It’s about 7:30 in the morning on Saturday and I’m on the ferry. halfway back to Hyannis from Nantucket.   I’ve had a really great trip to the island.. I have a bunch of pictures to log here.. hopefully I can get it done before we doc.

The boat is pretty full of people this morning… I had it almost all to myself on the ride over Thursday night.. Here I am the other night with my only friend on the way over the other night.

I found a big stack of newspapers on the boat the other night.. I was the main article on the second page.. It was pretty cool….

Luckily the boat had warning signs as not to let things like this go to your head….

Eric was there at the dock to meet me when we got in… I followed him the few miles to their very nice house. It was cool how … I don’t know.. how ’islandy’ the whole place felt..   Even the car thought it was cool

 Pam, Eric and I talked for a couple of hours until about 12:00.. It was cool getting to know them better. Eric grew up with good friend Deb in Detroit.  Pam is from Texas, like I am..
I ended up working for a while.. then went to sleep around 1ish..   I woke up the next morning to find the house decorated for their middle son, Zach’s 11th birthday. They had printed a ton of 11’s  and spread them all over the house.. it was cute..

Eric and Pam took the kids to school while I went out for a run..   As I left, I spotted one of their bikes. The brand name was the same as my old friend Rosario… Rafe’s dad.. who passed away quite a few years ago. It was nice sitting there thinking of him. He was an amazing guy..

The run was nice.. it was definitely spring here.. flowers blooming, pretty warm and overcast. The place is full of cedar shaked beautiful homes.. It’s empty this time of year.. but you can imagine how busy it must be in the summer !

I got back to the Goddards just as they’d come back from the drop off.. Their house is really cool.. lots of good kids things.. they have a huge koi pond in the back and a cabin with fussbal, pool table etc.. Looks like a great place to grow up.

We grabbed a quick breakfast then drove down to the school. Natucket has one big public school . it combines kindergarten through high school in one really nice complex.

I was going to be doing two shows in their main auditorium. It was a big venue for this version of my show. It has a raised stage, sloped seating, great lighting and acoustics . I think it seats about 800 folks.  Eric and Pam helped me move my gear and set up

The first show was kindergarteners through 5th graders.. I heard that we had about 660 kids.. It’s a challenge to aim the show such that you can keep both  6 year olds and 11 year olds with you .. But it really worked this time.  

The show really went well.. The kids stayed engaged.. My timing was OK.. and the equipement worked well.. can’t ask for much more than that. he kids mobbed me when I was through which was pretty fun.. and freaky..

We had about 45 minutes between shows… so we shuffled off to the school cafeteria.. On the way I saw this very cool whale skeleton   they have hanging in the walkway.. It’s a ’Right Whale’ that washed up on the beach a few years back..    I think our schools need one of these.

I walked into the lunch room while the high school kids were eating. I was still wearing my blinking lights. The kids seemed to like it.. Quite a few came over to talk to me..

In the cafeteria, found myself on the discussion list from the last teachers meeting.

The second show was about 330 kids.. these were 6th through 8th graders.. a totally different challenge. You have to aim a little more goofy.. a littl e more sarcasm.. a few marginally off-color references to bodily functions… and t-you have them. This show went great too. I did have an equipment problem with the large Tesla coil.. The grounding strap broke off as I was moving the device.. It’s an important part of the function.. I was able to do a hasty field repair using some alligator clips.. I was expecting it to catch fire.. it didn’t.. so all was well.   The kids seemed to like the show.. and again they mobbed me at the end.. A bunch of the kids came up and started hugging me.. .. about 50 of them came up and did that.. it was weird but cool

Pam, Eric and Bob the facilities manager helped me pack up. Bob couldn’t resist a ride on the go cart.. he was a really good guy.

Eric helped me place a SamStone in the theater. He’s almost 6’ 7″   so he was able to reach a good high spot for the stone. It felt good to leave one there.

We dropped the kids off at home then Eric took me to see the Maria Mitchell museum.   On the way we saw this old house being raised for a new foundation. Pretty cool.

Maria Mitchel was a self-taught  Astronomer who worked on the island in the mid 19th century.   There’s a research facility set up here in her name. One of their primary missions is outreach.. They have a great intern program here in astronomy, life sciences etc. They’ve got a great summer program for young girls interested in science, too.

Mitchell is like a goddess in the community of amateur scientists.   Though I guess she went pro.. she ended up teaching Astronomy at Vassar… even though she was completely self taught. I have just read Dava Sobels’ book ’The Planets’  which contains  excerpts from some letters that Mitchell wrote to Caroline Herschel, .. part of the famous English family of Astronomers.. in which they discussed the Herschel’ss recent discovery of the planet Uranus.   That made this a cool pilgrimage for me.

The main astronomer, Vladimir welcomed us there.. but then retreated because he was sick. He introduced us to his co-worker, Gary… who showed us around (Gary’s on the boat this morning)

Here’s one of their telescope installations. it’s a 12 inch Takahashi folded path reflector with a great imaging set up. They do a bunch of quasar/blazar research.. and extra solar planetary research. I was really impressed.   They’d just upgraded it to a carbon fiber tube.. They’re going to replace it wuth a 17″ instrument in the near future..

Here are some raw images they’d just captured with the scope on Wednesday.

It was cool seeing this ultra modern scope on the 19th century cast-iron pedestal from Maria Mitchell’s old scope…

The old scope’s tracking clockwork was on display in another room.. It’s amazing to me  that folks could figure out mechanical mechanisms for tracking that were this accurate.

They had a bunch of other antique instruments on display including this mid 19th century 5″ refractor

And the main lens form the original 7″ (I think) refractor.. This would have been an amazing instrument in it’s day

Mitchell used instruments like this to do important comet observations. She was the first to identify and track one of the most visible comets, Comet Mitchell.

The US named a crater on the moon after her, too !

Here she is.. looking very scientific .

On the way home we drove by one of the other sites from the Mitchell observatory. This is their big ’scope. a 24 inch reflector.. That’s a pretty sizable scope.. It’s in active use for research.

I loved the little cobble stone streets on the island. I’ll bet their tough to navigate in the summer , though.

Eric and I headed back to the house.. where we were met by 3 of the islands science teachers and some kids. We had a nice time talking, listening to Eric and and Pam’s collection of old LP’s and eating..   Still no beer for me , though.

When it got dark we went outside and did science crazy stuff.. Like the swirling steel wool…

And fire blowing.. this time with starch.. It was great..   but tasted so nasty !

The teachers had brought over a bunch of thank you notes to the Goddards for bringing me over. We had fun looking at the drawings the kids had made of me.

Then we did a little more science in the kitchen.. we did the milk/food color experiment..(Put food coloring in milk.. then add soap.. it all swirls around)  then made birds nest sugar candy . You do that  by melting sugar and pouring it into cold water.. very dramatic.. We had a near disaster there.. when Keegan added the peppermint extract, the alcohol in the flavoring caught fire.. It singed the hair off my hand.. cool, but scary !

I went to bed around midnight… I tried to blog these pictures… but was too tired.. It seemed like I had just closed my eyes when the alarm rang at 5:30… ughh.. I packed up and drove to the ferry doc.. It was a pretty morning..

Hey.. looks like this worked out. well. we’re just pulling into Hyaninis now.. I better pack up..   Now I have about a 5 hour trip home… which I don’t mind. It’s been a great trip…

More tomorrow.. CU folks.. CU Sam..
-me

ps. I liked this sign behind the Nantucket High School Secretary’s desk.