2-Year Anniversary

6/6/2011. While driving to work this morning I was thinking about my mom and missing her terribly. I wondered why I was thinking about her so much out of the blue. It didn't occur to me until I arrived at the office and looked at my calendar that today is the 2-year anniversary of her death. I guess my subconscious mind was more on the ball than my conscious mind. Even after two years I'm still really irritated with her for dying!

Flying Over the Great Salt Lake

Picture of the Day for 6/5/2011. The flight home from Tucson took us over the Great Salt Lake. I'm not sure what's up with the "green stuff"* in the lake, but it made for a pretty effect.

*As a former English teacher, I have an impressive way with words, don't I?

Aliens and Astronauts

Picture of the Day for 6/4/2011. I spent the day as Edgar Mitchell's assistant (i.e., the money gal who collected cash or ran credit cards- Mitchell charges $100 per signature) at Spacefest 3's astronaut autograph show. Mitchell was the lunar module pilot on Apollo 14, a mission that was commanded by Alan Shepard. I had served as Gene Cernan's (Apollo 17) assistant during Spacefest 2 in 2009 so it was nice to become acquainted with a different astronaut. Mitchell turned out to be both a lovely and popular fellow. I was delighted he was in demand since that meant we kept quite busy during the day. Mitchell has an interest in parapsychology and is an avowed believer in aliens. Consequently, it was interesting to observe the people who approached him for an autograph or just to chat. Half of them wanted to talk about his Apollo mission and to get some insight into what Alan Shepard was like. The other half were interested in discussing UFOs and aliens. I was curious about both topics so I listened to his comments with a great deal of interest. I liked Mitchell's story about Shepard's response to his inquiry about why Shepard had selected him for the mission. Shepard replied it was because he knew Mitchell would get them home.

I'm Famous - Part 2

6/3/2011. Check out the I'm Famous - Part 1 blog entry for some background information about this topic. Now I'm even MORE famous, if that's even possible (I'm kidding, I'm kidding).

I approached Francis French, the co-author of Al Worden's (Apollo 15) autobiography that will be released next month, and introduced myself as the moon poster girl. He knew exactly what I was talking about. I showed him the print version of the July 2011 edition of the Smithsonian Air & Space magazine where the photo I took of Al Worden signing my moon poster last November appears in an article about the forthcoming autobiography. (I'm writing this blog entry nearly a week after the fact and I'm still geeking out over seeing my name in print.) French explained the reason my photo was selected was because it is a good example of provenance (showing the history of a valued object- in this case, an Apollo astronaut's autograph).

French escorted me over to Worden to show him a copy of the magazine which he had not seen yet. French snapped a picture of me with Worden holding the magazine opened up to the page where my picture appears. We were laughing at how self-referential this was. I was laughing because the people surrounding Worden thought something significant was happening because they all rushed to take a picture as soon as they saw French doing so. I'm sure they'll look back on their photos and wonder who the mystery woman was.

Tucson Cactus

6/3/2011. I'm loving the saguaro cactus (cacti?) that dot the landscape in Tucson, Arizona.

Astronauts are Orange

Picture of the Day for 6/3/2011. The astronaut autograph show commenced at Spacefest 3 today. I was able to acquire three additional autographs from Apollo astronauts for my moon poster which brings me up to a total of 17 signatures. Above is Rusty Schweickart (Apollo 9). Below are Tom Stafford (Apollo 10) and Dick Gordon (Apollo 12).



Apparently, my camera was on a setting that turned everything and everyone orange. My hair came out looking like it was flaming red. (That's me with my flaming red hair with Charlie Walker, a space shuttle astronaut.)

Unfortunately, I did not discover the problem with the color setting for a long time. Oops.

I'm serving as a volunteer at the astronaut autograph show tomorrow, but for today, I just got to be a regular attendee which allowed me to:
-Visit with the astronauts
-Browse the merchandise offered by the vendors
-Attend speeches by Bob Cardenas, Michael Cassutt (author and astronaut biographer), and Rick Searfoss (space shuttle astronaut)
-Attend book signings with Andrew Chaiken (author of A Man on the Moon upon which the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon was based) and Chris Calle (space/astronaut artist)

It was a great day!

Bob Cardenas

Spacefest 3 (no- it's not a Star Trek convention) started on Thursday evening (6/2/2011) with a VIP reception where you could mingle with the astronauts and speakers. I spent some time speaking with General Bob Cardenas who, at 91 years of age, has probably had a more fascinating life/career than any of the famous astronauts in attendance. He was telling me about how his plane was shot down in Germany during WW ll, but he evaded capture by the Nazis and escaped into Switzerland. He was supposed to remain in Switzerland for the remainder of the war, but a woman who was part of the French resistance helped him escape into France and from there he was able rejoin the allies who flew him to England and then back to the United States where he could recover from a head wound. Cardenas said the woman who helped him escape was eventually caught and killed by the Nazis.

He had a long and varied career after the war. A couple of highlights include serving as the command pilot of the B-29 that launched Chuck Yeager in the supersonic aircraft (the Bell X-1) on the flight that broke the sound barrier. (The following pictures are from Cardenas' presentation the following day at Spacefest.)


Cardenas also flew the YB-49, the precursor to today's B-2 stealth bomber. In 1949, he was summoned to Washington to demo the plane for President Truman. Truman asked him to fly the aircraft down Pennsylvania Avenue at treetop level. All of the trees made it difficult to see so it wasn't until the last minute he was able to see the white dome of the capitol building. He was forced to pull up abruptly in order to avoid crashing into the building.


I encourage you to check out his biography. It's fascinating.