Week of Space

I apologize, this was supposed to go out on 4/16, but it seems to be stuck "publishing" on my phone.

Last week was a good week for me, a lot of space events going on.  Saturday a week ago was Yuri's Night (observed) for the Huntsville area, with a huge party in the Davidson Center.  Yuri's Night officially is celebrated April 12 (4/12, get it?), in honor of the launch of Yuri Gagarin, first human in space, on April 12, 1961.  For anyone concerned about why Americans would want to celebrate that, April 12, 1981 was the date of the first Space Shuttle launch.  So it has become a World Space Party day.

STEM to STEAM

I've been seeing several articles in my TwitterStream about changing from promoting STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) to promoting STEAM, with an A for Arts.  Here is a synopsis from the Rhode Island School of Design and the National Science Foundation.

I have several reasons for supporting this transition, for encouraging the Arts with STEM.  For just one example, I was one of the AIAA judges for the NASA Great Moonbuggy Race last spring.  We awarded the Best Design prize to an RISD team.  They had one SWEET rover, functional and beautiful at the same time.

But for me, support of the arts is much more personal.  The arts changed my life.  I could even go so far as to say that the arts saved my life.  This is me, at age 18.  The gentleman I'm with?  We've been married for 14 years.

I made him promise, while we were courting, that we would never give up music again.  I'm not sure how well I would say we kept that promise, we have had phases where we didn't play or sing, but we are both back in music again now, and loving every minute of it.