U.S.S. Aquila News and Views Heading into 2011
by Rob Langenderfer 

A dedicated group of U.S.S. Aquila members and their friends (Stephanie Rechtin, Linda Widener, Rob Langenderfer, Mike Schmitz, Karen Baumgartner and her son Noah) journeyed to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Part One at Newport on the Levee on November 20, 2010. Everyone was pretty favorably impressed with the film. Gary Pierce joined us for dinner afterwards to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the club.
Bad weather necessitated the postponement of the December meeting and book discussion. However, the game day the following weekend was a rousing success as Phil Textor and his daughter Hannah Eder led Stephanie, Gary and Rob in a game of Once Upon a Story, a kind of round-robin story game based on cards with pictures, and then Phil led a general SF role-playing game that used a story that he had first heard 25 years ago. Stephanie made lasagna for dinner, and we all had a good meal, and Jeff Ross from the U.S.S. Camelot showed up just near the time that Phil, Hannah and Gary were leaving. Jeff, Stephanie and I watched Babylon 5: The Lost Tales and an episode of The Avengers with Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg. We enjoyed both of them. Phil liked how the role-playing game story went, and we plan to do others in the future.

The Aquila will be meeting Sat. Jan. 8th at the main branch of the Hamilton County Public Library in downtown Cincinnati at 800 Vine St. in Meeting Room 2A on the 2nd floor near the Tech Center. That will likely be our main meeting place for 2011 at the very least. Lisa Garrison-Ragsdale will be sending us information about Millennicon shortly. It will certainly be a topic of discussion at the meeting. New suggestions for activities for the group are also most welcome.

Notes from earlier meetings: At the September meeting we had a good discussion of Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson, and a discussion of Geoffrey Landis’ Mars Crossing at the October meeting. It was decided not to hold a November meeting in view of the 20th anniversary and movie showing.

Fantastic Voyages: Mars Crossing covers a hard-scrabble Landscape
by Diane Baker

Geoffrey Landis is an accomplished writer, creating a man-vs.-environment tale with characters which reflect one another as they cross a hostile planet determined (almost mystically) to eliminate them. Much of the story offers biographies of the characters which show how similar are their experiences. Estrela and Tana are both minority women, with secrets well concealed. Ryan is Rodkowski in miniature, and Trevor has a mirror-character in twin brother Brandon. When they pull the ultimate "twin-switch," you can't help but pull for them. It's a "rocket boys" feeling. I neither liked nor disliked the characters, but Landis made me care what happened to them. That's a basic job for writers. I began wondering why all the mirror images, and realized that he killed off the mirror images, not the main characters: Tana, Ryan and Trevor are so like their images that we don't necessarily miss Radkowski, Estrela and Brandon. A clever trick, but does it make for a good story? It's suspenseful, but it leaves a bad taste behind.

> Three of the characters have to die for the crew to get back, a reminder that space is hostile. Q would like this novel: "It's not safe out there," he warns. Landis sings the same song. I wasn't surprised when we discovered who was behind all the bad luck: Estrela doesn't "want to be alone," as she declares. She wants to be on Mars alone with Jað, her lover, a previous voyager who died on the surface. Mars is a mighty prison, but Landis poses an ignoble end to an endeavor we're primed to cheer. Estrela's motives might convince, but her change of heart does not. This is a woman with grit, who won't move an inch in a hurricane. The science is first rate, but the fiction is flawed. Let's hope when we actually get to Mars we have people---and a mission---we can applaud.

USS Aquila History: The First 10 Years (cont.)
By Rob Langenderfer

Later in September 1995 Carson, Linda, Tina, Tammy, Adam and Brian Widener, Alex Snodgrass (Tina’s fiancé), Chris Langsdale, Tonya Jones, Jodi Crouch, Eddie Jones, Leonard Robinson, Glenna Juilfs and Erin Pence journeyed down to Lake Cumberland to help clean up the area, which was full of garbage. 

In October Linda, Tammy and Brian Widener and myself, Cindy Paugh, Glenna, Erin and Ben Kirby helped out at the 1995 VA Homeless Stand Down, giving clothes and other aid to the homeless. At Tall Stacks ’95 in October the following people from the Aquila and the Space Station Star Hawk helped out (with the great majority in historic costumes that they had made) to make the event more enjoyable for the thousands of people who came to see it: Linda, Tina, Tammy, Adam and Brian Widener, Jodi Crouch, Tonya Jones, Cindy Paugh, Erin Pence, Glenna Juilfs, Juanita Daley, Eileen Dehyle, Elza Corrill, Rob Langenderfer, Samantha Lawrence, April Byrd, Lynda Pence, Ben Kirby, Alex Snodgrass, Don Deyhle, Tammy and Heather Borchardt, Darlene Stroberg, Bill Robb and Terry. Glenna Juilfs, Erin Pence, Adam and Brian Widener, Jodi Crouch, Tonya Jones, Ed and Monica Watkins, Tami Illis, Eileen and Don Deyhle, Casey (Jones – who I believe was the Casey who was Eileen’s granddaughter), Stacy, Sam Fields, Mary Sipe, Earl and Eddie Jones and Jonathan Praether manned two rooms at the Delhi Haunted House – a medieval torture chamber and the family funeral of the electrocuted murderer. Members of the group who helped out at Boo Fest at the Haunted Neighborhood at the Cincinnati Museum Center were Linda Widener, Erin Pence, Glenna Juilfs, Juanita Daley, and Eileen and Don Deyhle.

At CPR Saturday in November Linda and Brian Widener, Janet and Jodi Crouch, Glenna Juilfs, Erin Pence, Eileen Deyhle and Rob and Mary Langenderfer all obtained or renewed their CPR certifications. I listed all of these events to give those reading this a sense of just how active the group was at this time. 

In January of 1996, the group moved into its new meeting place at the Barnes and Nobles bookstore in Florence (having had to leave the Union Hall after 1995 since Greg was no longer a union officer). That would remain its regular meeting place for the next ten years. At the meeting, Glenna, Erin and Leonard were promoted to Captain, Linda was promoted to Lt. Cmdr., I was promoted to Lt., Tina and Vanessa were promoted to Ensign, Tammy Widener was promoted to MCPO, and Brian was promoted to CPO, and Adam was promoted to PO (having been in the Cadet Corps and having started on the ship with a much lower rank). Although the prior two months were relatively disappointing due to bad weather, the death of Juanita’s father and the almost total destruction of the floats in the Thanksgiving and Christmas parades, the next months would again be a period of great activity as the Star Trek Federation Science Exhibit came to the Cincinnati Museum Center, and Star Trek clubs from all over the Greater Cincinnati area were given the opportunity to help explain the different experiments and rooms that comprised the exhibit which were designed to help the public better understand science and the technology that was coming from it.

In February Janet Crouch and Sam Hearld returned to the Aquila after long absences, and Greg’s stated intention to retire was vetoed by the entire crew, and he agreed to stay on as CO for another two years. The Aquila Marine unit (38th MSG) was given an award for being the SMI 7th Division Strike Group of the Year, and Leonard was given an award for being the SMI 7th Division Marine of the Year. Tina had married Alex Snodgrass and had moved to West Virginia, so Darlene Stroberg took over Project Genesis. At the April meeting, plaques for the 1993, 1994 and 1995 Officers of the Year were presented to Ken Paugh, Greg Turner and Linda Widener respectively.

The Museum Center exhibit finished up this month with a great volunteer party where Fleet Captain Joan Riley (former Polaris CO) had the opportunity to promote Dave Abbott (who by now had himself retired as Polaris captain, handing the reins over to Tom Creech) to Fleet Captain for his hard work on the exhibit. Bev was promoted to the rank of Captain later that month at Dover, largely because of her hard work on the exhibit. The exhibit was more than just a way of teaching people about science and Star Trek and being a nice PR activity for both the museum center and local clubs. It got people from different clubs working together and interacting with each other in a way they never had before. New friendships were formed, and a greater sense of community among fandom resulted. Glenna, Linda, Erin and Brian each worked 100 or more hours at the exhibit, which gave each of them the rank of Commander the way the ranking in the museum center’s system was done, with only Captain (with 150 or more hours of volunteer time) eluding them. Janet Crouch made the rank of Lt. for her volunteer time, Cindy made the rank of Lt. jg. and Leonard and I both made the rank of Ensign while Jodi made the rank of Chief. Tammy Borchardt, Darlene Stroberg, Janet Burgoon, Tammy Widener and her then boyfriend Robert Hollander were also recognized by the ship for the time that they had put in volunteering on the exhibit.

The Dover Peace Conference in 1996 with Robert O’Reilly and writers Margaret Wander Bonanno and Brad Ferguson as guests was a wonderfully festive time, a particular convention highlighted by one attendee of almost every Dover as the high point of Dovers. Dover seemed to always fall right near my final exam week at Thomas More College, but this was the one right before I was scheduled to graduate, and I figured that I could survive the trip and still do well on my exams. I went up with Linda, Brian, Glenna and Erin. Greg, Tammy, Darlene, Cindy and Ken Paugh, and Leonard and Shirley Robinson also attended from our ship.

I had a nice time getting to talk with Robert O’Reilly about acting, and I was able to get the Vulcan ears there from Earl Jones that he had made for me to complete my Vulcan costume, which I later wore to several conventions. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since this time, so I feel that I can finally say that I was NOT drunk on Dave and Jennifer Woodard’s rum-soaked watermelon. When I learned that it was soaked in rum, I decided to just act as if I was a little under to see if I could see what it felt like and to get a rise out of people, which I did! I was never not in control of any of my faculties, including when I was crossing the street.

Unless I was so drunk that I was not aware of my movements, which I don’t remember being, and I do remember thinking that it would be interesting to see what being drunk felt like and I remember consciously doing things that I was aware might make people think I was drunk, like rubbing my pants legs, so that is my final word on the subject unless someone who was there wants to offer their recollections of things!

I did end up graduating from Thomas More with a 3.914 GPA, and many members of the Aquila came to my graduation party held back at my house. Linda, Brian and Tammy Widener (along with her then-boyfriend Robert Hollander), Glenna, Erin, Lynda Pence and her daughters Becky and Cyndi and Dustyn Pence Jr. and Jonathan Pence attended, and I remember all of the things that occurred that day, playing basketball late at night with the Wideners in my driveway was the most fun.

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