Jan. 26 – Friday –
Gray sky – light rain at times, growing more steady towards nightfall –
A.M. In studio, more work on the Cherry Creek sketch. Before noon Hank called, suggesting we go to Sears, and get the electric sabre saw he had looked at. I picked him up at 12:30 and we went over. On Hank’s advice I bought one of the lighter weight medium-sized ones – The salesman demonstrated all the possibilities it had, but I already have forgotten them and will have to learn it all over again –
P.M. – finished work on the Cherry Creek sketch – Now that it is finished, I hate the thought of selling it and perhaps will not – it suggests a larger more important painting –
From Canada it was announced that we launched a satellite at the moon, designed to transmit pictures of the moon’s surface just before it landed, and that it had been a successful launching, and was on its way, due to land on Monday morning – a thrill to contemplate [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_3]. (Later it was announced that unfortunately it would miss the moon by 20,000 miles. But that this would not prevent the putting of a “man-in-space” (Lt. Col. John H. Glenn, Jr.) tomorrow morning. This event makes me nervous, and I will be until safe on the earth again. These things have to be done, but it is not easy fear the possibility he may be destroyed.
Bedtime music – “Pictures at an Exhibition” – plus Prologue + Persian Dance from Khovanshchina and then the Virgil Thomson movie [sic] music.
Charles E. Burchfield, January 26, 1962