Scenes from the City

HERSTORY IN THE MAKING?: So, in case you haven't heard, this year there's a presidential election in the United States. Here in Washington, it's an all-mail-in event. Wanting to save ourselves the stamps and make sure our ballots got to where they needed to go, this afternoon, we stopped by the ballot drop box outside of the Ballard library on Monday. It was quite the sight there.

There were four police officers (two on foot, two on bikes), at least two elections officials, and at least a couple of poll watchers. We've dropped ballots at this box for years and had never seen anything like this before. Perhaps it's due to the extraordinarily ugly rhetoric this campaign has been filled with. :/

There were dozens of voters approaching the box. Some of them took photos of Annabelle dropping a ballot in the box, in an election where a woman has the chance of being elected president of the United States. Kind of a big deal. 

I can only imagine what Tuesday will be like at this drop box, when the ballots are due.

Oh, and, by the way, if you think you can't be bothered to vote where you are. check out this guy. It's astronaut Shane Kimbrough. "Vote where you float" is NASA's motto. 


Astronauts are "pretty much apolitical," he told reporters last month. "And I'll be glad to welcome the new president, whoever that is."

Actually, I'd surmise astronauts might be pretty darn interested in who supports NASA's budget. ...

THE WRITE STUFF:  We had a wonderful weekend. Sunday afternoon, we headed to the central/main branch of Seattle Public Libraries for an event as part of the "Seattle Writes" series. This particular meeting was geared for people looking to have picture books published. We're a family of writers with an abundance of ideas put on paper, but we need to get them off of our shelves and hard drives and out there in the world, so attending the symposium seemed a good idea.

Here's Annabelle's write up of the 90-minute presentation: 

"Picture Book Writing: A Panel Discussion" was an event part of Seattle Writes, a series of conferences and meeting celebrating The Seattle Public Library’s 125^th anniversary. The panel for Picture Book Writing consisted of 5 authors: Jennifer K. Mann, the moderator; Liz Wong, a fairly new author with one book published; Ben Clanton, an experienced author with many books; Julie Paschkis, a children’s book “veteran” who uses paint for her drawings; and Jessixa Bagley, an author/illustrator who specializes in books about animals or animal characters.

One of the first points that they touched on was that in picture books (and by extension, children’s books), you should let the pictures do the talking. You shouldn’t show a picture of a potato and say “This is a potato.” in the text. You could, however, show a potato with googly eyes and say “This potato is hungry.”, as author/illustrator Ben Clanton said. It helps to have the words and pictures say different things because it keeps the reader interested and they pay more attention to the pictures and words.

The second point they talked about was taking inspiration from others. As Julie Paschkis put it, you “take other’s vegetables and make your own soup.” One of the places you could take inspiration from is spending time around your target audience and finding out what they’re interested in. The panel members also said that you should make the characters in your book relatable, putting them in situations your audience might find themselves in, allowing your audience to find a solution to their problem through the book.

They also touched lightly on other topics such as habits, where many of them said that they worked through and through on the words before inserting illustrations, and then “sliced and diced” parts that were unnecessary after pictures were added. The panel was super interesting and gave me many ideas on how to improve my writing. In general, the best thing you can do is just keep going, and even if you don’t like the current direction you writing is going in, you’ll hit a good idea eventually.

And here is CJ's report ... 

Our family frequently visits branches of the Seattle Public Library, such as the Magnolia branch in our neighborhood, as well as the Ballard branch, which is about 3 miles away. (Sunday), we actually visited the massive main branch of the Library, which is located in downtown Seattle. More specifically, we went for the "Seattle Writes: Picture Book Writing and Illustrating" event, which is part of the Seattle Writes program. Our family has written multiple picture books and actually made physical dummies of them, but we're having trouble getting the books published. We visited the Picture Book Writing and Illustrating event to learn more about picture book writing, and possibly learn how to get our books published.

At the event, there were five different picture book authors. From left to right (or right to left from the authors' point of view) at their desk, they were Jennifer K. Mann, whose book "Two Speckled Eggs" won a Washington State Book Award in the Picture Book category in 2015; Liz Wong, who debuted with the book "Quackers" this year; Ben Clanton, a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators; Julie Paschkis, who has apparently published 30 books since 1992(!); and Jessixa Bagley, whose artistic career has been a mix of comics, fine art, and illustration.

The Picture Book Writing and Illustrating event lasted 90 minutes, from 2 P.M. to 3:30 P.M., where we learned about multiple interesting writing and illustrating techniques used to make picture books. For example, one technique I find interesting, while it seems like it's common, is to use the text to tell a story that is not literally telling the story depicted in the illustrations, but is still related in some form or fashion. For example, one of the authors showed us a book (I cannot remember if it was by her or was made by another author) that showed a hedgehog that was about to move away from home. One of the pages showed an anteater friend of the hedgehog catching the hedgehog from the sky after being flung up by a seesaw, and the text accompanying the image said something along the lines of "I will always be there for you." When you look just at the illustration, it obviously means that the anteater will protect the hedgehog from danger by catching her from the sky, but in the context of the whole story, it can mean that the anteater will always support the hedgehog during tough times (it's kind of hard to describe).

Another thing that is less of a writing style, and more of a writing tip, is that you might use other people's vegetables to create your own soup. In my interpretation, this means that while you might use familiar ideas from previous books made by other authors (such as premise ideas or character archetypes), you should create something that is original in some capacity, or, more specifically, make your own, unique book using the ideas.

Sources:http://www.spl.org/audiences/adults/seattle-writes/seattle-writes-calendar#/?i=2http://www.jenniferkmann.com/http://www.lizwongillustration.com/http://www.benclanton.com/https://www.scbwi.org/members-public/benjamin-clanton-2https://juliepaschkis.com/http://www.jessixa.com/

The event was held on the library's fourth floor, where there is a collection of meeting rooms. We'd never been there before. It was a memorable space, to say the least.


The hallways connecting the rooms are red.

And so are the walls. And the stairs. And the ceilings.

CJ was thrilled to find the porthole below. It offered another glimpse of what seems to be his favorite thing about that library, a cool/creepy art installation in a wall next to an escalator.

Called "Braincast," moving images of faces are projected on egg-like orbs and the 'eggs' talk to passersby. The work is by Tony Oursler.

There was one wall on the floor where you could see something other than red!

SPACEFEST FUN: On Saturday, we headed to the Museum of Flight for their annual Spacefest. It's a terrific event spanning multiple days. Unfortunately, we only made it for one day. Next year, we vow to do better! 

I'll let the kids tell you a bit more about the presentation we attended. Here's a photo of them taking notes. 

CJ's report is up first ...

From November 4 to November 6, the Museum of Flight, a frequent haunt for us, hosted the SpaceFest 2016: Ladies Who Launch event, which, according to their website, was their 3rd annual SpaceFest. This year's theme was Ladies Who Launch, as its title implies, is primarily focused around women's role in the past, present, and future of aviation and spaceflight.

For the event's three-day duration, there were sixteen events, the first of which, "VR Experiences with VALVe", began on 11/4 at 5 P.M., while the final event, "Breaking the Chains of Gravity", ended at 4:30 P.M. on 11/6 (this is the only event we went to). As I just said, Breaking the Chains of Gravity, hosted by Amy Shira Teitel, a scientist, author, and journalist of Vintage Space, was the only presentation we attended this year. In what I assume is a contrast to most of the rest of the events at SpaceFest 2016, the Breaking the Chains of Gravity presentation actually had little to do with women in space, but was rather largely about the obscure, ill-fated Dyna-Soar program from the United States Air Force.

One of the first slides we were shown in Ms. Teitel's presentation had a black-and-white picture of a man riding on a cartoon dinosaur, alongside the text "The Life and Death of the Dyna-Soar". Teitel soon after reminded us that the cartoon dinosaur was not what the Dyna-Soar was or looked like, but she wished that it could've looked like that.

We then were shown slides of the iconic Space Shuttle, known for the STS missions from 1972 to 2011. According to the presentation, the STS missions were approved in 1972 by NASA, and designed to do 50 flights a year, and be able to do interplanetary missions and satellite recoveries. However, according to Amy, the Space Shuttles only did 4 missions a year, did only 3 unmanned interplanetary missions, and only 5 satellite recoveries throughout its entire 39-year service. However, Amy then brought up the Dyna-Soar again. Apparently, unlike the Space Shuttles, which lived up to the original idea in some capacity, the Dyna-Soar, throughout its 6-year "run", only resulted in 1 mockup, 7 frustrated astronauts, 1 frustrated Air Force, and 1 frustrated Space Agency.

Evidently, the Dyna-Soar was a failure in several ways, though the STS missions, which began 9 years after the cancellation of the Dyna-Soar, proved that an airplane-styled space launch vehicle could be done. Soon after, Amy went to the background of the Dyna-Soar itself, teaching us about Eugen Sänger, an Austrian scientist who designed the theoretical "Skip-Glide Vehicle" in the mid-thirties. If you compare pictures of the Dyna-Soar and concept art of the Skip-Glide vehicle, you might notice some similarity in the airplane-like designs. Eugen was born in 1905 in Austria, and died in 1964 in Germany. The Skip-Glide vehicle would be, as Amy put it, a 2-stage sled, that, unfortunately, lacked good propulsion in its design.

Eugen went to the Nazi-dominated Austrian military, where, in an attempt to get the Austrian army interested in the Skip-Glide Vehicle, Eugen added bombs to the Skip-Glide Vehicle, essentially turning it into a design for a weapon of war. The Austrian army was not interested, so Eugen had to go to the German army, also dominated by the Nazis, where he was redirected to the Luftwaffe, which the Nazis also ruled. The Luftwaffe was interested in the Skip-Glide Vehicle, because while it sounded like a crazy idea, it could've potentially helped in the battle against the Allied powers. Meanwhile, Wernher Von Braun, a much more famous engineer from the Nazi Bloc, was working on the Aggregate rockets, one of which would become the first man-made vehicle to fly in space. Sources: http://www.museumofflight.org/Plan-Your-Visit/Calendar-of-Events/3083/spacefest-2016-ladies-who-launch

                                            Artist's rendition of Dyna-Soar

And following is Annabelle's account ...

At the Museum of Flight, we listened to a lecture by Amy Shira Teital about the life and death of a spacecraft named the “Dyna-soar”. The Dyna-soar was a craft designed by Eugen Sänger, an inventor born in the Czech Republic in 1905. He started thinking about the Dyna-soar, then called the skip-glide vehicle, when he was experimenting with liquid fuel. He had the idea for a vehicle that could propel itself through the atmosphere, and then it would stop using fuel and “skip” on the atmosphere like a flat stone on a pond. It had a very flat bottom (which looks very much like the space shuttle we have today) that would allow it to skip.

Eugen Sänger showed his creation to the military but they refused to fund it, saying that it needed to be weaponized. When he did make it a bomber, they called him insane and refused again. Then he turned to Nazi Germany, who said they would fund the project. He was given a laboratory to work on his idea, disguised as an aeronautics research facility. He was just going to complete the project when Wernhern Von Brown, another Nazi engineer and designer of the Saturn 5, came out with the V2, his newest aggregate rocket. It was a very powerful missile and it completely overshadowed Sänger’s skip-glide vehicle. Sänger’s project was shut down, but he refused to give up.

After avoiding Stalin, who was very interested in him, Sänger settled for America and brang his project to the US. He teamed up with Bell Aircraft, a company who had made a vehicle called the X1, one of the first planes to break the sound barrier. Bell wanted the skip-glide to break the sound barrier as well, aiming for it to go 370 miles above the Earth’s surface at mach 20. This was too ambitious, however, and was promptly reduced to mach 7. The project was retitled the “Dyna-soar” and was going to be great, if Sputnik didn’t show up and ruin everyone’s day. Shortly after being shown up by Sputnik, the NACA, standing for The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, disbanded and was replaced by the now familiar National Aeronautics and Space Agency, or NASA. NASA was less focused on breaking the sound barrier and more focused on getting men into space. The Dyna-soar was given a cockpit and was going to be the first to launch man into space, but got one-upped again by the flight of Yuri Gagarin, further dashing Dyna-soar’s dreams.

At this point, nobody was very interested in Dyna-soar. It was eventually de-funded and became purely research. The only way it could survive would be to answer questions about the sound barrier, but those were promptly being answered by the Gemini program. Eventually Dyna-soar was flat out canceled, with the awkward trasitional phase of the Apollo missions taking its place. One can only imagine what could have happened if instead of funding Apollo, NASA got straight to the point and got the the Space Shuttle instead of an odd, splashdown-heavy transitional period. We could have done so many things so much earliet, such as building the ISS and maybe even landing on mars. It turns out the Dyna-soar’s name was oddly fitting- before long, it became extinct.

 Boeing mock up of Dyna-Soar/X-20

After the lecture, the kids got to meet Amy Shira Teitel. She autographed her book, "Breaking the Chains of Gravity" for them.