Contact Victor Williamson with your questions about simulator based experiential education programs for your school.
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Sunday, March 31, 2024

Jaime Catlett Needs Your Voter. The Voyager Club's March Meeting was Held on Saturday. My Childhood Easter Memores. Imaginarum Theater

 


Dear Space Center Friends,
     My name is Jaime Catlett. I have been nominated for America Favorite Teacher. They have some great prizes. One is to appear in Readers Digest. I would LOVE to share my story how I become an educator. I need your help, I need your vote. Please follow the link below and vote, and then forward it onto all your friends, community and family. You may vote once a day. Thank you so very much.
Thank you!
Jaime

A Note from Mr. Williamson
     Space Center Community, Jaime was a faithful, long serving Space Center volunteer over many years back in the 1990's. She was an inspiration to all of us. Her love of children, space, and education in general led her into a teaching career and what a fantastic teacher she is.  Please take a moment, click on the button below, and drop a vote for Jaime. The Space Center community takes care of our own.
 

The Voyager Club's March Meeting at the Christa McAuliffe Space Center

   The Voyager Club at the Christa McAuliffe Space Center had its March meeting on Saturday.  We had over 35 in attendance which may be a new record. Presiding over the meeting was the Voyager Club's Leadership Team: Amberly, Thomas, Eavie, and Jack. 

     The pre-meeting started at 8:00 A.M. with the traditional Bingo for Prizes game.  There were many sugary snakes awarded.  The meeting started promptly at 8:30 A.M. Amberly called everyone to order.  Business items were first on the agenda.  Canon was introduced as the newest member of the Leadership Team. Canon is a two Center Voyager Club member.  He volunteers at both the Space Center and The Space Place at Renaissance Academy.  Canon will represent the Farpoint Voyagers on the team.  We hope to have a member of the American Heritage School's Club on the Leadership Team soon. 
   Amberly asked the newest Voyager Explorers to come up and introduce themselves.  They are working hard to compete the requirements to move into the Volunteer group.  They will make excellent volunteers. 
     Dave Stevens gave a presentation on the Space Center's new StageWorks Department. StageWorks replaces the Engineering and Programming Departments. Jade Hansen will be the Department Head.  Look for more information on StageWorks trainings and opportunities in the Google Classroom.
     The March Space Science Lesson was taught by Jason Trump.  Jason is one of the Voyager Academy's instructors and Head of the Education Department at Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake.  Jason's topic was Eclipses.  The Voyager's made paper-plate eclipse models.  Each member was given a set of eclipse viewing glasses for the upcoming April solar eclipse.  We are fortunate to have Jason on our team. His lessons are always educational and interesting. 
     The meeting ended at 10:00 A.M. with the raffle drawing. Several Voyagers walked away with prizes including a bluetooth speaker, t-shirts, planetarium and laser show tickets, a cup stacking game, old Space Center memorabilia, a nice mathematics lanyard, and more. 


The Williamson's 1966


Hello Troops,
Had enough sugar for one day, or are you just beginning? I'm real old school when it comes to my candy of choice for Easter. You can have the jelly bean eggs. You can keep the Cadbury chocolate delights. I'll be your friend for life if you save me the marshmallow Peeps and the Brach's Easter Eggs with the colored candy shell and that white marshmallow interior. It's comfort candy to me - a reminder of my Easters in South Dakota as a kid.

My parents didn't put a lot of time into Easter, as evident in our traditional "Easter Egg Hunt". Every Easter afternoon my seven siblings and I would be ordered to the basement after Sunday School to take off our church clothes and wait for the arrival and departure of the "Bunny". Maybe it was because we were the poor kids on the block, or maybe Rapid City, South Dakota was always the Bunny's last stop, but that darn Bunny didn't put a lot of effort into hiding our eggs. His haste always led to concussions and spilt blood.

Imagine eight children on a very narrow staircase, huddled with pillowcases (we couldn't afford the nicely woven, colorful baskets). We sat close to each other and waited for the upstair's door to open - the signal that the Hunt was on. My older sister and I sat at the bottom of the stairway on my parent's orders. Putting us at the end of the line was intended to give our younger siblings first dibs on the pickings. It never did and always led to disaster. Sometimes parents never learn.

We all jumped up and pressed forward when the door opened. Our hearts pounded in our chests, feeding off the thought of pure sugar. "You can come up!" Suddenly the words we waited for were spoken. It was time to put brotherly love aside or go without the good stuff for another year.

First blood was always drawn on the rush up the stairs. It was usually the youngest's bloody nose. My sister and I, having had more experience at that kind of thing, easily pushed and shoved the other six out of the to make it outside first.

The Bunny's haste usually meant most of the eggs were located in one central area on the back lawn.
"There they are!" was the shout we all listened for. Once the stash was located, it was like two football teams descending on a fumbled football. We all piled in, pushing and shoving, swinging and missing, swinging and hitting, biting and punching - it didn't matter. There were no rules in this evolutionary sport of survival of the fittest.

Now that I'm older I understand why our neighbors were always outside at their back fences. Watching the Williamson's Easter Egg raucous was better than anything on TV. Some of them joined in the fun by waiting until our collecting was finished and then shouted that we had missed a few. We watched while they threw several eggs by the tree. They laughed as the whole rugby scrum formed and fur, hair and teeth flew all over again. It was like tossing a whole piece of bread into a gaggle of ducks on the pond. Feathers flew and camera's snapped.

At the end, we four oldest had most of the candy eggs and Peeps while the youngest had the strangely colored hard boiled eggs we'd dyed the night before. Then came the tears. The four of us knew that Mom would make us share the candy and Peeps if we didn't eat them right then and there. We ran to the side of the house and shoved them into our mouths as fast as we could (or hid them again for a later retrieval when everyone was in bed).

The Holy Grail of our Easter was finding the one that got away. Remember finding that one candy egg or marshmallow Peep that escaped the search? There it quietly sat, hiding up high on the window ledge or behind the living room curtain for a month or so until discovered. The thrill of finding the "One that Got Away" was intoxicating. The discovery would be followed by a parade through the house where the delicious morsel would be held out like a captive general of an opposing army. Your pride would swell from hearing "I can't believe it," said over and over again.

The Easter trophy would sometimes be eaten in front of everyone right after the parade. We believed that it's craftiness and cunning could be transferred into our own being through digestion. Other times the candy would be kept as a trophy to be taken out, dusted and shown to company for the next several months.

Yes, those are my Easter memories........ Happy days.......

Mr. Williamson

Imaginarium Theater


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