“Sweet Optimism”

Your Working Girl noticed the re-tweet from Evan Hadfield early in the morning of May 13th.  As she’s mentioned on previous occasions in this space, the work of Commander Hadfield has held her in thrall since he’s been sending his brilliant tweets from the ISS.  He looked like he was having such a good time in space, a hard-working Peter Pan in the flesh; she thought it might be a tad tough for him to come home.

His finale tweet, Spaceflight Finale: To some it looks this may look like a sunset.  But it is a new dawn, signaled he was okay about it.

Your Working Girl watched his version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity as soon as the link arrived in her iPhone and again later on her desktop.  It was an aria, set in the most expansive, operatic environment imaginable.  The next day, Jian Gomeshi referred to Hadfield’s “sweet optimism.”

She followed people following that link since Monday.  On her first click, there were about 230,000 views, later on Monday morning 500,000.  By Monday evening there was 3.3 million, by Tuesday morning 6.3 million, Tuesday night 8.9 million, Wednesday evening 11.2 million and 12.3 million on Friday morning.  Wow!