Amaze! Amaze! Amaze!

On April 6th, the crew of Artemis II passed 252,756 miles from Earth. Farther than any human being has ever been from our planet. Commander Reid Wiseman radioed back to Houston about the view, Earth at window four and the Moon at window three. The response from Mission Control: Amaze! Amaze! Amaze! Thank you, Reid. 

The phrase came from Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary, where Rocky, an alien engineer with a body made of stone, repeats a word three times when something is too big to hold in one utterance. The crew had watched the film together in pre-launch quarantine. So when our astronauts found themselves farther from home than anyone in history, they borrowed the language of a fictional alien made of stone. Rocky’s awe at what humans can do, and our awe at ourselves doing it, meeting in the same phrase. The wonder vibrating across the gap between fiction and the real.

That kind of awe is rare now. What we have lost over the last several years is something deeper than any single fight: our trust that big public systems, especially government, can still do hard things for the people we care about. The defunding, the dismantling, the steady drumbeat that the systems we built to serve people can no longer deliver for them. 

We are more jaded than we have ever been. I watch colleagues across the field lose something I can only describe as their capacity for awe. The belief that public infrastructure can work. That the unglamorous machinery of policy and care is worth the cost. We have lost our wonder. And without wonder, we cannot imagine. Without imagination, we cannot build.

Artemis II restored that sense of awe in me. Tens of thousands of people, across dozens of institutions – public and private, military and civilian, American and Canadian – built the most complex machine ever flown and four humans trusted it enough to ride it around the Moon. It worked. Christina Koch looked back from farther than anyone has been and said the words that stopped me: Planet Earth, you are a crew. 

If we can coordinate ourselves to fling humans around the Moon, we can coordinate ourselves to build child care that actually reaches families, housing that creates wealth for the people who live in it, and benefits that meet people in their dignity. The distance between those ambitions is not as far as we have come to believe. What they share is the same raw ingredient: the conviction that doing hard things together is still possible.

This month, Gary moved into a new office (come check us out!). I have been thinking less about the space itself and more about what I want us to feel when we walk through the door. Not gratitude, though there is plenty of that. Not the privilege philanthropy affords us, though we should never lose sight of it. Something harder to name. I want us in a posture of curiosity. I want us operating at exceptional levels of wonder. I want us to practice joy as the animating force of everything we do, not as decoration. Joy is the only durable form of resistance. Awe is how we imagine the world we still want to build. So I am declaring it: 2026 is the year of awe and wonder. Amaze! Amaze! Amaze! Let’s make it a meme.

On The Workbench

• Speaking of building systems that can challenge the status quo, Gary is piloting a new model of providing child care subsidies through a flexible, parent-directed digital wallet that braids family, friends and neighbor care and center-based care. You can learn more at capcolorado.org. We’re looking for research partners and others to share this idea and to learn from. Reach out to James Lukens to partner. 
• Gary has been reimagining afterschool access through an innovative family-driven program called My Spark. The DPS Foundation is expanding My Spark in Denver, and now we’re partnering with six other communities to explore a similar approach.
• I’ve talked about our awesome community insight venture – CDIG – that gathers rapid insights from families across Colorado. That team has a new partnership with GreenLight Fund Denver.
• Everyone relies on someone who relies on child care. Shay Castle documented how child care shapes the daily life of Andrew Hyde, a child-free 42-year-old. Shay is a part of our narrative and storytelling cohort. Read the article, published in the Denver Post and across several Prairie Mountain Media outlets last month. 
• We seeded an innovative child care facility funding pool to make it easier for providers to expand or build new facilities. Colorado Enterprise Fund and First Southwest Bank are our partners in this. If you know a child care provider who wants to grow or open a new space, share the Child Care Loan Fund with them and encourage them to reach out.

~ Santhosh

Welcome to the Workbench — a monthly peek behind the curtain at Gary. The way we work involves tinkering, making mistakes, changing, growing, and learning from all of it. We’re often in draft mode: testing ideas, iterating on what’s working, and letting go of what isn’t. This newsletter is our way of sharing that journey with you — not the polished final product, but the messy, exciting work-in-progress itself. Because if we’re serious about making Colorado the best place to raise kids, we want to build it with you.