Playing Catch Up

FERRY NICE: On Sunday, we made a quick, last minute trip over to Bremerton to pick up an item. We drove around the south end of Puget Sound and up its southwest end on the way there, which took about an hour and 10 minutes. On the way back, timing worked out so that we could catch the ferry at Bremerton and ride back to Seattle, a trip that's just under an hour. It was a night time crossing for us, and while we didn't have the pretty Sound/water views we would during a day trip, we had some nice night time views, and sparkling city lights.

BAKERS: Recently we had a problem with too many bananas going brown. CJ and Annabelle to the rescue! Without any adult intervention, they made some tasty banana bread! 

GAMERS:  We've been playing a number of tabletop games lately, and I'm on a nice little winning streak. 

Games have included Munchkin, Exploding Kittens, and a new-to-us one, Blueprints.

It's a fun game where you use dice to construct structures. The difference colors of the dice represent different building materials. You earn points based on how well you use the materials.

We liked the game. It was quick to learn and play, and we'll definitely play it again.

WORK: A couple of days ago, we caught an interview on NPR with Gray Brechin, geographer and founder of the online archive The Living New Deal, a wonderful resource all about Work Progress Administration projects. 

The WPA "did just about everything," Brechlin said during the interview on the program Here & Now, hosted by Jeremy Hobson. "It built roads, sewers, water systems, airports, zoos, libraries, city halls. It's all over the country. It's just that you don't really notice it," Brechin noted.  (You can listen to the archived interview on the WBUR's website: http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2018/01/16/wpa-us-infrastructure).

According to the Living New Deal website, The Works Progress Administration (WPA)  produced 651,000 miles of highway, 124,000 bridges, 8,000 parks, 18,000 playgrounds and athletic fields, 84,000 miles of drainage pipes, 69,000 highway light standards, and 125,000 public buildings (built, rebuilt, or expanded), including 41,300 schools.

Here's what CJ had to say about listening to the interview. ... 

Today, I listened to an NPR program about the New Deal, an important piece of American history. The New Deal was an elaborate program implemented by former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, designed to fix a moribund economy.During the New Deal, two agencies were created: The Work Progress Administration (WPA), and the Public Works Administration (PWA). From 1933-43, there were over 13,000 New Deal projects all across the country, including, but not limited to, freeways, the Statue of Liberty ​Visitor Center, the San Antonio River Walk, and much more.

The New Deal is estimated to have created about 8½ million jobs, while, according to Forbes, ~$50 billion was spent by the federal government on the New Deal itself.

During the NPR broadcast, they actually played a tape from 1937 of Franklin Roosevelt speaking at the dedication of the Timberline Lodge, in Clackamas County, Oregon.​
One New Deal project I found interesting was the Statue of Liberty Visitor Center. The Statue of Liberty Visitor Center was designed to improve the experience of guests travelling to the Statue of Liberty.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the New Deal was unpopular among the wealthy. For example, longtime media mogul William Randolph Hearst was a vocal critic of the New Deal, as it posed a challenge to his wealth (the New Deal had a progressive income tax).

And Annabelle had this to offer. ...

Before using his famous “drip” method of painting, Jackson Pollock worked for the WPA as part of their Federal Art Project in 1938-42. At the very end of this time period, he painted Male and Female, an abstract painting depicting two very stylized people and a colorful patterned background. This painting seems very similar to the style of artists like Joan Miro and Pablo Picasso. Pollock was under psychoanalysis when it was made, and it is believed that his therapists encouraged him to use painting as a means of treatment. In 1943, Male and Female was displayed in Jackson Pollock’s solo exhibit “Art of this Century” in the New York art gallery. The painting is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Pictured: Male and Female 1942 Oil on CanvasPhiladelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA73.1 x 49 in, 186.1 x 124.3 cm

The Library of Congress has a great collection of WPA Art Project posters on it website. Check them out here: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?st=grid&co=wpapos
Here are a couple ...

MEANWHILE, ON THE SPACE COAST: We'll be watching this afternoon to see if a scheduled launch takes place. I'll let CJ tell you about the mission we're tracking.

Today, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) is scheduled to launch SBIRS Geo Flight 4 for the Air Force, using an Atlas V rocket. The rocket is scheduled to launch at 7:28 P.M. EST (4:28 P.M. PST) tonight, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

SBIRS is described on the ULA's website as follows:
A PDF on the ULA's website includes multiple interesting and informative images. For example, on page 2, there is a map of the United States, in which states that any of the mission's equipment came from are highlighted in blue.

SBIRS, considered one of the nation's highest priority space programs, is designed to provide global, persistent, infrared surveillance capabilities to meet 21st century demands in four national security mission areas: missile warning, missile defense, technical intelligence and battlespace awareness. The SBIRS team is led by the Remote Sensing Systems Directorate at the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor, with Northrop Grumman as the payload integrator. Air Force Space Command operates the SBIRS system.