Hello Space Center Fans, Former Staff, and Former Volunteers,
I stopped using this blog address a few years ago because of issues I was having with Blogspot over all those darn Imaginairum images etc. Too many copyright issues. So,
I created a new Troubadour Blog, in fact, I'm currently working on the third. I switched to Wordpress for a while, then went back to Blogger. This original Troubadour, this one your are currently reading, covers the dates of February 2008 to March 2024
Here is the second Troubadour address covering the dates of April 2024 to January 2025. Here is the real address in case the link doesn't work. https://farpointcadets.weebly.com/troubadour-blog
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.
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.......
Last month I stopped by InfiniD Learning in Provo to do a recording. I'm the voice of the computer in all InfiniD missions. While there I was told in the strictest confidence that InfiniD Learning would be changing its name to Mission.io. Brooks Heder explained that while cool, InfiniD always had one problem - spelling. People misspelled InfiniD when searching for the web site. They knew the name had to change, but to what. After considerable brainstorming, they came to the realization that the word "Mission" had everything they needed.
The word "Mission" was the word I used for adventures in the Starship Voyager back when I founded the Space Center. The name stuck and is used at every Space EdVenture Center and Dream Flight Adventures today as you can see in Dream Flight's web site menu bar.
"Missions" has always been the word InfiniD used as well for their adventures. The InfiniD team made the decision to change the name to something easy to remember, easy to spell, and rich in space center lore. Their next problem was a website domain. Searching "Mission" led to a dead end. There wasn't a URL available so they went searching to buy one. With a bit of luck, and some cash, they found the owner of Mission.io and the owner was willing to sell for an undisclosed amount of cash. With a new name and website in place, the InfiniD team went looking for a new logo. That wasn't too difficult considering InfiniD has on its payroll excellent graphic artists for their missions. The new logo was created and the company was ready to launch
My Young Astronauts and Voyagers at Renaissance Academy love the new video opening to the missions. We do the missions religiously as part of our after school club meetings.
Congratulations Mission.io. Speaking as someone who has been with you since the beginning, I think it is fantastic. Keep up the good work and please give that guy who does your computer voice a big pay raise. Mission.io missions are nothing without that calm, soothing voice guiding the younglings through wild adventures through space and the inner body.
The Christa McAuliffe Space Center's New Planetarium Laser Lights
There is one thing you can always count on when it comes to the Christa McAuliffe Space Center, improvements are always happening. Whether it is new lighting controls in the simulators, new missions, new planetarium shows, new laser rock and roll shows in the planetarium, or all these new color lights in the planetarium installed this weekend - we never rest. Take a look at the video below to see this new lighting element for the laser shows.
If you haven't been to the Space Center's planetarium for a laser show, then time to remedy that right now. Go to the website spacecenter.alpineschools.orgto book a ticket and bring the family as well. Don't forget, the planetarium does some pretty cool stars shows as well. Imagine having something like The Christa McAuliffe Space Center right here in Utah County. Take advantage of this great educational and entertainment facility.
The Power of Educational Simulations
I've taught using simulations since my student teaching days at Central Elementary in March 1983. Because of my love of using simulations, I became enamored with using them to teach space and history. We all know what became of that fascination :)
Fast forward to today. In addition to my work at The Space Place at Renaissance Academy and The Christa McAuliffe Space Center, I also teach 6th grade math and history. Rignt now my two history classes are neck deep in reenacting World War I. My classroom has been sectioned into Imperial Germany under Kaiser Ezra, Great Britain, France, Russia and the United States. Kaiser Ezra rules the German citizens, and using his power of taxation, he generates a budget to keep Germany in the war. Our economy is based on classroom currency. Students earn the currency through grades, behavior, and projects.
Every morning the Kaiser (purple hoodie) and his top military aides meet before school to review the latest maps. Policy is driven based on the maps and what information his spies are able to collect from their opposing nations.
Everything seems to be going well for Germany - at the moment. But we all know what happens in the end. This week the Lusitania will sink and sadly things will go downhill from that point on. The real drama happens during the Weimar republic when hyperinflation sets in. Things will get ugly and there will be tears.
Our Space Place Voyagers Did an Excellent Job Providing the Tech Crew for Renaissance Academy's School Play
Six of our Renaissance Academy Voyagers made up the tech crew for Renaissance Academy's 3rd - 5th grade play over the weekend. They did an excellent job running the lights and sound with only a couple slight mistakes (nearly causing everyone in the gym to go deaf :) They volunteered their time over the last couple months attending hours of rehearsals and procuring needed equipment. I watched them from behind the scenes Saturday night. I confess, that sound board looked very tempting. Who wouldn't want to reach over and start pushing buttons and messing with the dials. It was all I could take to keep my hands to myself. I think Canon was on to me. He kept glancing back to see what I was doing.
Waiting for Passengers
Here is something crews see every time they arrive at the Space Center. The day's flight directors huddled near the lobby desk waiting for the lobby person to give them the thumps up that their crew has arrived and is ready to depart. Their topic of conversation on Saturday was how to run landing parties out of the ships when the school's gym and hallways were off limits due to Central's school play and the concession stand.
Baby Boomers like myself pride ourselves on not getting offended over minor things like may of the snowflake generation but I regret saying that I was nearly offended when I saw this Utah State sign outside Mr. Porter's office at the Space Center. Utah State is Mr. Porter's alma mater but does he not know that this is BYU country? What is a proud BYU graduate from the class of 1983 suppose to do about this? Should I demand equal representation? I'm sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this so I'll withhold judgement and shelve my offense for now until more information is forthcoming. While I wait I'll prepare my BYU sign to have at the ready.
Imaginarium Theater
The Week's Best Videos From Around the World Edited for a Gentler Audience.
