Here, There, Everywhere

STORY TIME: For the past five weeks, we've been involved in a special project. It involved going to Pacific Science Center one a week to participate in a program sponsored by PSC, the University of Washington, the National Science Foundation and Seattle Public Libraries - all favorites of ours!

There were a number of facets to the program, but the number one thing was we were given a Chromebook, a Hummingbird (motherboard), electrical components, and an empty box, and tasked with telling a story about our family using eletronics, art, and robotics. 

Needless to say, it was super fun. 

 So, how do you put a story in a box?

After our very first meeting, right away we began thinking up ideas for our diorama. Our talk almost immediately turned to politics, because our family talks about politics a lot. We found ourselves talking about the proposal to build a wall on our country’s southern border and how distasteful our family finds that idea. As we discussed more about this, we realized that politics alone wasn’t a personal enough topic to tell a family story. 

However, because we had been talking about a wall, we then thought about another wall that was a fun family story. Specifically, in 2013, our family went all the way to London to see Roger Waters, the lead singer of CJ’s favorite band, Pink Floyd, perform their concert “The Wall” in Wembley Stadium. We realized we could share the politics we discuss and an amazing trip we took by recreating the concert in our diorama.

We used actual photos of Wembley Stadium for the background, and we wrapped our box in a world map as the story is about travel and world politics. We purposely made the audience very diverse, and choosing the sound clips was a fun creative process, starting with a sound byte about building a wall today, and the lightning and thunder symbolize trouble or a storm that is brewing in world politics. We included some actual Pink Floyd music clips, and a clip of former president Ronald Reagan urging another nation to tear down their wall, which we find somewhat ironic nowadays. 

Naturally, we had to build a wall, as that was a central feature of the concert we saw. Ours was out of LEGOs. We had to snip and sand off the little LEGO nubs on some of the pieces, so we could build a wall that would stand when we wanted it to, and fall down at the right time.

Our biggest challenge was making the pig, quite literally fly. You may wonder, “Why a flying pig?” but the flying pig balloon is a staple of Pink Floyd concerts. We talked about adding more elements to use more of the hummingbird components, but in the end realized that what we had here told the story we wanted to tell.

https://youtu.be/y2Mp754acB8

A diorama we created using a Hummingbird motherboard. It tells the tale of our family going to Wembley stadium to see The Wall performed a couple of years ago, but it's also an allegory for present day politics. The flying pig is a Pink Floyd icon; we thought it only fitting that it broke the wall down.



By the way, the kids were caught in a 'windstorm' last time we went to PacSci. Fortunately, they survived unscathed.

SMALL BITES: Sunday morning, we were invited to meet for breakfast by Kennedy and Abby. They suggested Dim Sum (which translates to small bites, according to sources I read online).

We had never "dim summed" before, but were game to try. We met in Seattle's International District. They scouted for places that could seat our party of six, and we wound up at the Purple Dot. 

Oh my. SO delocious! Seriously, every single bite was wonderful. I'm really not  sure what all we ate, but it was all good and we can't wait to go again sometime! 

It was so much more fun than going out for a Sunday morning breakfast of biscuits or pancakes or some similar, familiar fare. 

SURPRISE FIND: Trying to avoid traffic in Greenwood a few days back, we were detouring through random residential streets. All of the sudden, in the middle of a bunch of single family residential homes, we happened upon this structure. 

I'll let CJ tell you a bit about it. ...

On my birthday, we went by the Sakya Monastery of Tibetan Buddhism, located in a residential section of the Greenwood neighborhood. According to their website, the purpose of Sakya Monastery is to share and preserve Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan culture. The Sakya Monastery does this through teaching and practicing traditional Tibetan Buddhism and by upholding Tibetan customs and traditions.

The Sakya Monastery caught my attention because I have a fascination with Shar-Pei, an ancient Chinese dog breed, and the Monastery is Chinese in origin.
I would like to visit the Monastery on some weekend.

WHAT IS THAT?! We were down in Des Moines (a bit south of Seattle) this weekend and saw a statue from a distance that made us pull over and get out of the car to check it out.

From a distance - and up close, frankly - it looked like a large fish attacking Albert Einstein.

So, it turns out that wasn't what it was. Rather, it's a statue called "The Great Catch," by artist Richard Beye. 

Not understanding what, exactly, we were seeing, we were happy there was a plaque at the bottom statue explaining it. 

"Legend of the 'Big Catch: Long ago, a beautiful young maiden fell in love with a handsome fisherman. To her dismay, the Wicked Witch of Puget Sound fell in love with him too. The Wicked Witch cast a spell and turned the maiden into a fish. For years, the sad fisherman searched all the waters of the Sound looking for his maiden, to no avail. One day, while fishing at the Des Moines fishing pier, he saw a big fish in his net. He knew it was his love. He pulled her up, kissed her, and she was transformed back into his beautiful maiden. They were married and lived happily ever after."

So there you have it. You can read a bit more about it here: : http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/1388#sthash.YHDHF3vi.dpuf