Catching up
Ok, here's a quick round up of the last couple of weeks. After the Darkness gig Janet and I flew to Washington DC for the Mutual Concerns of Air & Space Museums conference. This was actually my 5th consecutive year of attending. They had a record turn-out, spurred by the attraction of being able to see the new NASM Udvar Hazy facility at Dulles.
We had sneaked in for a quick look back in November with Kermit Weeks when it was still under construction, until their security threw us out. It's a very impressive place, I like it a lot more than their main museum on the Mall. I had a guided tour from the main person in charge of construction, and, unlike some museum facilities, it's definitely been built for the long haul. It carried a hefty price tag ($270 million) and they are $90 million short of fundraising goals, but Gen Dailly said their revenues were 700% above projections, and that's helping a lot.
While in Washington I also made some fundraising visits to Lockheed Martin and the National Endowment for the Humanities; checked out the flying dinosaurs exhibit in the Natural History Museum to help with research on a similar idea for us; saw the new "Mammals" exhibit at the NHM (6/10); the new "America on the Move" exhibit in the Museum of American History (5/10); saw the Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence and US Constitution in the National Archives; and the new Wright Brothers exhibit in the National Air & Space Museum (8/10). Delighted to see Sir George Cayley's famous silver disc in there - had only ever seen pictures of it before.
The true highlight of the trip was totally unexpected, seeing the incredible IMAX movie Space Station 3D at the National Air & Space Museum.
It is many years since I have had an experience in a Museum as good as this. Forget about poky carboard glasses with red/green filters... the 3D effect was amazing, and that combined with the size and clarity of IMAX and the incredible footage taken in space - the whole thing was stunning, very moving. It is as close to being in space as I'm every likely to get.
The Citabria is sick :-( The diagnosis is still underway, but it looks like one of those situations where it could cost $200 to repair or $10,000. And knowing my luck...
Janet flew me down to Tulsa on Friday evening to attend the B-17 pilot training. In that 3 hour flight, with no distractions at all, I got more quality work done than I'd typically manage in 3 days in the office. My first ever visit to Oklahoma (I think I'm up to about 30 states now in my quest to visit them all) was memorable for the wrong reasons. I became violently ill and was up all night with all kinds of nasty stuff coming our of various orifices. The flight home was no fun at all, only just avoiding use of the sick sack. I fell into bed at 5.15 and did not wake up up until after 8 this morning. The only things that registered on my consciousness all day were that Burnley lost, England won the cricket and Matthew Hoggard got a hat-trick.
There was some interesting buildings in Tulsa and most of them had the name "Oral Roberts" on them. Sounded like some kind of toothpaste manufacturer but having done an internet search it seems he was (in fact is, still alive) a famous TV evangelist who was very big in the late 70s and 80s. Raised a lot of money and built a lot of buildings during this time, but eventually stretched the credulity of his audience a bit too far. This is a very hard thing to do if you're an evangelist. But the tricks he pulled included claiming he'd had a meeting with an angel, and doing a roaring trade selling plastic angels as "commemorative items" (it later turned out he'd bought the plastic angels several months before the meeting); and famously a 700 foot tall Jesus told him that he needed to raise $8 million for a medical centre by a certain deadline, or he'd die. He raised the money with 3 hours to spare, lucky chap, but the medical centre closed with $40million debts a couple of years later, so not much divine blessing of the project in the end. Anyway, here are Oral Roberts' giant bronze praying hands:
11:10:51 PM 
|
