the adventures of glass-arm woman

After 15 years i can still be surprised. Today was a super-fun, good day full of treats, but there was a moment when i almost died laughing. Team member Amy was drying glassware and I was wrapping it. She had reached into the giant graduated cylinder and was singing a little song about how absorbent the paper towel needed to be to get the job done (i kid you not) when i hear a pause and then this :

Amy : ummmmm... Miss Niki... I think i'm stuck...
Niki : No you aren't. You've got this; just ease your arm out.
Amy : No. Miss Niki. It's stuck.
Niki : giggle Hold still. Don't flex. Keep your arm still; i'll hold the glass and you gently pull back.

Nothing happened. Not a budge, nothing. I mean, her arm was stuck in this $100 piece of glassware.

Niki : BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I just need a second. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Just, just hold a second and then we'll get it off. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Amy : It's okay. I understand if you need to go get your camera.
(does my team know me or what?)

People, it was so funny i almost peed. It was so funny i couldn't breathe. I could just imagine her flailing about like a cartoon and eventually us getting so frustrated we'd just bash the glass against the wall to free her arm.
After i caught my breath and could get a good look at it, I eased my finger past the bicep and pushed the skin away from the glass to allow air into the tube. Viola! off in 2 seconds.
Man i love my job. And i love science.

library treats

We perform in libraries in the summer and generally it is a good gig : staff is ready for you, kids are excited and often there are bottles of water waiting for you. One day often blends pleasantly into the next. Sometimes you have to deal with tiny spaces or cords plugged into the ceiling, but every once in a while you hit a day that is outstanding, even by summer standards.
Today, team member Amy and I went to Potomac Library in Woodbridge, VA. I've been to this library several years in a row and always have a nice time. This is the location of the fairy tale reading pit i shared last year. It has a large meeting room with a great black and neon footprint rug. The audience was large, well-behaved and enthusiastic. There was one parent that i thought was gonna hurt her hands from clapping so much and another that almost fell off of her chair laughing at one point. Amy and I were really in-synch and the show was awesome. It helps that this is how the day began at 10:15 :

Bonnie, the Librarian : Before you start setting up can i get you some coffee? Are you coffee drinkers?
Niki : Oh, no thank you.
Amy : I don't drink much coffee.
Bonnie : How about ice cream? Can i interest you in ice cream? Every summer we bring in treats so that we can survive and right now the freezer is full of ice cream. Would you like some?
(i remind you that it is 10:15am)
Niki and Amy : Yes, please!


Without unpacking any equipment, moving the tables or getting ready in any way we abandoned set-up without a backward glance. Bonnie took us to the staff lounge for our choice of treat. She wasn't kidding about the freezer being full.

So Amy and I munched on Drumstick Ice Cream Cones while we set up the show.
[hey kids, remember never to eat or drink in the laboratory, okay?]
After our awesome, fun show we were cleaning and drying glassware when Bonnie came back, Are you ready for more ice cream? Heck, yeah! This time i went with a cup of cookie dough (dontcha love eating out of those wee cardboard cups with the little wooden paddle?) and Amy had an ice cream sandwich. Munch, pack, munch, munch, pack. Bonnie watches us working and proclaims, Those treats are small. You need to try the Dove bars. I just had one. They're fabulous. I'll go get you some!
Really, lady? Really? You might be the best hostess librarian, ever.
Thanks, Bonnie!

Beautiful Day, the end

After dropping Matt at his car at the rest area in DE I made my home. At 1:30 in the morning on I-95 i got to watch this happen

You just don't get days like these often enough.

Beautiful Day, part 3

As we left Scranton I remembered that the largest concrete bridge on the east Coast is somewhere near by. I wasn't sure where, but we set out to find it. There was much driving around. We headed one way on 11. Then the opposite way on 11. Then we were on 92 for a while. Then we turned around. Then we found out we had turned around too soon and turned around again. We drove and drove mostly in zigzags. But it was a beautiful day so we didn't mind. The road took us up and down mountains and next to the Susquehanna river. It was gorgeous. We stopped and got ice cream. It was such a gorgeous evening that neither of us really cared if we found the bridge.
That is, until we found it.
It was unspeakably large. I squealed when we saw it in the distance.

The town of Nicholson seems to be hiding in the shadow of the bridge. This viaduct built in 1913 is one of the most impressive man-made objects i have ever seen. Because it took us 2.5 hours to go the 21 miles from Scranton to Nicholson we arrived at sunset

You'll have to believe me that it was even more beautiful in real life. I honestly can't describe how impressively huge this thing was

or what it was like to stand under it

There was a little park with a postcard view of nearly the entire span

I would love to drive on the bridge, but alas it is only for trains. Of course, since it was a Beautiful Day as we drove to find a place where we could get a good picture of the name on the front of the bridge,

a train did indeed pass over it

Can you believe that? sigh. What a beautiful day.

Beautiful Day, part 2

What could possibly be waiting for us in Downtown Scranton? you wisely ask. We had no clue, but by jiminy we were going to find out. Nestled in the mountains it looks like any other former mining town in PA

but as we drove into the city center we were amazed

Check out the Lackawanna County Courthouse and the Electric Company

Who knew Scranton was so lovely?
We were a bit dazed by the sudden revelation that there is more to Scranton than The Office and we were starving so we parked and walked around for a bit. Unfortunately it seemed like everyplace to eat was closed. It was weird. Finally we ended up at a mall - the Steamtown Mall to be exact- and figured that there would at least be a food court. I was a bit disgruntled cause i wanted to eat fun neighborhood food, not crappy food court food, but i was way too hungry to argue and there really was no other choice.
Munching on my corndog from Nathan's i noticed that there was a walkway off of the food court and it seemed to go by some trains. Figuring that looking over a train yard would make up for having to eat at a mall we ventured outside.
And into the Steamtrain National Historic Site!!!

Trains upon trains upon trains. We thought the long pedestrian bridge might take us over the trains, but no, it took us down to the trains

where we could wander freely (as long as we watched out for them moving).
I loved that you could see the rainbow reside on this oil carrier

and that this wee locomotive was sitting by itself.
There was no signage saying that you couldn't climb on the trains, soooooo

It was so freaking fun to explore these relics. You could wander through
a passenger car and then look up
to see an engine right on you.
Or you could pretend to be a lookout
watching for cattle on the tracks.
I have always been fascinated by large machines.
These coal engines were amazing and powerful. How in the world did we ever invent such a thing?
There were little storage areas in every nook and cranny. Hey, i wonder what's in this seat locker
Hi Matt! Guess i won't put anything too valuable in there.
I assume that being a National Historic Site means there is a museum or some sort in the roundhouse, but we never got that far. In fact, it was so late that the pedestrian bridge to the mall was being locked up as Matt and I made our way back. I will definitely have to return when i have a whole day to explore.
I never thought i'd find a reason to return to Scranton!

Beautiful Day, part 1

Sometimes you just have a really, really good day. You know the day i mean - you take the day off from work, no one calls from work with anything on fire, the weather is gorgeous, you get to spend time with one of your favorite people, your planned adventure turns out to be even cooler than advertised and the unplanned adventures rock. I had that day last week.
My friend Matt is on the East Coast for a bit of time this summer and he had a day free from plans on a day i had no shows. Adventure time! We met at the rest stop in DE on I-95 as i was coming from Baltimore and he was coming from Dover. It was a great day for a drive so we headed up 95 to I-476 towards Scranton. Yep, we went on an adventure to Scranton, PA.
First we went to the Lackawanna Coal Mine.

Located in the Poconos it was a working coal mine until 1960. After lying abandoned for awhile it has been turned into an educational tour.

There is so much information about the how and why coal was mined as well as the men and boys who did the back breaking work. After a quick look around we paid for the $10 ticket to go down into the mine and went outside to queue up for the next tour. We passed this amazing chunk of coal

I told Matt to jump into frame for size reference, but i don't think he realized that he should have smiled as well.
and then we walked up to the hoist house to wait for the car that takes you underground

After a bit of a wait (where there was plenty of time to contemplate the meaning and/or use for this)

the car slowly emerged from the opening of Slope 190
This is no Disney tram, people. It is tiny and cramped and filled with injury warnings in the languages of the immigrant miners

You descend slowly, backwards into the darkness

with only naked bulbs
hanging from the ceiling of the slope for light. It is a cool sensation as your eyes adjust to light and you can hear the groundwater trickling down the walls as you go deeper. Then temperature falls rapidly to about 50 degrees and after a 4 minute journey you are almost 300 feet underground.
This is Tony our guide showing us the geology of the coal beds (bottom) and the layout of the mine tunnels and ventilation (top). After the basic explanation we start walking the mine
If you have never been (and it is a fair bet most of you have never been) you should go. They have done an amazing job preserving a lot of what was just left at the end of the operation and adding exhibit pieces.
To get the coal out of the bed, the miner would manually use this body drill
to make 10 six-foot deep holes, fill them with dynamite and blow them. Then he and his assistant -who could be as young as 13- would shovel the chunks into the waiting cart
which would be hauled to the surface.
Here is a locomotor that would have pulled the carts of coal after 1903

and the earlier 10-year-old-boy-with-a-mule method. Check out the sharp stick coming out of his sleeve. The carts didn't have brakes so to stop them he would leave the mule, run back to the wheel, jam the stick into the spokes and hope for the best. Needless to say, sometimes there were incidents with this braking method, not to mention the hazard of being in close quarters with a mule. (Tony shared that his grandfather's brother died from a single kick by a mule in the mine - share that story with your kids if the whine about taking out the trash)
The coal beds are different sizes and sometimes you would have to work in a monkey tunnel
with a clearance of about 3 or 4 feet. Imagine crawling up that slope dragging all of your tools with you and spending the entire shift scraping and shoveling without being able to even sit up all of the way.
The safety boss had his own office
but even his day wasn't that cushy since it would take him 8 hours just to walk the entire mine making sure everything was okay. The youngest workers were called nippers. Their job was to sit into the double-doored airlock (mostly in the dark) and then open the doors when the carts came. Nippers were 7-9 years old.
It was cool to see the giant air intakes
and hear that there used to be a capsule inside where 2-3 people could be hauled straight to the surface. I would definitely have paid extra to be allowed to try that, but apparently they don't have a working capsule anymore.
Here is the very end of the mine. There was still plenty of coal, but lack of demand closed the operation on November 10, 1960. One of the best parts of the tour came here at the end when Tony turned off all of the lights. True darkness is amazing. Then he turned on his headlamp and shone it on the coal face to show why anthracite -or hard coal- is called black diamonds. It was breathtaking.
This hard coal is only found in the Poconos and the mining of it shaped not only the local economy, but the entire industrial revolution in America. You really should visit this mine.
After a quick stop in the giftshop for a carved-coal refrigerator magnet, Matt and I were on our way to explore the wonders of Downtown Scranton

that will not be in my mouth

What?!?

a team member retires

Sometimes when i walk into my office my first thought is
What the heck is hanging from the ceiling?
We have a show about structures that uses a Spider-man action figure as a weight. After over a decade of faithful service his arm suddenly broke off. Apparently someone on the team thinks suspending him from his web-entwined arm is a fitting tribute.
They're strange, but i love them.

Respite

Where did you eat lunch today?

Broadway in Baltimore

Last weekend i finally got a chance to go to the Hippodrome Theater in Baltimore. It was renovated and reopened in 2004. I've always wanted to see the inside after the redo. It was beautiful. Why did i take no pictures, people? Plus the sound was excellent, which is always my concern in these old theaters. The Broadway Across America season is over at the Hippodrome, but there are various shows going on year round. Parking was reasonable for the city ($8) and even attached to the theater. You should go.
I was able to finally see the inside because my high school best friend, Franci (no, not Francie in Belgium - she has an "E" and is in Belgium) won tickets to the Broadway traveling production of Spring Awakening. I'd never heard of it, but apparently it won 8 Tony Awards last year. Based on a play written in 1890 by Frank Wedekind it is coming of age story set in a provincial German town. Doesn't sound too interesting until you add that the original play was banned for years because it was considered too salacious. Sprinkle in rock music, nudity and teen-aged sex and you have a winner.
I was a poster child for teenaged angst. It is hard to believe if you know me now, but at one time i found life meaningless, pined for my innocence and wrote terrible poetry that often featured blood and pain. Obviously i identified with most of the characters on stage. In fact, the plot was really nothing new : kids are confused, angry, and/or stressed and the adults range from loving, but unhelpful to outright cruel. We've seen variations of this story over and over again (especially when we GenXers started getting published) though i can see how it was groundbreaking in 1890. It was bittersweet to see the play sitting next to the person with whom i suffered much of my angst. We really rallied and kept each other afloat in high school and i was glad to briefly revisit that place and then look at the healthy, (mostly) sane adults we became.
The music by Duncan Sheik (yes, that Duncan Sheik) was good, but not go-out-and-buy-the-CD great. Why, then, would i recommend that you see it?
The staging is phenomenal. There are no set changes and most of the cast is on-stage during the entire performance. In fact, part of the audience even sits on stage. The lighting is jaw dropping. The choreography is marvelous. The band is incredible. And most importantly, the energy of the cast is infectious. There were some interesting choices made (like having all of the adult characters played by only 2 actors) and i can honestly say i have never seen anything quite like it. My only kvetches with the staging are that the nudity, though not at all gratuitous, felt like it was there simply to shock us, one pivotal scene between the leads about feeling pain being better than feeling nothing was rushed and a touch awkward, and there is one sequence of pointless and distracting hand/arm choreography that keeps cropping up like a bad rash.
I'd like to see it again and sit on stage next time be in the midst the controlled chaos. The tour went to Philly after Baltimore and is in DC for an extended run next. The actor i saw play the main character Melchior, Kyle Riabko, is leaving the company and i know nothing about his replacement. However, if you can see it while Blake Bashoff is still playing Moritz you should - he was amazing as the best friend and often stole the show.
Go relive those wonderful adolescent moments and come out thanking God you aren't there any more.