Making Connections

PHONES' HOME:  Thursday morning, three of us headed just a little north and west of MPA's campus to a one-of-a kind museum in Seattle's Georgetown district.

Open only four days a month and hidden away in a non-descript building in a hardscrabble part of town, Connections Museum, a collection of working artifacts from the telephone industry history, is easy to miss from the outside. In fact, I think we've probably driven by it 200+ times without knowing it's there. 

Who knew all this was so close yet so far?!

Upon stepping into the site, my first thought was that it felt like an extension of the awesome Living Computers: Museum + Labs.  Like LCM, at Connections, not only were the archival machines on site, they are functioning! 

 Look at the glowing control panels. Aren't they lovely?

Typewritten instructions everywhere!

CJ can tell you a bit more about the place. ...

Today, I went on a field trip to the Connections Museum in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle. The museum's website describes itself as follows:
Our museum features working Panel and Crossbar electromechanical (sic) central-office switches. We also have working Step-by-Step and Crossbar PBX equipment as well as antique telephones, switchboards, outside plant displays (poles, cables, splicing equipment, and tools) and a reference library.

Our tour began on the third floor, where Sarah Autumn (a tour guide) led us to the sights of the very old telephone equipment. For much of our time on the third floor, Autumn showed us telephonic communication equipment circa 1923, which relied on a large series of "panels" raising and lowering various components to carry phone calls from the caller to the called. Autumn let me (try to) use a phone from the 1920s to call another phone a few feet away.

Afterwards, Autumn showed us more telephone equipment, circa the 1950s. Autumn remarked that since she mostly works with the 1920s equipment, the 1950s equipment seems "futuristic" or something along those lines. The new(er) equipment is much cleaner-looking and more space-efficient than the older equipment. According to Autumn, many phone stations' most busy day annually was Mothers' Day, when countless people would call their mothers with telephones. The equipment would make noise when calls were made, so on busy days, the equipment could be making noise all day. Some people who used to work with telephonic communication equipment reportedly still have hearing aids.

Check out the rainbow spaghetti on site.
 Astounding and impressive!

One thing our tour guide pointed out to us is we were being bathed in multiple banks of florescent tube lighting fixtures. Back in the day, they didn't have those. They had these (below), and worked had to scramble about the facility, with all its knobs, switches and wires with flashlights in hand!

We also learned about how communications worked out in the field. The 'swing' seat below was how technicians worked the wires for a good number of years. 

The diagram below showed a progression of wires.

 Technicians in the field often had to repair the wires, including melting down lead to make patches. 

Check out this cluster - a cut end of a big cable!

I couldn't help but notice all of the documentation on site. One of our tour guides, Sarah, told us that she has been working for over a year to help get just a fraction of them in order. 

There were so many working alleyways of floor to ceiling circuits. Astounding! Gosh, I'd love to see video of people 60+ years ago working in this space.

Hundreds of different phones were on display. 

CJ got to place a real live call on a hundred year old phone. 

Later, I coveted this see-through 1970s model!

The kids stand next to a futuristic model for the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle.

Likewise, this "Space Age" phone was created for the Space Needle. When its rotating restaurant was constructed, they had to come up with a cord-free way of installing communications there.

 The museum is an homage to Herbert H. Warrick Jr.

Annabelle has this to say about her visit: 

Connections Museum is a small facility near the Museum of Flight dedicated to keeping a working history of the telephone. There are two levels of the museum- the first our field trip group went to was the upper level which held large, functional Panel & Crossbar office Switches, the large machines that were used to dial phone numbers. Almost randomly, the machines clack repeatedly whenever a number is input. They take up a huge portion of the floor, meaning workers would frequently have to use ladders to fix the upper levels of the Switch. The panel Switch uses brushes up and down on metal rods to create the contact that registers the number. The Crossbar Switch presses down on certain combinations of bars on the grid to register the number, also creating a lot of noise. Both, while the panel switch is finicky, do work to call phones within the building.

The second level contains a small display of cabling (from phone lines to underground ducts), while the majority is dedicated to vintage phones. There’s a room featuring multiple wall-mounted phones without a way to dial- you would have to be connected via Operator. Our guide showed us that in some rural towns, someone had to volunteer to be operator and keep an eye on the panel 24/7. As phones advanced, soon they didn’t need a wire to connect to the operator. The first “wireless” phone was actually used in the top of the Space Needle during the world’s fair after workers realized that, in case of an emergency, there would be no way to get help as there was no wiring up the needle. From there, phones became a standard household item.You can learn more about the Connections Museum at their website, http://www.museumofcommunications.org/

Here's a vintage news story about the museum
https://youtu.be/PDyWCDYuD_0


Connections Museum has their own YouTube channel with more videos. Check them out here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm87i_qG_B-rRvG7NWqyVLw

All in all, our visit there was too short. We can't wait to go back!

The Little Prince

SWEET SOMETHING: So, you know how Facebook tracks your every keystroke and puts things in your feed that it knows will appeal to you? Well, a couple of weeks ago, out of 'nowhere,' a notice of something called an Edible Book Festival popped up in my feed.

It was being held by an arts council in the common space outside a huge, awesome bookstore about a half hour north of our place. The call was for entrants to make something edible based on a book. My first thought was, "That's really cool we should do that!" That thought was immediately followed by, "That's stupid, we have enough going on and that would take lots of time." 

I went back and forth on it for a couple of days and then, just minutes before the deadline, hopped onto the event's website and committed the kids to doing something for the event, figuring it would be good language arts and creative arts education, not to mention math (the baking).

And so, then the question was, what to do? Part of the contest was encouraging participants to be 'punny.' 

I Googled 'classic children's books,' and one title jumped off the screen at me immediately. I asked the kids how the felt about doing a cake based on The Little Prince, a classic by French aristocrat, writer, poet, and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Naturally, the obvious pun there was replacing the original book's character with one Prince Rogers Nelson, or just "Prince" to most of the world. He, the diminutive rocker of "Purple Rain" and other fame.

The kids were all over that and so on Wednesday, they began work on their project. One of the first orders of business was building a little Prince. Below, Annabelle plays shoemaker. You can see the shirts and pants are already crafted.

Both of the kids worked on Prince heads. When you're doing something like this, you always want to have multiple body parts. Annabelle made six pairs of shoes, we had three pairs of pants, two shirts, three heads, extra hair parts. ...

It goes without saying, faces are always the hardest part.

 Here are a couple of reject heads!

CJ handled the bulk of the baking. After deciding on a purple velvet cake, the kids looked online for recipes. Because they'r experienced bakers, they have a good sense for what a recipe will taste like by looking at it. They selected a phenomenally-reviewed red velvet cake recipe from the New York Times. 

And as a nod to Prince's song "Raspberry Beret," the kids made a raspberry puree filling. It was SO, SO good! Here's the filling between the asteroid layers.

Getting the lettering right was tricky. The kids tried a few different techniques, including letters out of fondant. But, those looked like crap.

We couldn't help but eye the Cricut machine sitting on our dining room table. We had used sugar sheets before, and wondered if you could stick one of those into the machine for precision cutting, just like we cut designs from cardstock. Annabelle did the research and found out that it maybe might probably work.

And sure enough, it did!

They also used the machine to cut a medallion like the one on the front of "The Little Prince," and to cut some cool Prince symbols (representing that time frame where he used it instead of his name when he was in a battle with his record company).

On the medallion, Annabelle carefully wrote the first line from one of Prince's biggest hits, "Let's Go Crazy."  As people made the rounds at the show, the hardcore Prince fans saw that little detail and were SO happy. One woman even gave the kids high fives after reading it. :)

Below you see Prince parts, ready to make the trip up to Bothell, where the show was held.

Setting the cake up on site took about 45 minutes. The kids had to make repairs to the sheet cake layer, put the asteroid atop that, and then get Prince up on the asteroid.

 At 11 o'clock they were ready for the show!

As you can see in the photo below, their cake attracted a crowd! 

The kids stood next to their cake for two hours, answering dozens and dozens of questions about ingredients and techniques. They explained how they used gumpaste, fondant, buttercream, sugar sheets, and more. It was fun for them to get so much positive feedback following their hours of work. And they made it clear to those asking that they did, indeed, do the work themselves.

The kids' hard work paid off. Not only did they win a judge's award for "most book like," but they won the coveted People's Choice award.

After the awards ceremony, entrants cut up and served up their entries to share with the public. 

The kids' cake was so big, they had plenty to share. CJ was THRILLED that they had enough to bring some home. Below, he's ready to cut into the asteroid.

 Look at that lovely dark purple shade CJ made for the cake!

 The slice was a thing of beauty on the plate!

And I have to attest that the cake was So, SO GOOD! I don't even like cake, really, and this stuff was amazing! Great recipes, properly executed.

I also caught some snaps of a few other entries. I liked this "Eagle Has Landed" entry. It looked tasty!

 This gardening-themed entry was appealing.

The entry below won people's choice for adult entrants. The competitor even rewrote the book (upper left corner).

 This flower-themed entry was really pretty.

 And the cute cake below, "Little Mouse on the Berry," won an award, as well. 

 I loved "The Old Man and the Sea." It was very punny and well executed.

Some entries were super simple, like this one, below. I have to admit, though, I shuddered when people started dishing it up when it had been sitting at room temp for nearly three hours. #foodsafety

I loved the range of ages involved in the competition. This Quidditch ring was totally recognizable. 

 And there were many other clever entries from people of all ages. 

Following is CJ's recap of the endeavor. ... 

For about three days, I worked on, and assisted with, the making of a cake for the Edible Book Festival, hosted at the Third Place Books store in Shoreline. The contest involved making a cake based on a pun with a book's title. For our submission, my sister and I submitted a cake titled The Little Prince.

The Little Prince is an iconic French children's book about a boy who lived on an asteroid. However, our cake was a pun on that, replacing the titular prince with Prince Rogers Nelson (better known as just Prince), a famous musician.
I baked the purple velvet cakes used as the base for the decorations. I followed a New York Times red velvet cake recipe, slightly altered to be a purple velvet cake (as in the Prince album and song Purple Rain). The cake was double-layered (meaning I baked it twice using the same pan), with a raspberry pureé between the layers.

As the cover of The Little Prince features an asteroid, I used the same recipe to make the interior of the asteroid, which would be covered in fondant.

And below are Annabelle's impressions. ... 

Third Place Books, a local bookstore technically located in Third Place Commons, holds an annual event where members of the community bring in “edible books”- puns on book titles, represented by food. There are two categories- adult, and youth. Most submissions are cakes, but there are other fun puns and ideas too. This year’s event was very well organized, with around 3 or 4 dozen entries total. The categories for prizes were “Most Pun-derful”, “Most Book-like”, “Most visually Appealing”, and the “People’s Choice”, with 1 winner each from both the adult and the youth submissions.

The cake we submitted, “The Little Prince” featured an adaption of the original book cover with a spherical asteroid cake on top- however, in our rendition, the titular Prince was replaced with another Prince completely- Prince, the singer famous for songs like “Purple Rain”, “1999”, and “Let’s Go Crazy”. The cake took around 3 days to make, including baking (which CJ did most of) and making things like fondant and buttercream from scratch. The main focal point of the cake is a gum paste figure of Prince that we stood on top of the asteroid. It took a lot of tweaking, bad gum paste, and breaking of pieces, but he ended up making it to the end of the event safe and sound.

Some of my favorite submissions to the event were “Fork Diaries: How to Fork Your Diary” (“Dork Diaries: How to Dork Your Diary”, a DIY entry into the Dork Diaries book series), “Little Mouse on the Berry” (a cute pun of “Little House on the Prairie” with impressive homemade macaroons), and “Red E Layer One” (a riff on “Ready Player One”) in the youth category, and “Goodnight Buffoon” (“Goodnight Moon”, featuring a rewritten version appropriate to the United States’ 45^th president, who was featured scowling on the cake), “Hickory Daiquiri, Doc” (inspired by the classic “Hickory Dickory Dock” poem), and “Old Man and the ‘C’” (A beautifully crafted, obviously very time-intensive version of Ernest Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea”).

Most of the cakes I mentioned did end up winning awards, and ours actually won two (People’s Choice and Most Book-like)! Every winner got a certificate and $10 gift card to Third Place Books! The event is annual, and even a small treat has a great chance of winning if you do it right! Plus, even if you don’t enter, it’s extra fun to just come and look at some of the entries. Cakes aren’t the only accepted entries, either. So if you’ve got a favorite book or great pun in mind, give it a try! There may even be a similar event at a library or bookstore near you!

Space Lift

GOING UP: On Thursday morning, MPA's student body took a field trip to Seattle's #1 landmark, the Space Needle. 

It certainly wasn't their first visit there, but it was a trip like no other, as they got to get an up close look at the Space Needle's extensive, expensive remodel underway. 

Annabelle can tell you a bit more about it. ... 

The Space Needle, as it’s written on the banners that cover scaffolding on the observation deck and on the ground, is getting a “Spacelift”. Around the “Space Base” gift shop is where it’s most apparent, with small hallways made of black fabric stretched between metal piping. 

Our field trip was escorted through those and past lines by an employee, and we walk single-file up the stairs to see the bag check now blocked by two metal detectors. One by one, we slowly make our way through and pack the elevators to the observation deck.

Once we reach the top, it smells like fresh kettle corn- which we soon see popping- and sawdust from the circular saw we can hear from past the plywood. 

The outside has been opened since last time, but you still can’t access half of the needle through the locked, temporary wooden door.

The glass panes that have been installed are at least an inch and a half thick, and there are three of them glued on top of each other for each section of window.

The weather outside is cold and misty, not lending much to the view that would normally be there had it not been for clouds. The trip was short, but the Space Needle is making progress.

And CJ had this to say about the experience. ... 

Before seeing the documentary Pandas 3D at the Pacific Science Center, I visited the iconic (and currently in-renovation) Space Needle, located with the Pacific Science Center downtown. I visited on a Cascade Parent Partnership Program field trip, despite the fact that I am no longer enrolled at Cascade.

I was chaperoned by my older brother Ken. Once the elevator finished bringing us to the top of the Needle, most of the top interior was obviously not complete. Many of the walls and some of the floor was visibly wood.

Strangely, a smell of caramel corn permeated the interior. I later learned that this smell came from bags of caramel corn where the concessions stand was during prior visits.

We briefly visited the exterior, where there is normally a great view of much of Seattle (and the surrounding area, including the Bellevue skyline). However, on this visit, the view was covered by thick fog.

Per the Space Needle's webpage about their renovation, the work "will update the structure’s physical systems and elevate the visitor experience by dramatically enhancing the view. Privately funded, the ambition project will heighten the Observation Deck experience with floor-to-ceiling glass on the interior and exterior to further open up the uninhibited 360-degree views of the Puget Sound. The 500′ level will be reimagined with a first-of-its-kind rotating glass floor revealing downward views of the structures never seen before."

Here is some video of the project: https://youtu.be/yjF_Trx8Q4s

After the Space Needle experience, the kids caught the monorail to Westlake Station. Shocking to me, it was Kennedy's first time riding the monorail.

Too bad he didn't have a more picturesque trip. Seattle was absolutely saturated on Thursday.

Here they are on the way into and through MoPop.

And below is a shot in what looks like South Lake Union. 

 Despite the downpour, the three still had a great outing.

Rocked

SMASHING: Our Tuesday evening was a little interesting. We were in a convenience store in West Seattle, and the manager came over to us and asked us if we drove a blue Honda. We said, "Yes," and he said that a couple of guys wanted to talk to us about our car. I thought that was odd, and immediately feared I hadn't set the parking break and that the car had rolled into another car or something.

Turns out the guys in the parking lot wanted to tell us about the man they just saw throw a rock through our driver's side window. Fantastic. Sigh. They said that the guy was out of it, and was actually trying to throw the rock at them, they thought.

I called 9-1-1 to report the incident, and the operator immediately shifted me to the non emergency number. Granted, nothing was on fire and I wasn't being shot at, but it ticked me off that the operator had ZERO interest in what had happened. When the non emergency operator came on, she began telling me how to file an online property damage report. I said, "Really? So that's it, huh? So no one there cares that there's a violent crazy guy running around somewhere nearby here? He was trying to hurt strangers, and my car just happened to get in the way."  At that, I was transferred back to another 9-1-1 operator who asked me if I wanted a cop to come out. I said, "Well, yeah, if you have someone in the area, I think they should at least be on the lookout for the guy."  The operator then asked if I was going to stand by my car and wait for an officer. I said, "Well I can for awhile, but not INDEFINITELY." Again, sigh.

We waited for several minutes, meanwhile cleaning up the mess that was our shattered window. Unfortunately, I didn't have gloves and wound up with several small cuts on my fingertips. Eventually an officer did show up. She was very professional and gave us a case number. And I'm sure that's the last we'll ever hear of it. 

Fast forward to Wednesday, Christian took the day off work and went down to Kent to an auto wrecking yard and got us a 'new' driver's side window and got the car all fixed up already. In the end, the incident cost us about $100 and some time. I suppose it could have been much worse.

PANDA-MONIUM: This afternoon, CJ, Annabelle and Kennedy previewed a new movie, "PANDAS 3D." We had free tickets (hooray!) from Pacific Science Center. 

Per the movie's promo material, it documentary is about "a very curious female cub named Qian Qian on an exciting new adventure in the mountains of Sichuan as she takes her first steps outside her protected habitat, discovering her true animal nature, and even facing challenges of the unknown."

Here's a trailer for the movie: https://youtu.be/cAamrkLjIuM

Per the trailer's description on YouTube, "At Chengdu Panda Base in China, scientists are dedicated to protecting the species by breeding adult Giant Pandas in order to introduce cubs into the wild. This film follows one such researcher, whose passion leads her to initiate a new technique inspired by a black bear program in rural New Hampshire. What starts as a cross-culture collaboration becomes a life-changing journey for an American biologist who crosses an ocean to join her; a scientist from Inner Mongolia; and a very curious female cub named Qian Qian, born in captivity." The film's directors were David Douglas and Drew Fellman, who also worked on “Born to be Wild” and “Island of Lemurs: Madagascar."

Here's what CJ had to say about the movie. ...

Today, I saw Pandas, a short documentary, in our local IMAX theater. Pandas primarily details the story of Qian Qian, a panda that is raised at the Chengdu Panda Base in China, with the assistance of various wildlife workers.

Ben Kilham, a naturalist from New Hampshire who has been raising black bears for decades, assisted in raising Qian Qian. In the film, Kilham said that one of the first black bears he raised had a bossy personality. The bear (who I can't remember the name of) in question is now 22 years old, and is the mother of ~20 bears.

Once she turned 2 years old, Qian Qian was released into the Chengdu Panda Base. A GPS leash was put on her neck. Jake Owens, an assistant of the effort to raise Qian Qian, was visiting his home in America when he got an alarming notice: Qian Qian had not moved for 24 hours.

Owens had to return to the Panda Base, and a search party was sent deep into the forest to rescue Qian Qian. After two days, the search party found Qian Qian, injured and up in a tree. One of the search party's members (who was afraid of heights) had to climb the tree, and give Qian Qian water mixed with honey and medicine.

AFRICAN ARTISANS: Yesterday afternoon, Annabelle and I watched a documentary, "African Pottery Forming and Firing" by art historian Christopher Roy.

In a description of the documentary, Roy writes, "This video demonstrates the five major techniques used by potters in Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Nigeria. The techniques include concave mold, convex mold, coiling, direct pull, and hammer and anvil. You can see Bwa, Jelly, and Mossi potters in Burkina Faso, the Ashanti potters in Kumasi Ghana, and Igbo and Yoruba potters in Nigeria. In addition there are two detailed videos of pottery firing."

It was a fascinating look at talented artists extracting clay from the landscape, and then turning it into works of art.

You can watch it via YouTube: https://youtu.be/52HKSwkI1hs