Placitas Community Library

“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,” wrote John Gillespie Magee, Jr. in his oft-quoted poem High Flight, “and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings…put out my hand, and touched the face of God.” The entire poem appears on the back of the Space Shuttle Challenger Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery proving yet again that art—whether poetry or music or the visual arts—possesses the power to reflect and channel human aspirations and emotions in ways that touch us…