Blog Archives

To the Space Station

5/26/2020

Well, if I’m going to be stranded here, I might as well take a look around.
from Snoopy: A Beagle of Mars
Schulz, Charles M.
KaBoom!, 2020 [electronic resource]

I grew up when space exploration was an exciting frontier. We watched TV shows like “My Favorite Martian,” “The Jetsons,” and “Lost in Space.” “Telstar” shot to the #1 spot on the pop music charts.
   At school, we gathered in the gym to watch spaceship launches. A local TV channel projected the news in real time. We were in awe. Lots of my classmates wanted to be scientists, astronauts, and explorers. I did not.
   I liked the safety of my own front door. I liked feeling cool grass between my toes on a hot, summer day. I liked reading books about kids like me, kinda boring, but grounded.
   Tomorrow afternoon at 4:33 EDT, SpaceX will launch its Crew Dragon spaceship. (Wednesday, 5/27/2020) It’s not the first time the shuttle will see space, but it’s the first time it will carry people when two experienced astronauts climb aboard and fly to the International Space Station.
   The 27 foot tall craft, about the height of a three-story building, will transport Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to the International Space Station. To watch live coverage, go to NASA.gov then type ISS in the search box on the top right. This will take you to a live stream of the blast off.
   The International Space Station is a space laboratory. NASA is using the what they learn there to help us understand how spending time in space and in a confined area affects people. The goal is to make it possible for humans to travel farther into space than ever before.
   Finding the ISS while traveling 17,000 miles per hour in orbit around the earth is a tricky business, especially since the space station is also moving. Traveling about 17,500 miles per hour, the ISS is in its own orbit about 200 miles above the earth. It makes one full orbit every hour and a half. The scientists have it all worked out though. It is more a matter of getting close and doing a series of U-turn maneuvers, kinda waiting until the space station finds its way to the craft. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition19/earth_day.html
   The Crew Dragon is expected to dock on the space station late Thursday morning. So about 17 hours to travel 200 miles at a speed of 17,000 miles per hour.
   On the face of it, it seems like, (if not for being in space) you could walk there faster! But, I’m not an astrophysicist.
   It’s the first time in eleven years that a shuttle will launch from Kennedy Space Center. An American crew will take off from American soil in an American built craft. For the last nine years, the United States has been depending on Russia to transport our astronauts to the International Space Station and bring them home. NASA had been working on the development of a shuttle, but cost overruns and delays put plans on hold.
   Now in private/public ventures, four different companies are working on designing re-usable space craft. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, of course. But Boeing, Airbus, and Lockheed Martin, too.The plan is for the space capsule to be used and reused for 10 flights before it will need significant refurbishing.
   In the 1990s, the ISS was renamed and redesigned to reduce costs and expand international involvement. In 1993, the United States and Russia decided to merge their separate facilities into one, and shortly after invited Japan to join them. Canada, Brazil and eleven members of the European Space Agency joined forces, too.
   The ISS has been continuously occupied by humans since November, 2003. Astronauts and cosmonauts come and go, staying for various amounts of time, and performing different experiments. “Moving astronauts and cosmonauts, science experiments, food, water, air, spare parts, and other supplies to and from the ISS is a highly choreographed international operation that must be executed with near perfection, every time."
https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2018/04/30/what-does-it-take-to-keep-the-station-stocked-with-supplies/
   Nationalism is raising its ugly head in all different countries and parts of societies. But we may be witnessing a whole new era. Scientists tend to live in a world where cooperation is necessary and expected. Space exploration and space travel are cooperative ventures where learning and teaching each other is commonplace. In the area of space science, at least, many people have learned to work together toward common goals.
   The goal is Mars, and by 2034, to invite regular people along for the ride. (see “Far Out!” 7/16/19) I’m not sure I’d sign up if I got the opportunity, but I bet lots of people would.
--stay curious! (and fly high)

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Happy Birthday Margaret Wise Brown

5/19/2020

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Goodnight stars
Goodnight air
Good night noises everywhere
from Goodnight Moon
by Margaret Wise Brown
pictures by Clement Hurd
Harper, 2016 [electronic resource]

I love picture books. I mean I really love them. I love the honest emotions they explore, the wisdom they illuminate, their humor, raucous and quiet, and the way a whole story unfolds between 32 pages. I love the way the pictures expand the text, and how the text plays with the pictures.
   Well, in my twenty-five years as a children’s librarian, and since, I have read my share of picture books that made me stop and say, “How did *this* get published?” “Where was the editor?” “What could the author have been thinking?”
   But, if I’m being honest, (of course I am!) most of what I read and shared with children was and still is excellent literature. Just like the short story or a novel or poetry, there is an art to a picture book, aside of course, from the illustration. But there is a craft, too. For the last several years, I have been studying that craft. I’ve learned about character development, story arcs, and the importance of point-of-view. I’ve studied and tried techniques for using dialogue, crafting plot points, and incorporating language play.
   I’ve explored the importance of tapping into my (potential) readers’ emotions, widening their world view, and creating tension for the beautiful release it offers when done correctly, like breathing in and breathing out.
   One of my favorite authors has always been, or at least since I found Goodnight Moon at the library when my girls were small, Margaret Wise Brown. She wrote beautifully simple, true stories that are a pleasure to read over and over.
   In The Runaway Bunny, the book I gave each of my girls as they left for college, a little bunny has decided to run away from his mommy and his home. He poses different scenarios to his mother. She promises to help him make his dreams come true. My favorite pages go like this:
   “If you become a sailboat and sail away from me,” said his mother,
   “I will become the wind and blow you wherever you want to go.”
When I was still working, I was advised not to use The Runaway Bunny with groups of children. Every other spread in the book is black and white, and their attention would wander. “My” children loved the story, though. The colorful pictures show the mommy bunny’s dreams for her child. They contrast with the black and white illustrations depicting reality. The distinction was not lost on the storytime crowd, young as they were.
   Almost every mother realizes she won’t be able to take care of her children for their whole lives. Reality holds many possibilities that make this statement true. But almost every mother wants her children to be happy. She wants to encourage them to dream impossible dreams and help them make those dreams come true.
   Even though she freely admitted that she didn’t really like children, (https://www.npr.org/2017/01/22/510642518/goodnight-moon-author-margaret-wise-brown-was-no-old-lady-whispering-hush) Margaret really knew how to write for them, and their grown-ups, too. She published over 100 books in her short life. One day she was at her doctor’s office literally kicking up her heels to celebrate how well she was feeling, when she dislodged a blood clot and died almost instantly. She was only 42 years old.
   Well past an average lifespan now, (Margaret would be 110 years old this coming Saturday, May 23, 2020), much of the world of children’s literature still mourns her untimely passing and celebrates her remarkable career.
   Two biographies have been published pretty recently. In the Great Green Room by Amy Gary (Flatiron Books, 2017) tells a somewhat narrative tale of Margaret’s colorful life. Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon by Leonard S. Marcus (Beacon Press, 1992) is a more straightforward telling.
   In 2019, HarperCollins published a picture book biography by Mac Barnett and Sarah Jacoby, The Important Thing About Margaret Wise Brown. The title refers to her Important Book and begins with a quote: “It did not seem important that any one wrote these stories. They were true. And it still doesn’t seem important! All this emphasis today on who writes what seems silly to me as far as children are concerned.”
   But who writes the stories is indeed important. Children can grow up to be authors. And artists. And actors. And explorers, nurses, physicists, cosmologists, and cosmetologists. They need role models and teachers. And books where they can see themselves and find themselves.
   As Mac Barnett reminds us in his 42 page book, there were many important things about Margaret Wise Brown, but the most important thing is, she wrote books for children.
   And the important thing about that is, books help children dream.
   Happy birthday, Margaret Wise Brown.
RIP
-—stay curious! (and dream big)

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Could this be the Era of the ERA?

5/12/2020

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Nowadays, girls didn’t need special treatment as if they were weaker—in fact, nowadays they’d be knights, too.
from Here in the Real World
by Sara Pennypacker
HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2020

   Is it true that of all modern nations in the world, only the United States does NOT have guaranteed rights for all its citizens? Well, I’m afraid so. The white men who wrote the Constitution at the Pennsylvania State House (now called Independence Hall) in Philadelphia in 1787 were men of their day. It was signed on September 17 of that year. On June 21, 1788, when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify, the Constitution was officially adopted.
   Amendments seek an improvement, a correction, or a revision to the Constitution. Two thirds of both Houses must agree that an amendment is necessary in order to introduce it, and three fourths of the States need to ratify it before it's adopted. That puts the magic number at thirty-eight (3/4 of 50).
   Thousands of amendments have been discussed and not proposed. To date, 27 amendments have been approved, including the first 10 (the Bill of Rights) and only six have been introduced and not adopted.
   Of those, four have no expiration date, so technically still can be considered. They include a way to expand representation in the House of Representatives, prohibition of the acceptance of Titles of Nobility or other honors from a foreign power, a pro-slavery amendment sent to Congress on the eve of the Civil War, and one regulating child labor.
   Two proposed amendments have expiration dates and have expired. An amendment granting the citizens of the District of Columbia full congressional representation and the ability to vote in national elections expired in 1985 with only 6 states having ratified it.
   But when the original deadline for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment came and went in 1979, Congress extended the cutoff date to June 1982. Thirty-five of the necessary thirty-eight states had ratified it by then.
   Nevada ratified the amendment in 2017, and Illinois in 2018. On January 15, 2020, the Virginia legislature passed a resolution to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, the thirty-eighth state. One month later, February 13, 2020, the US House of Representatives passed a joint resolution to remove the original time limit. Ah! So why hasn’t it been adopted yet?
   Well, lucky for me it doesn’t have anything to do with fractions.
   Without getting too deep in the weeds or too far down a rabbit hole, it has to do with deadlines and how they are worded. In 1921, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could put time limits into a proposed amendment, but is not required to.
   For example, James Madison proposed the 27th Amendment in 1789. It was not ratified until 1992. Yep, 203 years later, 1992. That Amendment says any pay adjustment (raising or lowering) Congress may pass for itself can’t go into effect until after the next Federal Election. That Amendment did not have a deadline.
   The drafters of the ERA chose to include a time limit. But they included it in the text of the amendment itself, not in the resolution language that *proposed* the Amendment. What’s the difference, you ask? Good question. Garrett Epps, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Baltimore asked it this way: If the congressional-pay amendment could come back from the dead after two centuries, why not the ERA after a mere decade and a half? Since the ERA limit has already been changed once by Congress, why can’t another Congress change it again, retroactively? https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/will-congress-ever-ratify-equal-rights-amendment/580849/
   The answer is, it depends. Of course it does. It depends actually on two decisions. The first is congressional approval of a new time frame. Can it be changed again? So far, the House thinks so. Also, four states that had voted to ratify have since changed their mind and passed resolutions of “rescission.” A state’s vote to rescind has never been accepted as valid, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be argued.
   The 14th Amendment granting citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States was ratified in 1868. Even though the 14th Amendment granted them citizenship, women didn’t get the right to vote for fifty-two more years. The 19th Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920.
   Section 1 of the Equal Rights Amendment says simply: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” Seems to me that a statement like that should be understood within the Constitution itself. But it’s not.
   All members of the Constitutional Convention were white men. They were products of their day. As a society, we have become more and more inclusive even as we have become more and more polarized.
   But discrimination, (making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit https://www.dictionary.com/browse/discrimination?s=t) has no place in a society that values kindness, courtesy, and compassion.
-—stay curious! (and tolerant)

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May 4 . . . a Fifty Year Reflection and Some Other Related Stuff

5/5/2020

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Shiela Rae was brave. She was fearless. … When her sister Louise said there was a monster in the closet, Shiela Rae attacked it.
from Shiela Rae, the Brave
written and illustrated by Kevin Henkes
Greenwillow Books, 1987

The year is 1971. I graduated from high school in June and my plans for college were all set. I thought I’d like to stay a little close to home, and Kent State University sounded like a good choice to me. My mom and dad were concerned, though, since four students were killed by the National Guard and nine were injured just a little more than a year before. Besides, they said, I’d be better off at a smaller school.
   For reasons beyond the scope of this page, and for some reasons I still don’t understand, I registered for classes at Ohio Northern University, a small school in northwestern Ohio, about three hours away from home. Many very good and some not-so-good decisions were made there, by me, by my classmates and roommates, and by those in charge of one thing and another.
   Even though I did not know any of the students who were killed or hurt at KSU, the incident stayed on my mind. It was the senseless and random violence of that tragedy that stuck with me.
   Several years later I met one of the National Guardsmen who was there. He was an acquaintance of my ex-husband’s. It was probably around 1979, and he said he was not allowed to talk about it. At all. And he didn’t. He looked uncomfortable and I believed him.
   I’ve always been uneasy around guns. Even though my brother played with toy guns and I sometimes played with him, it was pretend. I’m not sure that made it okay, but that’s how it was.
I don’t know if my father kept a gun in the house. I suspect not. Even thinking as hard as I can, I have to admit that I really don’t know.
   My brother never kept a gun in his house. I never asked him, it’s just something I know in my soul. I think my nephew or nieces did not play with toy guns, either.
   I don’t know if any of my brothers-in-law had a gun. It was a discussion we never had.
   My ex-husband felt the same as me. He did not have a gun.
   My husband had a gun for a time. I think he kept it in the back of the closet. He sold it many years ago and I’m glad it’s gone.
   Guns are always in the news. Guns are in the paper, on TV, in movies. Whether we want to admit it or not, our society is a violent one. Maybe it has something to do with the Wild West. Maybe it has something to do with our desire to be seen as strong and fearless. But powerful people don’t always make good decisions. Gun-toters aren’t always brave.
   And I know not everyone who carries (or owns) a gun is homicidal or suicidal or mentally ill or unstable.
   Gun shops were declared an essential business in our age of COVID-19 and gun purchases have surged along with the virus. I’m not sure why. Protection, I guess. From burglary? Do people really think someone will come steal their toilet paper or hand sanitizer?
While homicides have indeed decreased, domestic violence has increased. After all, if kids are not in school, bars are closed, movie theaters shuttered, mass shootings, of course, will decrease. But tragically, hate and anger will find their own outlet. So the irony is, we have been told to stay home, to stay safe. But, some homes are not safe.
   And while the Dickey Amendment prohibits the Federal Government from allocating funds to advocate or promote gun control, in March, 2018, Congress reached a compromise of sorts. Language stating the Secretary of Health and Human Services has the authority to conduct research on the causes of gun violence. But, even though research is allowed to be conducted, that research has yet to be funded. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5993413/ The NRA, while experiencing funding issues of its own, is still a powerful political force.
   But gun’s are not just for civilians. Police and soldiers carry guns, tools of their trades. They are used for self-defense or to protect the values of the United States and our citizens. But not always. That is not the case when police kill civilians. The Washington Post has been keeping track of that since 2015. Here’s the link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/
   A big part of the problem is the weapon of choice. While most victims of hand gun violence can recover from their injuries, victims of assault type weapons will not.
   When soldiers use rifles kill students on a college campus in the outskirts of a small town in Ohio, the reverberations are heard and felt 50 years later.
   The United States is not the only country to experience senseless civilian shootings on a mass scale. About two weeks ago, a gunman killed 22 people in Nova Scotia. One week later, Prime Minister (of Canada) Justin Trudeau announced an immediate ban on assault type weapons. Current gun owners can sell back their newly-illegal weapons. Detail of the ban are still being worked out.
   Strength and courage sometimes means solving a problem, even when the solution is complicated. Thanks, Mr. Trudeau, for being like Sheila Rae, brave and fearless.
-—stay curious! (and stand strong)

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"Small acts of kindness can change and humanise our world."
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks 1948-2020
Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, 1991-2020
Author, Advocate, Advisor

To the Space Station

Happy Birthday Margaret Wise Brown

Could this be the Era of the ERA?

May 4 . . . a Fifty Year Reflection and Some Other Related Stuff

I'm a children's writer and poet intent on observing the world and nurturing those I find in my small space .

Archives

"Small acts of kindness can change and humanise our world." Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks 1948-2020 ​Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, 1991-2020 Author, Advocate, Advisor

To the Space Station

Happy Birthday Margaret Wise Brown

Could this be the Era of the ERA?

May 4 . . . a Fifty Year Reflection and Some Other Related Stuff

I'm a children's writer and poet intent on observing the world and nurturing those I find in my small space .

Archives

"Small acts of kindness can change and humanise our world."
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks 1948-2020
Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, 1991-2020
Author, Advocate, Advisor