Savage on the Hornet 4

Former Mythbuster Adam Savage has posted his fourth video exploring my favorite aircraft carrier museum, the USS Hornet - Sea, Air and Space Museum. I believe this is the last one, although who knows? If Mr. Savage's "Tested" crew got enough good footage out of their day aboard ship, they may go on forever. 

This episode focuses on aircraft restoration, most of which is done by a burly crew of gear-head volunteers as well as a neat corps of high school students. As always, I love Adam's enthusiasm, which is well-matched in this video by his guide, Anthony. One thing that's generally true about the Hornet staff: they're passionate about their jobs and their ship!

The Hornet is in the middle of its summer fundraising push and would love it if Adam's 7 million subscribers donated a dollar each. Well, that's not going to happen, but if you watch the video, maybe consider clicking on this link and sending them a few bucks? In addition, here's the Hornet's wish list that Adam and Anthony mentioned. They're a big ship with a small-museum budget and every donation counts. 

Savage on the Hornet 3

Former Mythbuster Adam Savage posts his third in a series of videos exploring my favorite aircraft carrier museum, the USS Hornet Sea, Air and Space Museum. Again, I love his enthusiasm, especially as this episode focuses on the Hornet's Apollo-related artifacts (the Hornet is the carrier that plucked Apollos 11 and 12 from the Pacific). 

I've poked my head inside that Apollo test capsule (CM-011 for those following along at home) and been inside the Mobile Quarantine Facility (MQF), although the bunks Adam crawls into have always been off-limits. Lucky Adam! I have a story about my personal involvement with an MQF-related artifact that I'll share some other time. 

There are other museum ships and even other museum aircraft carriers, but the Hornet's involvement in the Space Race makes it very special (plus the fact that they employ one of my daughters!). I love seeing Mr. Savage bring it some attention it deserves.

Apollo on the Hornet

EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY! Just in time for the anniversary of Apollo 11, the USS Hornet - Sea, Air and Space Museum has posted never-before-seen home movies of the Hornet's recovery of Apollo 11! The film is from museum volunteer Joe Holt, who in 1969 was a Marine sergeant stationed aboard the Hornet. 

Nobody but Mr. Holt and his family have EVER seen this footage! The first half shows the recovery of Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins and their spacecraft, Columbia, with glimpses of the astronauts inside the Mobile Quarantine Facility (a tricked-out Airstream trailer) and President Richard Nixon. The second half shows the crowd that welcomed the Hornet to Pearl Harbor where they offloaded the MQF, and then quite a survey of other Naval ships in port at the time.

I think eyewitness records like this offer a whole different perspective on historic events from people who played a role in them. Many thanks to Mr. Holt for sharing it with the world.

Savage on the Hornet 2

Another report from Adam Savage aboard the USS Hornet, my favorite former-aircraft-carrier-turned-museum, this one touring the old girl's machine shop. I understand his team produced a total of four videos from his day on the Hornet; this is number two.

As a Mythbusters fan who's kept up with Adam since that program ended, I think his gift as a broadcaster is how he nerds out with unabashed glee and communicates that to the audience. He's so happy and excited he makes us happy and excited, even if the sight of a big lathe or drill press wouldn't normally delight us.

The best broadcasters (or artists or writers or graphic novelists) are the ones who know how to show their authentic selves. Audiences can tell when you're faking it. He isn't.

Savage on the Hornet

Mythbuster Adam Savage visited the USS Hornet - Sea, Air and Space Museum recently, and produced this video (with more to come) for his YouTube channel. It's a great piece!

About halfway through the 18-minute video, Adam rides the ship's old aircraft elevator. I have also ridden that elevator, and it is a thrill! As Adam says, it almost feels like freefalling as your eyes adjust from daylight to the dark cavern of the hangar deck in just a few seconds. It's like a portal between worlds.

My daughter Laura, who's the CEO of the Hornet Museum, doesn't appear on camera but did all the contacting and legwork to arrange Adam's visit (and now Laura gets to brag that she's met BOTH Mythbusters!). Adam's guide for most of the video, Russ, is a friend and a great guy whose knowledge and passion are evident. 

Obviously, the Hornet is hoping that Adam's enthusiasm is contagious and that some of his 7 million subscribers will come check it out. I'd encourage them to. I've spent a lot of time aboard the Hornet and love her nearly as much as the people who work there.

EDITED TO ADD: Here's the video I shot of MY elevator ride several years ago. I don't want to keep nattering about the elevator--there's so much more to the ship than that, and they don't routinely run it for visitors--but it was darn cool.

Willie & Joe & Me

Regular readers know I love the USS Hornet, the aircraft carrier that recovered Apollos 11 and 12, and is now a National Historic Landmark and museum in Alameda, Calif. where my daughter Laura works and my other daughter Robin volunteers from time to time.

Laura helped put together an exhibition on "Cartoons at War" inspired by the recent find of some letters in the archives between a sailor on the Hornet and famous cartoonist Milt Caniff in 1944. Caniff created the comic strips "Terry and the Pirates," and later "Steve Canyon," which both featured a lot of military action. Caniff wanted to get the details right so he regularly corresponded with soldiers and sailors. Full disclosure: I edited the exhibition's text panels for Laura, so I'm invested.

The museum staff asked me to give a talk about Cartoons at War, and I asked Corry Kanzenberg, curator of the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, if she wanted to do it with me. I was astonished and delighted she agreed. Schulz was a machine gunner in Europe; he drew a lot of sketches while there, and his experience informed his later work in "Peanuts," particularly re: Snoopy and the Red Baron.

So we went and did that Saturday.

Laura, wearing a "Peanuts" hoodie to fit the day's theme, gave us a tour of her "Cartoons at War" exhibition. It's in a space designed for temporary rotating shows, and in fact closes today. Sorry if you missed it!

Wartime art from the Hornet's sister ship Bunker Hill (the Hornet was CV-12).

Disney designed more than 1200 military insignias and patches during the War, including one for the Hornet.

Corry and I are way up on the stage under the giant flag, projecting our slides on the screen at the right. The audience included a good-sized squad (or platoon or whatever) of recruits who spent the weekend training on the Hornet. Karen counted about 60 people in the audience, which I thought was a good turnout.

I presented first, while Corry sat beside me wondering if she'd make a terrible mistake. I gave a real quick history of comics up to World War 2, then, taking my cue from the exhibition, hit superhero comics, Bill Mauldin's "Willie & Joe," Dr. Seuss's political cartoons, Milt Caniff, Roy Crane's "Buz Sawyer," and more, all lavishly illustrated. 

Corry introducing the Schulz Museum. We were speaking on the Main Stage in the Hangar Deck, which extends far to the left and right. At the right side of the photo is a flight simulator ride for entertaining the kiddies. 

Corry's turn to talk. Her presentation was great. Then we talked to each other for five minutes, took a few questions (one boy just had to tell us how much he loved Snoopy), and were done after about 50 minutes.

Immediately afterward I went to a small classroom below decks to do a Girl Scout Comic Artists Badge Workshop for a troop of six scouts. One of their mothers works with Laura on the Hornet (Hi, Chris!) and has wanted to do the workshop for a while, so we figured we'd kill as many birds with as few stones as we could. Attendance at the earlier talk was part of their requirement for earning the badge. It was a great group of girls, lively and attentive in all the right parts. By the end of the workshop everyone knew how comics are made and had drawn a four-panel (at least--some girls did much more) comic strip.

Me up front guiding the troop through some cartooning skills, with Laura looking on from the gangway. Robin came too, but we didn't get photos of her. I really like this shot Karen took because it give a good sense of what it's like to be aboard this giant chutes-and-ladders maze of a ship.

The ship's store stocked my book. We sold and signed a few.

In the Hornet's Apollo Exhibit, inspecting the plastic case I underwrote to properly display these two Space Age artifacts that are, in my opinion, the jewels of the Hornet's collection. I explained the significance of those little wooden signs the first time I actually got to touch them. 

Any day I get to spend aboard the Hornet is a good day for me. Thanks to Heidi and the Hornet staff for inviting me, and huge thanks to Corry for driving all the way down from Santa Rosa to help me out. She was terrific!

Gravity: Not Just a Suggestion, It's the Law

Here's how I got into the lucrative museum display game.

In 2012, I built my first interactive display for a museum. My daughter Laura is on the staff of the USS Hornet Aircraft Carrier Museum in Alameda, Calif. That's the ship that picked up Apollos 11 and 12, so they've got some nifty Space Age artifacts. Laura was redoing the ship's Apollo Exhibit, and I got to build a box comparing gravity on Earth to gravity on the Moon (one-sixth as strong) via the highly scientific means of pulling handles that look like Wile E. Coyote TNT plungers.

If you drop by the USS Hornet, be sure to say "Hi" for me.

It turns out that kids love making a lot of noise banging and clanging things. Who knew?

Enter a gentleman named Ken Winans, who serves on the Hornet's board of directors, has one of the largest private collections of space artifacts, and runs a small storefront museum in Novato, Calif., called the Space Station Museum where Laura worked for a while. Ken recently opened a new room nearly filled by a 9/10th-scale replica of a Lunar Module. A few months ago, Ken contacted me and said, "Hey, what would it take for you to build me one of those boxes?" As it turned out, not much.

So three summers after I built my first "Gravity Box" I built my second in my driveway, and immediately hit a snag. My plans and notes from my first box were lousy. My dimensions weren't clear, my diagrams didn't match the photos; hey, I made it up as I went! So the first thing I did was send Laura up to her Apollo Exhibit to measure the prototype for me and reverse-engineer how I put it together in the first place.

After that, it was a breeze.

The basic frame in 2x4s and pressure-treated 4x4s. More 4x4s were added later. Not all of them were needed structurally--some were just to add weight, so that kids yanking the handles wouldn't nudge it across the floor.

A peek at the guts. The steel pipes of the handles themselves weigh 4 pounds. Add 20 pounds of weight to one of them, and it weighs 24 pounds--six times as much as the other, exactly the difference between Moon gravity and Earth gravity. The pipes pass through holes drilled through two 4x4s. That extra hole at upper left is what we in the museum display racket call "a value-added accessory."  Sounds better than "a mistake."

The cabinet is medium-density fiberboard (MDF), which I like for its smoothness and strength. It's also heavy.

Painting. I offered to make it any color Ken wanted, but he wanted to stick with Hornet Navy Blue.

Gluing on the information panel. This is a poster I designed and had printed by VistaPrint. It's on good thick paper, they do quality work.

Here's what the poster looks like. I cut off the bottom part to glue to the front of the box. Notice the lack of units on the weights: doesn't matter if you're talking pounds, kilograms or troy ounces, the ratio is always six to one.

Almost done. The posters are covered by sheets of acrylic, which are designed for easy replacement if somebody scratches them up. I also built a step, half visible to the left.

Dropped off at the Space Station Museum, next to a Saturn V model and a Soyuz control panel. The best part about making this delivery is that, while the Gravity Box was sitting outside on the sidewalk, two boys came up and began playing with it. Success!

Satisfied customer Ken Winans.

This time I took thorough notes and carefully documented every step in photographs, absolutely guaranteeing that nobody will ever ask me to make another one again.

If you'd like to play with an Original Fies Industries Gravity Box™, visit the USS Hornet anytime OR drop by the free Space Station Museum some weekend. In fact, I'd recommend next weekend because Ken is hosting his annual Novato Space Festival on Saturday, August 1, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. You can meet astronauts and NASA scientists there, and see all kinds of cool stuff. Did I say FREE?! 

This was a fun project.

Splashdown!

The aircraft carrier USS Hornet was built during World War II, served in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and recovered Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 from the South Pacific in 1969 before being decommissioned in 1970. She spent a couple of decades in mothballs before becoming a National Landmark and museum now floating in San Francisco Bay at the Alameda pier. As my six regular readers know, my daughter Laura is on the museum staff, and I never tire of telling people that my little girl has the keys to an aircraft carrier.

I think Laura had something to do with me being invited to speak and sign copies of Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow at last Saturday's "Splashdown 45" event, marking the 45th anniversary of the flight of Apollo 11. But it wasn't entirely nepotism; I believe that at least some Hornet board members independently knew about my book. Still, I think I owe the kid a lot.

Did I mention that the star of "Splashdown 45" was Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin?

That was sufficient motive to rise at the crack of dawn Saturday and leave Comic-Con for a flight to the Bay Area.

Got there on time, thanks to my daughter Robin's airport shuttle service.
Same clothes I wore at Comic-Con; I travel light.

The Hornet is a huge ship that usually swallows crowds with ease, but I've never seen it as packed as it was Saturday. I was talking with the museum CEO and he guessed more than 3500 attended. Buzz Aldrin was scheduled to speak on the big main stage in the Hangar Deck at 1:00. I was slated for the same stage at 11:30, asked to talk on the topic of Space Art and Illustration.

I widened that mandate to include a lot of the themes I worked into WHTTWOT: mainly the idea that the stories we tell about ourselves and our future are as important in shaping that future as the hardware we build. "Beat the Commies to the Moon" is as much an aspirational narrative as "Boldly go where no man has gone before." I focused mostly on art and illustration but also ventured into movies, TV, literature, and tried to tie them all together.

So I took the big stage and gave a 35- or 40-minute talk that in 162 fast-paced slides managed to name-check Galileo, Hevelius, Cassini, Maria Clara Eimmart, John W. Draper (who took the first photograph of the Moon), Gustav Dore, Jules Verne, HG Wells, Angus MacDonall, Scriven Bolton, Lucien Rudaux, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Frank Paul, Will Eisner, Wally Wood, Frank Frazetta, George Melies, Fritz Lang, George Pal, Chesley Bonestell (of course!), Wernher Von Braun, Walt Disney, Charles Schulz, Robert McCall, Ludek Pesek, Don Dixon, William Hartmann, and more.

Just reeling off names like that makes it looks like a random laundry list, but I think I was able to build a theme and make a point that people seemed to get and appreciate. The Hangar Deck was set up with several hundred chairs facing the stage, and projection screens and speakers hanging half the length of the deck. It was obviously rigged that way so that everyone throughout the ship could see and hear Buzz Aldrin, but it worked to my advantage as well!

At the Hornet's book sales tent. One of these things is not like the other. They had about 1000 of Aldrin's books and 50 of mine, plus maybe another dozen in the museum gift shop. I'm very happy with that ratio.

Blah blah blah blah. Why won't this guy shut up? We Want Buzz!

Pulling back a bit, my wife Karen took this shot from the first row of seats. The podium was not initially set up with a monitor for me to see my own slides, which would have been disastrous because a lot of my talk relied on a rapid-fire "bang bang bang" clicking through the pictures. The speaker before me resorted to standing at the back of the stage and watching the rear projection on the big screen. I griped enough to the audio-video team that before I spoke they rewired one of Buzz Aldrin's teleprompters to show me my slides instead. Saved the day. Hope they remembered to re-rewire it for Buzz.

Stepping farther back into the cavernous Hangar Bay to show one of the screens set up to broadcast presentations throughout the deck. There were three of these screens hanging from the ceiling. It's a big ship.

My view from the podium.

From the start I had a pretty big audience, which grew as my talk went on. For a little while I thought I must have been orating better than anyone had ever orated before: more and more people were coming to watch me! Slowly it dawned on me that no, they were just staking out good seats to see Aldrin, who was going on 45 minutes after I finished. Still, it also worked to my advantage. Captive audience or not, I was the only thing on the stage at that moment so they had no choice but to sit and listen.

After my talk I sat at a bank of tables with other speakers and presenters to sign books. That went splendidly! Not everyone who bought a book got it signed or even realized I was there, but I had a steady stream of really nice people come up to chat and get an inscription. Having just left Comic-Con, I couldn't help noticing that Space People are a lot like Comics People but generally brighter (no offense to Comics People but c'mon!).

My book signing set-up amidship.

From time to time I had a little line, but nothing unpleasant. People couldn't have been nicer.
That's my daughter Robin beside me. 

This whole family was terrific. Very enthusiastic about the book and posing for photos with its author.
That doesn't happen to me very often.

I think this guy was hired by the Hornet. I hope this guy was hired by the Hornet.

Aldrin was preceded by a short video highlighting the Apollo 11 mission. I was surprised. I've seen the same old footage so many times I thought I was relatively numb to it, but I got an honest-to-God lump in my throat and tears in my eyes watching that Saturn V blast off into the Florida sky. Man. Aldrin was introduced by astronaut Yvonne Cagle, with whom I once shared a pizza.

At 1 p.m., Buzz Aldrin took the stage. Topic One of every conversation the rest of the day: how does an 84-year-old man do it? He boarded the ship at 9 a.m., did press interviews for three hours, then gave a one-hour speech, then signed books for three hours, then appeared at a reception and dinner in his honor until probably 10 or 11 p.m. Could you do that? I couldn't do that. I guess once you have the Right Stuff, it never really goes away.

Buzz drew a bigger crowd than I did.

Buzz's talk touched on his Air Force and academic career before settling on Apollo 11. I'm sure he's told the same "magnificent desolation" stories 300,000 times before, but he tells them well. Then he segued to his current passion, drumming up popular support for manned exploration of Mars. I wouldn't presume to debate Aldrin on the wisdom of that, but will say that he makes his case convincingly and enthusiastically.

Buzz World
Preparing for "Splashdown," I jokingly told some people I'd be spending the day "hanging with Buzz Aldrin." In fact, one does not hang with Buzz Aldrin. He had a black-shirted security detail of about six persuasive men who kept the respectful mob at bay. He also had one handler whose main job was being the bad guy so Buzz didn't have to. No, you cannot have a private word with him. No, he will not shake your hand. No, he will not sign your photo.

Buzz's book signing was a rapid assembly-line process--necessarily, given the hundreds of people in line. I had no special access, just queued up with everyone else, wondering what I might say to the Great Man when I had the chance. What hasn't he already heard 30 million times before? What could I possibly say that he might chuckle at and remember at the end of the day? Maybe something smart and obscure, a question about orbital rendezvous (the subject of his Ph.D. thesis) or his Gemini 12 mission?

In the moment, I froze up tighter than little Ralphie meeting Santa Claus in "A Christmas Story."

Buzz Aldrin and me.

To be fair, I only had about two seconds to spin around for Karen to snap a photo and spit out my carefully crafted bon mot. I believe I said, "It's a great honor to meet you." He looked up and said, "Thank you." Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's still got that original insight rattling around his brain.

I should have asked him for a Red Ryder BB gun. 

After the day's main public event, Karen and I stayed for a VIP reception. Here, again, you get a unique perspective on spending time in the orbit of one of the most celebrated men in the world. Buzz came to the reception and seemed accessible--he was 10 feet away! Yet actual interaction with him was defined by invisible circles enforced by his polite but firm security team. Only certain people got inside the circles. I wasn't one of them.

Here's what I mean. It appears that I could just walk over to Buzz's table and share a nice drink with him. There he is! Right there! But if I'd taken one more step in his direction, a large man would've gently taken me by the elbow and steered me away.

This is no criticism of Aldrin. I'm sure it's what he has to do to manage the millions of people who "only want a minute of his time" and get through the day. I just found it a fascinating glimpse at what goes into being Buzz. It was impressive and a little sad. I imagine it gets very tiring.

As it was, this was a very special day for me. In addition to spending the day on the Hornet (always fun!) and making such a memorable impression on Buzz Aldrin, I think this was my most successful speaking/book-signing event ever. My talk went very well. The museum sold all of its WHTTWOTs, so that by the end of the day I was doing sketches for disappointed people who hadn't been able to buy my book. That never happens for me.

I opened my talk by saying that if I had a time machine and went back to tell 1969 Brian that someday he'd be standing in that spot, on that ship, speaking on the same stage that Buzz Aldrin would be taking in less than an hour, there's no way I could make him believe it. "Splashdown 45" pushed every emotional button I've cultivated for 45 years.

I was Buzz Aldrin's opening act. Lifetime achievement unlocked.

Musings

My pal Raina Telgemeier (anyone I know who's spent a year on the New York Times bestseller list is automatically "my pal") recently wrote on Facebook that "The very earliest stages of writing a new project very much resemble 'doing nothing' and feel incredibly unproductive, but heading into my fourth book, I at least know this is important and worthwhile and that I can trust myself. Or so I hope."

In his excellent book Backstage at the Strips, cartoonist Mort Walker retold one of my favorite anecdotes about James Thurber's wife catching him staring into space at a dinner party: "James!" she scolded. "You're writing again!"

This morning my wife Karen awoke before dawn to find me propped up on the headboard already awake, gazing into the dark. "What are you doing up?" she asked. "Writing," I said.

(To be totally honest, I said "Sixty percent writing, forty percent bladder," but that may be more than you want to know.)

I figure I get more than half of my best creative ideas lying in bed immediately after waking up. I recall cartoonist Lynn Johnston said the same thing in one of her books and ascribed it to being in a relaxed semi-dreamy state. I think that's right. Ideas born of actual sleeping dreams are usually useless--they're too random and unstructured, and are never as profound or clever in the light of day. But right after I wake up, my brain seems to be in a loosey-goosey state in which I can still tap the creativity of dreaming but also guide it.

This process looks a lot like lying in bed staring at the ceiling. I'm not sure Karen believes me when I explain I'm doing my most important work of the day.

I keep a notebook by the bed to capture these flickering embers before they're snuffed. The usual joke about bedside journals involves a writer who bolts awake in the middle of the night, scrawls out a totally original sure-fire story idea, then rises in the morning to find a scribbled line reading "Boy meets girl." However, I find that my early morning notes are almost always useful and usable. The rest of what I do with them in daylight--the refining and drawing--is just mechanics.

A notebook page from last July, capturing some action that showed up this week in my webcomic, The Last Mechanical Monster. Though this is a sketch, most of my notes are plot ideas or bits of dialog.

I don't think there's any mystery to it, no "praying for the muse to strike." I'm very much of the school that waiting for inspiration is for amateurs; just start working. It'll come. I've simply learned to use my environment to my advantage and trust in the process.

Or so I hope.

* * *

I posted this on Facebook but wanted to share it here as well: a commercial for H&R Block filmed on my daughter Laura's aircraft carrier, the USS Hornet. No, my girl didn't join the Navy; the Hornet is a museum in Alameda, Calif., and hasn't plowed through the waves like it does in this commercial for more than four decades. Laura is on the museum staff.



 My affection for this ship, which in addition to serving in wars ranging from WWII to Vietnam also recovered the Apollo 11 and 12 capsules from the South Pacific, has been well noted in this blog. I have been backstage in its Collections Dept. (cool!), helped design and install an exhibit (fun!), spent the night in a junior officer's stateroom (spooky!), and rode the gigantic aircraft elevator featured in the commercial (fast!).



It is my understanding that the Hornet did not get to keep the pallets of cash.

* * *

Time for a quick Mark Twain Insult of the Day (#11) in parting. Today's concerns a publishing colleague of Clemens's named Charles Webb:

Webb believed that he was a literary person. He might have gotten this superstition accepted by the world if he had not extinguished it by publishing his things.

Just One More, I Promise

After this, I'll give it a rest...

Saturday was Neil Armstrong Remembrance Day aboard the USS Hornet Museum. In addition to a full afternoon of programs, the event featured the reopening of the ship's Apollo Exhibit, documenting the Space Age and Hornet's service recovering Apollos 11 and 12. See the previous two posts to understand why I care.

I surprised my daughters, Laura (the museum collections manager) and Robin (Hornet volunteer and loyal assistant), by driving down for the big unveiling. The Apollo Exhibit was scheduled to open at 3 p.m. I showed up around 1 p.m. and poked my head in the door; they were startled and happy to see me for about 10 seconds and then put me to work. They still had a lot to do. We polished everything as best we could, grabbed a quick lunch on the historic carrier's Flight Deck while watching a series of impressive ceremonial flyovers by vintage aircraft, then ran back down for the ribbon-cutting.

Some of the ceremonies in honor of Neil Armstrong. The speaker is Apollo Flight Surgeon Dr. William Carpentier, who later did us the honor of cutting the ribbon on the Apollo Exhibit.

About an hour before the grand opening: Chad sweeping up while Laura, friend and fellow museum master Erica, and Robin caption photos, arrange artifacts, and clean cases.

The exhibit entrance, with the 8-foot Saturn V model in place.

Laura and Chad giving a pre-opening tour to a cameraman from one of the Bay Area TV news stations that covered the event.

Finally! Open to the public!

Some of the first real-life kids to try my Gravity Box, comparing the gravity of the Earth and Moon. Folks seemed to have fun with it and get the point. I kept waiting to hear a metallic "sproing-kaboom" as the box broke and possibly exploded, but it never did. Success!

Robin and Laura. The slips of paper on the octagonal case are artifact labels yet to be placed. Stop dawdling and get to work!

I shot two videos. The first is of the ribbon-cutting remarks by Museum Trustee Ken Winans (I missed the first few seconds). My favorite part is the audible gasp among the onlookers when the big doors open. The second video--worth watching only for those who really care, trust me--is a seat-of-the-pants tour of the exhibit I did 10 minutes before it opened.





I know one eagle-eyed viewer (sigh...Jim) will catch something that isn't in the video: the two iconic wood signs attached to the Mobile Quarantine Facility during the Apollo 11 and 12 recoveries (which I wrote about a while back). The custom acrylic case ordered to house them did not arrive in time. Those signs are in my opinion the Crown Jewels of the Hornet's collection, and will be displayed at the very back of the room so that visitors see them from the entrance. Just a bit disappointing, although the "Hornet +3" sign was on display in a case out on the Hangar Deck, so all was not lost.

Saturday was the exhausting culmination of months of work by Laura and her co-worker, Curator Chad, along with other volunteers and the occasional family and friends. The public seemed excited and satisfied, the museum staff and trustees I spoke to seemed ecstatic, and I'd say it was a total triumph. Especially impressive is that they did it all on a budget of about $600, so had to innovate and reuse as much as they could. As in all museums, their work will never be done, and a lot of great ideas will have to wait for more funding, but Laura and Chad created a foundation that the Hornet can build on for years to come. I'm very proud of her and proud to be a small part of it.




A Wee More Hornet

Came across a few more photos of our work on the USS Hornet last Sunday (see previous post) that I wanted to share. I know these may not interest everyone, but it's a topic that excites me on many levels: space history, creative expression, teaching, storytelling, parental pride--mostly, just getting to play with cool toys.

Did you see the recent episode of "The Big Bang Theory" with a mock YouTube video of Buzz Aldrin handing kids candy on Halloween? The set-up is that Howard (the character watching the video with his wife) just returned from a stint on the International Space Station and drove his friends crazy bragging about it:



"I walked on the Moon. What have you done?" I built a space museum on an aircraft carrier. What did you do?

The Apollo Exhibit gallery space as we received it, freshly painted. This view is from near the far end looking back toward the foyer through the open door.

Girl Under Glass.

Laura and Chad delicately repairing a Lunar Module model that had gotten some dings over the years.

Sorting and loading.

Laura (in back) and her friend and fellow museum master Erica laying out one of the display panels.

These three display cases hold (L to R) an Apollo-era astronaut survival kit, astronaut Tom Stafford's seat from Apollo 10 (as Jim noted in the last post's comments, one of the three fastest pieces of furniture in history), and those models Laura and Chad were working on.

If you're ever in the San Francisco Bay Area and have any interest in space or military history, I can't recommend a trip to the USS Hornet in Alameda enough. I obviously love the old gray gal.

Thanks for your indulgence.