The Hours Volunteered Database for the Space Center's Retired Staff and Volunteers: 1985 to 2012. Are You in the Database? Read and See. The Imaginarium.

Before I started The Troubadour, the Space Center used a YahooGroup called SpaceEdVentures.  The SpaceEdVentures YahooGroup was created in March of 2000.  The Troubadour blog took its place in 2008.  From time to time I like to repost interesting posts from the YahooGroup. 

SpaceEdVentures has several databases.  One of the most interesting is Memory Hall. Memory Hall is a record of many of the old volunteers and staff who worked on a regular basis from the mid 1980's to 2012.  If you've been with the Space Center for a number of years, and started before 2012, you may find your name listed in the database. 

The database shows when the volunteer started and retired. Back in the day, volunteers and staff could officially retire when they knew they couldn't volunteer or work any longer; however, most of the time the staff and volunteers just stopped coming. It's not that they  intended to stop. Usually they just got busy and one thing led to another, and the Space Center was out of their active life - meaning they never officially retired, they just went "inactive".   

In the database you'll see a fairly accurate accounting of Overnight Camp and Private Mission volunteer hours. You'll notice that the earliest staff and volunteers from the 1980's to the early 1990's show no hours. They were the first generation staff. I failed to track their hours.  My bad....

Why do some people have a "Joined Staff" date before the Space Center opened in 1990? Remember, before I created the Space Center I ran starship simulations in my classroom and the school's gym. I needed a staff for those as well!     

If you know someone on this list, please email or text them and make them aware of this post. 

Mr. Williamson

Memory Hall Volunteer and Staff Database.  1980's to 2012
I can edit this database if you see an error and would like it corrected.  
Contact me:  spacecamputah@gmail.com
Mr. W. 

The Troubadour

Small Tortures for Being Bad

Residents From The Gone Boldly Assisted Living Center for Retired Space Center Staff See Star Trek Beyond in Costume! Theater Imaginarium.

Patients from the Gone Boldly Home for Retired Space Center Staff at the Theater. I'm happy to report they were reliable. No issues were reported by the cleaning staff.

Disclaimer: The Troubadour brings you news from all the Space Centers inspired by the original USS Voyager. Trust our news to be fair, impartial, at times confusing, and nearly accurate. We like to season our offerings with a spray of imagination to give it just the right flavor for tired eyes.

     

     Senior Flight Directors, staff, and abnormally long term volunteers whose service to the Space Center during my tenure as director was labeled exemplary, are eligible for post Space Center service care in The Gone Boldly Treatment Center for Retired Space Center Staff.  GBTC offers both outpatient and inpatient care. Residential services are reserved for those who find themselves confused, bewildered, challenged by reality, and most importantly - unreliable in the bathroom (brought on by holding it too long during prolonged battle scenes or elongated, multi character narratives - where the flight director engages in conversations with himself as another character; which introduces us to another common Flight Director malady - schizophrenia).

The Gone Boldly Treatment Center for Retired Space Center Staff.
It is a color picture, the place is just sort of gloomy year round

     Several of my dearest Space Center comrades currently in GBTC residential treatment got a special treat last night. With the permission of their therapists, and a sincere promise to be good - despite past experiences where that promise was broken - they were released on their own recognizance to attend the new Star Trek Beyond motion picture.  You may recognize some of them in this photo taken at the theater  

     Todd Rasband with his date Isis Stormwalker, Skyler and Emily Paxman, BJ Warner,  Jacqueline and Bradyn Lystrup were photographed at the theater last night.  Had a member of the GBTC staff been with them, they would not have been photographed in front of that particular display.
     Understand proper dress is not an issue with these "once trusted with your children" former staff members. They notified the staff they would be going to the movie in fancy dress.  The van driver alerted us to the fact that their costumes didn't compliment a Star Trek film. It was a battle we didn't want to fight so we let it go. 
     It had been a long day dealing with a disturbing incident in the cafeteria. Long term care patient Mark Daymont, already unsettled by finding bananas in his jello, dropped his mental mooring and slipped into his Chief Okinawa character to confronted David Kyle Herring over the last serving of lasagna.  Kyle Herring abruptly stepped aside to let his engineering character, James Carvell, emerge from years of psychiatric insulation and repression. It was the battle of Space Center engineering characters.  Food ended up everywhere. The cafeteria manager pushed the red button. The home went into red alert. Straps were applied and calming medication administered.  It was one of those days.
           

BJ and a poster man

      BJ did very well considering. His only issue was confusing a poster character with someone real. He kept asking the posterman if he could have his picture taken with him. After being ignored for the fifth time, BJ filled the theater lobby with words so vulgar, a nearby construction worker was seen to blush.  "Take the picture!" BJ ordered after Bradyn explained in terms he could understand that the posterman was just that, a poster.  Out of embarrassment, BJ hid his face behind his miniature shield until the movie started.    

     Skyler Paxman, married to Flight Director Emily Paxman, played along with them.  He was never a flight director nor is a patient of the GBTC. Being a dutiful husband, he supports his wife's treatment every way he can, no matter the cost to his wallet or pride. 
     I'm happy to report the patients returned to the Home happy and well entertained. It was a grand adventure for all concerned.  
     If you're ever in the area, please stop by the Gone Boldly Treatment Center for Retired Space Center Staff and visit those flight directors who worked so hard to entertain and teach you. They love seeing their former campers. They love even more visitors patient enough to sit through hours of stories of missions long gone. You may even see some of them flying the new Voyager at Renaissance Academy in Lehi. I'm arranging work release for those eligible for extended release. Won't it be something to see them in the flight director's chair again?  Don't worry, they will come properly sedated.  

Mr. Williamson  

They Did it at the Last Star Trek Film, and the One Before That!

Ben Murdock with Morgan Mitchell. Jacqueline and Bradyn Lystrup. May 2013.

And with Spencer Dauwalder at the first Star Trek Film in 2009  

Theater Imaginarium

Using Horcruxes to Reincarnate the Voyager. The Voyager Control Room. The Imaginarium.

     The Great Western School of Wizardry and Magic is perched precariously on a long majestic curve of crumbly cliffs. Above the school are hundreds of miles of snow covered peaks circling outward for hundreds of miles before descending into purple rolling hills. The school's mountain, as seen from a distance, floats on an ethereal cushion of clouds drifting up from a heavily forested valley deep in the inner sanctum of the Rocky Mountains.  
     The Western Hemisphere's greatest wizards and witches are educated at the GWSWM. Its graduates are sought after in the magical world of business, government, and education.
The school's field work in spell archeology is renowned. Their wandmanship and spellology are unique in both form and phraseology. It is to this school we went in search of a wizard knowledgeable in the mystical practice of horcruxes.  Our quest was simple in definition and questionably impossible in execution. My associates and I had two questions requiring answers: 1) Was the original Voyager truly gone?  2) If not, was enough of it locked away in heavily spelled hard drive horcruxes to be enchanted back from a forgotten code? 
     The heavily robed, tri-bifocaled headmaster was obliging during our interrogation. He answer both questions while searching his patchy gray beard for bits of unfinished pork pie unceremoniously deposited during the midday meal, much to the delight of the first year students who sit closest to the elevated masters table.  
     "The Voyager was preserved to some extent by Professor Ricks," he said. "It is he, and he alone, who can cast the spells necessary to bring what was - back to what is."  The headmaster walked to the open window to lean out for a listen. Grunting in the negative, he tapped his left ear with his wand and extended it further out, his body teetering a degree or two from finding an end at the bottom of a long and painfully unforgiving cliff.  Pulling himself back from the brink, he revealed his finding. "Professor Ricks is in his workshop on the verge where the forest brushes up against the mud pond. I hear him smithing. He loves to tinker with bits of this and that."
     We found Professor Ricks' workshop. He was inside working the bellows while turning a glowing metal rod.  In the corner sat a simple contraption, the imagine of a person made of rods, pulleys, and wire.  We explained who were were and the purpose for our visit. His eye's sparkled with the news that the time had come to pull the essence of the mother ship from the horcruxes he had so faithfully spelled five years previously. He asked for patience while he changed from his smithing overalls. Then, dressed in his muggle's best, he gathered the horcruxes, placed them gently in a knapsack and strung it over his shoulder. "Let's be about it!" he exclaimed as he strode out into the dusty twilight. We followed, carefully steering away from the mud pond on his advice.           

     Professor Ricks enchanted from the cassette tape the Voyager's original Sick Bay program and wizarded the code into the waiting computer. 

     The spells complete, Professor Ricks checked the second generation IMac in the Voyager Control Room to see if it had paired successfully with the computer in Sick Bay.  The horcrux was stubborn. Several attempts were required before he announced the procedure successful.
     The news gets even better. Professor Ricks handed me a USB thumb drive containing all the printable messages once stored on the Voyager's IIFX station. The messages were in Appleworks. Today's Mac's can't read Appleworks; however I have an old Mac laptop at home which has the ancient program. I can dehorcrux the USB myself!  We will soon have all the first Voyager's documents: the mission messages, the engineering reports, the damage control reports, everything. All my work, and the work of so many volunteers and staff, recovered and usable once again.  It is good news.  The Voyager lives on. 

More Test Missions  

     Isaac Ostler, with the help of three students from our Flight Director Academy, ran another test mission on Saturday.  There were glitches. The microphone cable failed just as the mission was about to start. I think these cables are engineered to fail at the most inopportune times.  "Mr. Williamson, we need another microphone cable," was something I expected to hear at least two or three times a month when I directed the Space Center back in the day. And sadly, it appears Fortuna has decreed that this problem should continue to haunt me at Renaissance Academy.      

The Voyager Control Room with my Diet Dew in in proper place.

      In the end the mission was successful. Isaac is a good problem solver and the FDA staff were brilliant as is expected.  

     New missions are being written for the Voyager. Old missions will return and the new Voyager will once again fly alongside the other ships of the fleet.  

     I want to thank Mr. James Porter, director of the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center, for his help and support. The Space Center is in good hands. I want to thank Casey Voeks, Skyler Carr, and Brandon Wright, and my other good friends at InfiniD, for their contributions to the quality and professionalism of our missions. 

     I've worked with all these good folks for many years. I take pride in the work both organizations are doing - forging ahead with this unique form of experiential simulator based education I imagineered back in 1983.

Mr. Williamson   

The Imaginarium

 How to Speak to Women