Platoff has undertaken the task of researching and locating the position of the six American flags planted on the moon during the Apollo missions. The simple act of raising a flag, it turns out, required intense preparations. Listen below as she describes how the thick astronaut gloves impeded gripping the slippery nylon, how a third horizontal bar had to be mounted to keep the flags from flopping down due to a lack of a breeze, and how micro-meteriods now threaten to puncture little holes in the still-waving stripes and stars.

What we loved most about all the flag-loving was Platoff herself. How in the world, we wondered, did this woman figure out her passion, which, by the way, comes with a delectable official name—vexillology. 

"Well," she says. "It's funny, but I first fell in love as a kid. They had these flags of the world patches that you got in the mail if you sent in 3 Campbell's soup labels and one proof of purchase from a Premier saltine box." 

From there, she moved on to reading the flag entry in the encyclopedia, creating flags for high-school model-UN conferences, and graduating from Kansas State University, Topeka, with a degree in political science, where she realized, "There are just no jobs in flags. Unless you want to be a flag salesman."

So she thought about what made her love flags--and that was the research behind them, digging through books, looking up oral stories. Who researches? Librarians. Before too long, Annie was working at the the library in the Space Center in Houston, Texas, which is where she stumbled on the story of flags on the moon...and promptly went starry-eyed.

 

Just another reminder: no matter how obscure or difficult your dream may seem at times, there is a place on this very earthly world for it.

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