of light to travel up to a mirror located on the surface of the moon and to reflect it back to Earth.”
“I wasn’t one of the scientists on this project — I was sort of technician. My job in the experiment was to install the mirror."
“It may not be obvious why anyone would want to measure the distance to the Sea of Tranquility within 11 inches, but we had to have some way of confirming our mileage for our expense account.”
“The mirrors are expected to be busy for many years to come, which gives me enormous satisfaction as a technician on the project.” 

“From the Sea of Tranquility, the Earth hung above me 23 degrees west of the zenith, a turquoise pendant against a black velvet sky.”
“The home of the human species is not inherently restricted to Earth alone. The universe around us is our challenge and our destiny.”

“Thanks to everyone here for being a part in this civilization.”

Neil Armstrong on the moon

It turned out to be Armstrong's last public speech [and second-to-last interview; his last being with an Italian radio station] gave before his death on Aug. 25, 2012.

The video to which he referred at another speech in Australia in 2011:

Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong also left behind an American Flag, a plaque, an olive branch-shaped gold pin, messages from 73 world leaders, a patch from the Apollo 1 mission that, during a training exercise, combusted and killed three American astronauts, and medals in honor of two of the first Soviet astronauts who had died in flight.

Digitally remastered footage of the 1969 Apollo 11 moonwalk:


The video highlights of the three-hour moonwalk include a clearer picture of Neil Armstrong's descent down the stairs of the lunar module, which was taken from the Parkes Radio Observatory and the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station outside Canberra on 21 July 1969 (Australian time).
The long-forgotten video footage was uncovered during a decade-long search for the original recordings of the moonwalk, and involved lengthy detective work and clandestine meetings, says astronomer and telescope operator John Sarkissian from the CSIRO at Parkes, who headed up the search.
At the time of the Moon landing, three stations - Goldstone in California, Honeysuckle Creek in Canberra, and Parkes in New South Wales - simultaneously recorded the events onto magnetic data tape. The direct recordings were not of broadcast quality, says John, so they had to set up a regular TV camera pointed at a small black-and-white TV screen in the observatory to obtain higher-quality images that could be relayed to television stations around the world.
"Original signals weren't HD quality TV. They weren't even broadcast quality, even by 1969 standards," he says. "They were better than what was broadcast to the world; that's why we went looking for them ...".

Buzz Aldrin on the moon

The Goldstone camera settings to convert Neil's descent down the stairs were not correct and showed an image too dark to see. So the decision was made to switch to the Honeysuckle Creek footage, and after eight minutes, to the Parkes footage, which was used for the rest of the moonwalk.

It was this clearer footage, which had not been seen since 1969, that John and his search team were hoping to recover from the NASA archives, where the tapes had been sent.
Unfortunately, they hit a roadblock. "We discovered, to our horror, that in the 1970s and 80s NASA had taken the tapes in the national archive and erased them all to record other missions."
About 250,000 tapes from the Apollo era, likely including the 45 tapes of the moonwalk, are likely lost forever.

The Apollo 11 Plaque left on the lander on the moon

After some digging, they found that in the 1980s someone made a VHS tape of the Honeysuckle Creek magnetic tape, "a bootleg copy if you like, that was severely degraded," John says. A copy of that copy was given to an Apollo enthusiast who was tracked down to Sydney by the search team. This footage included a brighter and clearer version of Apollo 11 mission commander Neil Armstrong's descent to the lunar surface and was used to replace the darker Goldstone images at the start of the broadcast.
At the awards ceremony, select scenes from the entire restored video will show Neil's first step on the Moon's surface, Buzz Aldrin's decent of the lunar module ladder, the plaque reading and the raising of the U.S. flag.

Had the Apollo 11 mission failed, the White House had planned for President Richard Nixon to give this speech, which remained quietly in government archieves. The speech is heart-wrenching, even if it was never needed: