Giving Thanks

 

Thank You…

  1. For family both here and past.
  2. My first grandchild
  3. Being able to get together for a day with family near and far!
  4. Can’t forget all of the wonderful food from yesterday!
  5. Even during these crazy times that we all have things to be thankful for.
  6. We should all take a moment to remember all of the wonderful things we actually experience each day.
  7. Thank God!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!
…………………………………………..—Steve

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

First You Get the Ladder…

The fun of the season. Getting the house all lit up and glowing. It can be hazardous as those few pictures suggest so be careful out there. Below those images are a couple of really old ads for lights. That black & white ad is selling the safety of electric lights vs candles which may burn down your house. I’m sold. And a couple of old boxes of lights. Remember those bubble lights? I thought those were the greatest. Still do. Then there are the photos of some way over the top lighting displays. Love it!!!

Yep – it’s that time of year, my annual ritual of lighting up the house for the holidays.  Like you, I’m torn – my logical brain says I should take advantage of the warmer weather and hang the lights before Thanksgiving, cleaning out the gutters and avoiding the cold.  But my “do other chores or just watch football” brain says – oh, you can wait – and then I find myself outside in the freezing wind, shaking on the ladder as I hang half frozen bulbs across the gutters …  To be honest, my lovely wife Jackie helps me decide … 🙂  Now, although I love how our home looks all lit up,  I have reached a point where Jackie and I have agreed that I am not allowed to be climbing, crawling, kneeling, hanging on the roof any longer.  For some reason the downsides of falling off outweigh the upsides of hanging lights all over the roof-windows, etc!  With this in mind, I started to think about the design and manufacturing marvel those tiny little bulbs are.  Talk about a PIA (Pain in the @%$) Job – figuring out an efficient, low cost way to manufacture billions of bulbs to meet our ongoing desire to light up our homes both inside and out.  Here’s some cool history and info on the manufacturing of holiday lights. Thanks to the genius of Edison, and all those engineers who machined, (heat treated YEA!!) built the machines and make them go. Enjoy.  And special thanks to howmade.com and Business Insider for the videos.

  • Festivals in a number of ancient civilizations were celebrated with lights; any and all of these may have been the inspiration for the lights we use to decorate Christmas trees and the exteriors of homes.
  • The Druids in both France and England believed that oak trees were sacred, and they ornamented them with candles and fruit in honor of their gods of light and harvest. The ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia included trees decorated with candles and small gifts. The worship of trees as the homes of spirits and gods may have led to the Christmas tree tradition and that tradition has long been accompanied by the companion custom of decking the tree with brilliant lights evoking stars, jewels, sparkling ice, and holiday cheer.
  • From the beginnings of Christianity to about 1500, trees were sometimes decorated outdoors, but they were not brought into homes. One legend has it that Martin Luther (1483-1546), the father of Protestantism, was walking through an evergreen forest on Christmas Eve. The beauty of the stars sparkling through the trees touched him, and he took a small tree home and put candles on its branches to recreate the effect for his family.
  • Similarly, German settlers brought the Christmas tree to America where the first tree was displayed in Pennsylvania in 1851. Candles were attached to the boughs of the trees with increasingly extravagant candle-holders, some with colored glass that made the lights appear colored. Of course, the practice of using candles was hazardous; many fire brigades were called to extinguish fires started by candles that had ignited the trees or the long hair or dresses of the ladies. Candles on trees were lit for several minutes only and sometimes only on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day; the custom of lighting trees for extended periods of time had to wait until the invention of the electric light bulb.
  • The first electric lights for Christmas debuted only three years after Thomas Alva Edison invented the lightbulb in 1879. Edward Johnson, a resident of New York and a colleague of Edison’s, was the first to have an electrically lighted Christmas tree in his home in 1882.
  • The tiny bulbs were hand blown and the lights were hand-wired to make this event possible, but it opened an avenue for Edison’s electric company that produced miniature, decorative bulbs for chandeliers and other uses from its earliest days. Electric lights appeared on the White House Christmas tree in 1895 when Grover Cleveland was President.
  • General Electric (GE) bought the rights to light-bulb production from Edison in 1890, but GE initially only made porcelain light bulbs. To light a tree, the family had to hire a “wireman” who cut lengths of rubber-coated wire, stripped the ends of the wires, fastened them to sockets with brass screws, fitted a larger socket to a power outlet or light fixture, and completed assembly of a string of lights. This was too expensive and impractical for the average family. This was a major PIA (Pain in the @%$) job!
  • In 1903, the Ever-Ready Company of New York recognized an opportunity and began manufacturing festoons of 28 lights. By 1907, Ever-Ready was making standard sets of eight series-wired lights; by connecting the sets or outfits, longer strings of lights could be made.
  • Ever-Ready did not have a patent on its series-wired strings of lights, and this basic wiring system was adapted by many other small companies. These sets were not always safe, and episodes of tree fires raised public alarm.
  • In 1921, Underwriters’ Laboratories (UL) established the first safety requirements for Christmas lights. A number of light manufacturers merged in 1927 to form the National Outfit Manufacturers Association (NOMA), which went on to dominate the Christmas light business, with GE and Westinghouse as the leading bulb makers. Also in 1927, GE introduced parallel wiring that permitted light bulbs to keep glowing when one on the string burned out.
  • Bulb shapes also evolved. In 1909, the Kremenetzky Electric Company of Vienna, Austria, began making miniature bulbs in the shapes of animals, birds, flowers, and fruit. Companies in the United States, Japan, and Germany also made figurative bulbs, but Kremenetzky consistently made the most beautiful glass that was hand-painted.
  • World War I ended the influx of Austrian lights. GE made machine-blown shapes beginning in 1919, and the Japanese light-bulb industry, then in its infancy, began filling the void left by the Austrians. The Japanese techniques continued to improve and were quite sophisticated by 1930, but this trade ended with World War II.
  • NOMA started to make tiny lampshades with Disney figures on them to fit over standard miniature bulbs in 1936. The most spectacular miniature bulb success was the bubble light. Carl Otis invented it in the late 1930s, but World War II also interrupted this development. Bubble lights were finally introduced in 1945, peaked in popularity in the mid-1950s, and declined by the mid 1960s. So-called midget lights, midget twinkle lights, or miniature Italian lights began arriving from Europe in the 1970s and became the best sellers of all time in the Christmas tree light business.
  • Today, holiday lights are made of three sets of materials. The strings are composed of 22-gauge copper wire that is coated in green or white polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic. Specialized manufacturers supply the wire on spools that hold 10,000 ft of wire. Two plugs begin and end each set of lights, and they are made of injection-molded plastic. The lights are held in lamp holders that are also injection-molded plastic and contain copper metal contacts.
  • The second set of materials goes into the making of light bulbs. The bulbs are made of blown glass, metal filaments, metal contact wires, and plastic bases. Bulbs are made in clear glass to produce white light, or they are painted to shine in assorted colors.
  • Finally, the finished sets of lights require packing materials. These include a molded plastic tray, a folded cardboard display box, and shipping cartons that hold multiple sets of boxed lights. The shipping cartons are made of corrugated cardboard. Each set is also packed with adhesive-backed safety labels and paper instruction and information sheets. All of the paper goods are made by outside suppliers and are produced from recyclable materials.
  • The basic design for holiday lights consists of a tried-and-true string of green plastic-covered wires with clear or colored light bulbs. Design aspects include the number of lights on the string (in multiples of 25 with 25, 50, 100, or 125 bulbs) and whether the string contains only clear bulbs, bulbs of a single color, or assorted colors of lights.
  • Green wires were made originally to blend in with the green branches of evergreens, either as indoor Christmas trees or outdoor shrubs. The tiny lights are used for many other holidays and for garden displays, so strings with white wires are made for other decorating uses. Plastic covers for the lights are also designed with Christmas and childhood themes as well as an extraordinary range for party decorating from aquarium fish to chili peppers.
  • The newest designs to take the decorating market by storm are nets of lights that can be spread over shrubs to save time in decorating, and icicle lights that look like long white icicles hanging from house eaves. Fiber-optic lights also became available in the 1990s; they are basic strings of wire and light bulbs, but each bulb is the source of light that passes through clusters of fiber-optic wire held in plastic covers that clip onto the bulb. Usually, they resemble flowers or other designs that take advantage of the cluster-like display of optic wires.

The Manufacturing Process – watch video or read the steps HERE

 

 


 

“Sunny Days, Chasin’ the Clouds Away…”

(top) The gang is 50?? They don’t look a day over 5. (row two) Jim Henson and Bert & Ernie. (row three left) There’s no shortage of Sesame Street gear like this Sesame Street Bert Face T-Shirt HERE; (row three right) Cookie Monster Plush Interactive 13 Inch Cookie Monster, Says Silly Phrases & Belly Laughs HERE; Saw these cookie Monster slippers on Nordstrom’s site, lost the link. Sorry; (row four) Cool Sesame Street gang t-shirt HERE; Nursery Rhyme Elmo reading stories HERE; (row five) “K” is for Kowalski Heat Treating; And Make an Elmo birthday cake instructions HERE; (bottom) Okay, kids break out your red crayons and color Elmo!

Go ahead.  Sing it.  I know it’s a part of your memory bank.  All of us can remember growing up with the main characters, episodes, songs and awesome music of our beloved Sesame Street – an American gem for sure – celebrating 50 years this week. I spent some time online finding some history on the early days and a few “tidbits” I hope you will enjoy – Hats off to the visionaries and creative efforts behind the show, its mission and those lovable characters Bert, Ernie, Elmo, The Grouch, Big Bird, Snuffy, the Count and of course my favorite Cookie Monster (we both love to eat) – what fun!  Here’s to another 50 great years ahead.  The history is fascinating! Enjoy the tidbits!

  • The preschool educational television program Sesame Street was first aired on public broadcasting television stations November 10, 1969, and reaches its 50th season this year.
  • The history of Sesame Street mirrors changing attitudes in developmental psychology, early childhood education, and cultural diversity. Featuring Jim Henson’s Muppets, animation, live shorts, humor and celebrity appearances, it was the first television program of its kind to base its content and production values on laboratory and formative research, and the first to include a curriculum “detailed or stated in terms of measurable outcomes”, a term not commonplace when all this began.
  • Initial responses to the show included adulatory reviews, some controversy and high ratings. By its 40th anniversary in 2009, Sesame Street was broadcast in over 120 countries, and 20 independent international versions had been produced. To date, it’s won eleven Grammys and over 150 Emmys – more than any other children’s show.
  • The show was conceived in 1966 during discussions between television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and Carnegie Corporation vice president Lloyd Morrisett. Their goal was to create a children’s television show that would “master the addictive qualities of television and do something good with them”,such as helping young children prepare for school. After two years of research, the newly formed Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) received a combined grant of $8 million from the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation and the U.S. federal government to create and produce a new children’s television show.
  • By the show’s tenth anniversary in 1979, nine million American children under the age of six were watching Sesame Street daily, and several studies showed it was having a positive educational impact. The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast.
  • Because of the popularity of the Muppet Elmo, the show incorporated a popular segment known as “Elmo’s World”. In late 2015, in response to “sweeping changes in the media business”, HBO began airing first-run episodes.  Episodes became available on PBS stations and websites nine months after they aired on HBO.
  • As of its 50th anniversary in 2019, Sesame Street has produced over 4,500 episodes, 35 TV specials, 200 home videos, and 180 albums. Its YouTube channel had almost 5 million subscribers, and the show had 24 million followers on social media.

Development Genius & The Early Days – A Real PIA (pain in the @%$) Job!

  • In the late 1960s, 97% of American households owned a television set, and preschool children watched an average of 27 hours of television per week.  Programs created for them were widely criticized for being too violent and for reflecting commercial values. Producer Joan Ganz Cooney called children’s programming a “wasteland” as many children’s television programs were produced by local stations, with little regard for educational goals, or cultural diversity.
  • Early childhood educational research had shown that when children were prepared to succeed in school, they earned higher grades and learned more effectively. Children from low-income families had fewer resources than children from higher-income families to prepare them for school. These trends in education, along with the great societal changes occurring in the United States during this era, the time was ripe for the creation of a show like Sesame Street.
  • Since 1962, Cooney had been producing talk shows and documentaries at educational television station WNDT, and in 1966 had won an Emmy for a documentary about poverty in America. In early 1966, Cooney and her husband Tim hosted a dinner party at their apartment in New York; experimental psychologist Lloyd Morrisett, who has been called Sesame Street’s “financial godfather”, and his wife Mary were among the guests. Cooney’s boss, Lewis Freedman, whom Cooney called “the grandfather of Sesame Street“, also attended the party, as did their colleague Anne Bower. As a vice-president at the Carnegie Corporation, Morrisett had awarded several million dollars in grants to organizations that educated poor and minority preschool children.
  • Morrisett and the other guests felt that even with limited resources, television could be an effective way to reach millions of children.  Morrisett hired her to conduct research on childhood development, education and media, and she visited experts in these fields across the United States and Canada. She researched their ideas about the viewing habits of young children and wrote a report on her findings.
  • Cooney’s study, titled “Television for Preschool Education”, spelled out how television could be used to help young children, especially from low-income families, prepare for school. The focus on the new show was on children from disadvantaged backgrounds, but Cooney and the show’s creators recognized that in order to achieve the kind of success they wanted, it had to be equally accessible to children of all socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds.
  • As a result of Cooney’s proposal, the Carnegie Corporation awarded her a $1 million grant in 1968 to establish the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) to provide support to the creative staff of the new show. Morrisett, who was responsible for fundraising, procured additional grants from the United States federal government, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Ford Foundation for the CTW’s initial budget, which totaled $8 million; obtaining funding from this combination of government agencies and private foundations protected the CTW from economic pressures experienced by commercial networks. Sesame Street was an expensive program to produce because the creators decided they needed to compete with other programs that invested in high quality professional production.
  • After being named executive director of the CTW, Cooney began to assemble a team of producers: Jon Stone was responsible for writing, casting, and format; David Connell took over animation and volume; and Samuel Gibbon served as the show’s chief liaison between the production staff and the research team.
  • The CTW hired Harvard University professor Gerald S. Lesser to design the show’s educational objectives and establish and lead a National Board of Advisers. Instead of providing what Lesser called “window dressing”, the Board actively participated in the construction of educational goals and creative methods. At the Board’s direction, Lesser conducted five three-day curriculum planning seminars in Boston and New York City in summer 1968. The purpose of the seminars was to ascertain which school-preparation skills to emphasize in the new show. The producers gathered professionals with diverse backgrounds to obtain ideas for educational content. They reported that the seminars were “widely successful”,and resulted in long and detailed lists of possible topics for inclusion in the Sesame Street curriculum.
  • Instead of focusing on the social and emotional aspects of development, the producers decided to follow the suggestions of the seminar participants and emphasize cognitive skills, a decision they felt was warranted by the demands of school and the wishes of parents. The objectives developed during the seminars were condensed into key categories: symbolic representation, cognitive processes, and the physical and social environment. The seminars set forth the new show’s policy about race and social issuesand provided the show’s production and creative team with “a crash course” in psychology, child development, and early childhood education. They also marked the beginning of Jim Henson’s involvement in Sesame Street. Cooney met Henson at one of the seminars; Stone, who was familiar with Henson’s work, felt that if they could not bring him on board, they should “make do without puppets”.
  • The producers and writers decided to build the new show around a brownstone or an inner-city street, a choice Davis called “unprecedented”.  Stone was convinced that in order for inner-city children to relate to Sesame Street, it needed to be set in a familiar place. Despite its urban setting, the producers decided to avoid depicting more negativity than what was already present in the child’s environment. Lesser commented, “[despite] all its raucousness and slapstick humor, Sesame Street became a sweet show, and its staff maintains that there is nothing wrong in that”.
  • The new show was called the “Preschool Educational Television Show” in promotional materials; the producers were unable to agree on a name they liked and waited until the last minute to make a decision. In a short, irreverent promotional film shown to public television executives, the producers parodied their “naming dilemma”. The producers were reportedly “frantic for a title”;  they finally settled on the name that they least disliked: Sesame Street, inspired by Ali Baba’s magical phrase, although there were concerns that it would be too difficult for young children to pronounce. Stone was one of the producers who disliked the name, but, he said, “I was outvoted, for which I’m deeply grateful”.
  • The responsibility of casting for Sesame Street fell to Jon Stone, who set out to form a cast where white actors were in the minority. He did not begin auditions until spring 1969, several weeks before five test shows were due to be produced. He filmed the auditions, and Palmer took them into the field to test children’s reactions. The actors who received the “most enthusiastic thumbs up” were cast. For example, Loretta Long was chosen to play Susan when the children who saw her audition stood up and sang along with her rendition of “I’m a Little Teapot”. Stone reported that casting was the only aspect that was “just completely haphazard”. Most of the cast and crew found jobs on Sesame Street through personal relationships with Stone and the other producers.  Stone hired Bob McGrath (an actor and singer best known at the time for his appearances on Mitch Miller’s sing-along show on NBC) to play Bob, Will Lee to play Mr. Hooper, and Garrett Saunders to play Gordon.
  • The producers of Sesame Street believed education through television was possible if they captured and sustained children’s attention; this meant the show needed a strong appeal. Edward Palmer, the CTW’s first Director of Research and the man Cooney credited with building the CTW’s foundation of research, was one of the few academics in the late 1960s researching children’s television. His research was so crucial to Sesame Street that Gladwell asserted, “… without Ed Palmer, the show would have never lasted through the first season”.

Bet you didn’t know …
1. THE IDEA FOR SESAME STREET CAME FROM ONE VERY SIMPLE QUESTION – According to The Hollywood Reporter, the original idea for Sesame Street came about during a 1966 dinner party hosted by Joan Ganz Cooney, who was a producer at New York City’s Channel 13, a public television station. Lloyd Morrisett, an experimental educator at the Carnegie Corporation, was one of Cooney’s guests and asked her the question: “Do you think [television] can teach anything?” That query was all it took to get the ball rolling on what would become Sesame Street.
2. SESAME STREET ALMOST WASN’T SESAME STREET AT ALL – When the idea for Sesame Street was first being talked about, the original title being discussed was 123 Avenue B. Eventually, that title was nixed for both being a real location in New York City that would place the show right across from Tompkins Square Park, and also for being too specific to New York City.
3. KERMIT THE FROG WAS AN ORIGINAL CAST MEMBER – Before he became the star of The Muppet Show (and the various Muppet movies), Kermit the Frog got his start as a main character on Sesame Street.
4. KERMIT WAS VERY SIMILAR TO HIS CREATOR – Most people considered Kermit the Frog to be an alter ego of creator Jim Henson.
5. CAROL BURNETT APPEARED ON SESAME STREET’S FIRST EPISODE – Guest stars have always been a part of the Sesame Street recipe, beginning with the very first episode. “I didn’t know anything about [Sesame Street] when they asked me to be on,” Carol Burnett told The Hollywood Reporter. “All I knew was that Jim Henson was involved and I thought he was a genius—I’d have gone skydiving with him if he’d asked. But it was a marvelous show. I kept going back for more. I think one time I was an asparagus.”
6. OSCAR THE GROUCH USED TO BE ORANGE – Jim Henson decided to make him green before season two. How did the show explain the color change? Oscar said he went on vacation to the very damp Swamp Mushy Muddy and turned green overnight.
7. COOKIE MONSTER ISN’T COOKIE MONSTER’S REAL NAME – During a 2004 episode, Cookie Monster said that before he started eating cookies, his name was Sid.
8. C-3P0 AND R2-D2 PAID A MEMORABLE VISIT TO SESAME STREET – In 1980, C-3PO and R2-D2 visited Sesame Street. They played games, sang songs, and R2-D2 fell in love with a fire hydrant.
9. MR. SNUFFLEUPAGUS HAS A FIRST NAME – It’s Aloysius. Aloysius Snuffleupagus.
10. RALPH NADER APPEARED IN AN EPISODE – Ralph Nader stopped by in 1988 and sang “a consumer advocate is a person in your neighborhood.”
11. OSCAR THE GROUCH IS PARTLY MODELED AFTER A TAXI DRIVER – Caroll Spinney said he based Oscar’s voice on a cab driver from the Bronx who brought him to the audition.
12. IN 1970, ERNIE BECAME A MUSIC STAR – Ernie reached #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 with the timeless hit “Rubber Duckie.”
13. COUNT VON COUNT ISN’T THE ONLY COUNT ON SESAME STREET – One of Count von Count’s lady friends is Countess von Backwards, who’s also obsessed with counting but likes to do it backwards.
14. AFGHANISTAN HAS ITS OWN VERSION OF SESAME STREET – Sesame Street made its Afghanistan debut in 2011 with Baghch-e-Simsim (Sesame Garden). Big Bird, Grover, and Elmo are involved.
15. CULTURAL TABOOS PREVENTED OSCAR AND THE COUNT FROM BEING A MAJOR PART OF BAGHCH-E-SIMSIM – According to Muppet Wiki, Oscar the Grouch and Count von Count were minimized on Baghch-e-Simsim “due to cultural taboos against trash and vampirism.”
16. BREAKING BAD AND BETTER CALL SAUL’S GUS FRING PLAYED BIG BIRD’S CAMP COUNSELOR – Before Giancarlo Esposito was Breaking Bad’s super intense Gus Fring, he played Big Bird’s camp counselor Mickey in 1982. Thankfully, those episodes are available on YouTube.
17. THE BIG IN BIRD BIRD’S NAME ISN’T A MISNOMER – How big is Big Bird? 8’2″.
18. BEING THAT BIG OF A BIRD REQUIRES A LOT OF FEATHERS – In order to craft Big Bird’s iconic yellow suit, approximately 4000 feathers are needed.
19. COOKIE MONSTER HAS AN BRITISH COUSIN – His name, appropriately, is Biscuit Monster.
20. “GUY SMILEY” IS JUST A STAGE NAME – Sesame Street’s resident game show host Guy Smiley was using a pseudonym. His real name was Bernie Liederkrantz.
21. THE COUNT IS REALLY, REALLY OLD – The Count was born on October 9, 1,830,653 BCE—making him nearly 2 million years old. Try putting that many candles on a birthday cake!
22. SESAME STREET’S FIRST SEASON HAD A FEW SUPERHERO GUEST STARS – In the first season, both Superman and Batman appeared in short cartoons produced by Filmation. In one clip, Batman told Bert and Ernie to stop arguing and take turns choosing what to watch on TV. In another segment, Superman battled a giant chimp.
23. TELLY WASN’T ALWAYS TELLY – Telly was originally “Television Monster,” a TV-obsessed Muppet whose eyes whirled around as he watched.
24. SESAME STREET IS HOME TO THE ONLY NON-HUMAN WHO HAS TESTIFIED BEFORE CONGRESS – According to Sesame Workshop, Elmo is the only non-human to testify before Congress. He lobbied for more funding for music education, so that “when Elmo goes to school, there will be the instruments to play.”
25. MOST MUPPETS ONLY HAVE FOUR FINGERS – According to Sesame Workshop, all Sesame Street’s main Muppets have four fingers except Cookie Monster, who has five.
26. THERE WERE NEVER ANY PLANS TO TURN COOKIE MONSTER INTO VEGGIE MONSTER – In 2005, Sesame Street made healthy eating one of its main themes for the season—which led to some speculation that Cookie Monster might be trading in his cookies for something a bit more green and healthy. But these rumors were just that: rumors!
27. THERE ARE VERSIONS OF SESAME STREET ALL OVER THE WORLD – According to Sesame Workshop, there are currently more than 150 different version of Sesame Street—in 70 different languages—being produced around the world.
28. SESAME STREET IS ABOUT TO MAKE HISTORY AT THE KENNEDY CENTER HONORS – In December 2019, Sesame Street will receive a Kennedy Center Honor—making it the first TV show ever to earn the distinction.
29. SESAME STREET IS NOW A REAL STREET IN NEW YORK CITY – In early 2019, Sesame Street finally became a place in the real world. In honor of the show’s 50th anniversary, and its impact on New York City in particular, the intersection of West 63rd Street and Broadway in Manhattan was rechristened as “Sesame Street.”
30. WHAT ABOUT MISS PIGGY? – Despite misconceptions and rumors to the contrary, Miss Piggy has never appeared on Sesame Street.  While Kermit the Frog is well-known for his many appearances on Sesame Street, Miss Piggy (and her Muppet Show co-stars Fozzie Bear, Gonzo, Bunsen & Beaker, Animal, and others) have not appeared.

 

 


 

 

Hello – is Anybody Listening?

(top to bottom) Voyager 2 Factoids; Where the Voyager twins are now; Two awesome artist renderings of the probes in space; Get those cool his/hers black Ts being modeled HERE; The Voyager 40th anniversary logo T HERE; And the Voyager 2 Neptune black T HERE; Then get the coolest model of the Voyager—all steel, no glue required HERE; Humans certainly are amazing to have figured out how to do this. But I guess once we’ve applied ourselves to a problem, any problem, solutions keep coming. Kind of like what we do with your impossible PIA jobs, eh?

Space travel.  The stuff of Buck Rodgers, Neil Armstrong and Captain Kirk.  As a kid, I was fascinated by space and space travel. In full complete disclosure, I fully believe there is life out THERE!  Somewhere!  I’ll admit, I still struggle with the concept of distance in space, especially when coming across terms like “light years” and “billions of miles”.  Recently I read an article about Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 “still going” and wanted to share some of the cool info.  Talk about a PIA (Pain in the #%$) Jobs! – yikes!  Let’s see.  Design and build a never before done/long lasting spacecraft.  Check.  Make it power itself.  Check.  Put it inside a rocket.  Check.  Launch it into space.  Check.  And then release it, so it travels through space “forever”, transmitting back to earth for the next 50 years or more.  What?  Who does this stuff?  (rocket scientists?).  Any who, one year ago, this week, NASA’s Voyager 2 became only the second spacecraft in history (think Voyager 1 as the other) to reach interstellar space, the region between our suns reach and the stars (wrap your head around that tidbit.  And this week, several new research papers in Nature Astronomy Journal described what scientists observed during and since Voyager 2’s historic crossing.  According to Ed Stone, project scientist for Voyager and a professor of physics at Caltech, “The new findings help paint a picture of the “cosmic shoreline” where the environment created by our sun ends and the vast ocean of interstellar space begins. The Voyager probes are showing us how our sun interacts with the stuff that fills most of the space between stars in the Milky Way galaxy.” Now that’s cool!  Enjoy the info and images – special thanks to Doyle Rice of USA Today and my trusty Wikipedia to fill in the holes. (or should I say empty space 🙂 )

  • Studies say Voyager 2 has left the heliosphere – the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by our sun – at a distance of about 11 billion miles from Earth, well beyond the orbit of Pluto. (Voyager 1 headed into interstellar space in 2012)
  • The heliosphere can be thought of as a cosmic weather front – a distinct boundary where charged particles rushing outward from the sun at supersonic speed meet a cooler, interstellar wind blowing in from supernovae that exploded millions of years ago.
  • “In a historical sense, the old idea that the solar wind will just be gradually whittled away as you go further into interstellar space is simply not true,” said the University of Iowa’s Don Gurnett, corresponding author on one of the studies. “We show with Voyager 2 – and previously with Voyager 1 – that there’s a distinct boundary out there.”
  • Voyager 2 is only the second spacecraft to travel this far out into the solar system. The craft was launched slightly ahead of its twin, Voyager 1, in 1977 and has been traveling through space for the past 42 years.
  • “We certainly didn’t know that a spacecraft could live long enough to leave the bubble and enter interstellar space,” Stone said at a media teleconference to announce the findings. “We had no good quantitative idea of how big this bubble is.”
  • Even though the spacecraft are out of the sun’s bubble, the Voyagers are still technically in our solar system, NASA said. Scientists maintain that the solar system stretches to the outer edge of the Oort Cloud. It will take about 30,000 years for the spacecraft to get that far. (please help me grasp this…)
  • Voyager 2 is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, to study the outer planets. Part of the Voyager program, it was launched 16 days before its twin, Voyager 1, on a trajectory that took longer to reach Jupiter and Saturn but enabled further encounters with Uranus and Neptune.[4] It is the only spacecraft to have visited either of these two ice giant planets.
  • Its primary mission ended with the exploration of the Neptunian system on October 2, 1989, after having visited the Uranian system in 1986, the Saturnian system in 1981, and the Jovian system in 1979. Voyager 2 is now in its extended mission to study the outer reaches of the Solar System and has been operating for 42 years, 2 months and 16 days as of November 6, 2019. It remains in contact through the NASA Deep Space Network.[5]
  • At a distance of 122 AU (1.83×1010 km) (about 16:58 light-hours) from the Sun as of November 4, 2019, moving at a velocity of 15.341 km/s (55,230 km/h) relative to the Sun, Voyager 2 is the fourth of five spacecraft to achieve the escape velocity that will allow them to leave the Solar System. The probe left the heliosphere for interstellar space on November 5, 2018, becoming the second artificial object to do so, and has begun to provide the first direct measurements of the density and temperature of the interstellar plasma.
  • Constructed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Voyager 2 included 16 hydrazine thrusters, three-axis stabilization, gyroscopes and celestial referencing instruments (Sun sensor/Canopus Star Tracker) to maintain pointing of the high-gain antenna toward Earth. Collectively these instruments are part of the Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem (AACS) along with redundant units of most instruments and 8 backup thrusters. The spacecraft also included 11 scientific instruments to study celestial objects as it traveled through space.
  • Built with the intent for eventual interstellar travel, Voyager 2 included a large, 3.7 m (12 ft) parabolic, high-gain antenna to transceive data via the Deep Space Network on the Earth. Communications are conducted over the S-band (about 13 cm wavelength) and X-band (about 3.6 cm wavelength) providing data rates as high as 115.2 kilobits per second at the distance of Jupiter, and then ever-decreasing as the distance increased, because of the inverse-square law. When the spacecraft is unable to communicate with Earth, the Digital Tape Recorder (DTR) can record about 64 megabytes of data for transmission at another time.
  • Voyager 2 is equipped with 3 Multihundred-Watt radioisotope thermoelectric generators (MHW RTG). Each RTG includes 24 pressed plutonium oxide spheres and provided enough heat to generate approximately 157 W of electrical power at launch. Collectively, the RTGs supplied the spacecraft with 470 watts at launch (halving every 87.7 years) and allows operations to continue until at least 2020.

 

 


 

“Chicken Feed”

Candy Corn…I’m not a fan but a lot of people are. And I have to say, they are THE iconic candy of Halloween. You can even get that plush toy at the bottom left for your kids HERE. Or the one on the right for your dog HERE.

 

Now that Halloween is over, the odds are you have sorted your candy and have some “not my favorite” sitting around the house – that Halloween favorite Candy Corn – loose in bowls, in tiny plastic bags, or in half used bags tucked in the back of the pantry.  You know all about it – that white, orange and yellow treat that’s intriguing to eat, but not quite what your stomach can take.  Seems like all of us like to eat them in stages – bite the white tip, then the orange center, then the yellow bottoms – (silly traditional, much like unscrewing Oreo’s and teeth-scaping the frosting).  At my house we purchase a few bags of these each year to set out in some of Jackie’s favorite Halloween bowls. All I can say is that we only eat them because they are sitting out! After that I will actually silently judge myself….again and again!

Anyway, here is some trivia about this iconic Halloween (and now other holidays) treat.  Special thanks Wikipedia and National Confections Association for the info. Enjoy.

Chicken Feed (Candy Corn as we know it today) has been around for more than 100 years. According to oral history, George Renninger, an employee of the Wunderlee Candy Company, invented the popular confection in the 1880s and Wunderlee became the first to produce the candy. The Goelitz Candy Company (now Jelly Belly Candy Company) started producing the confection around the turn of the century and still produces the popular Halloween candy today.

Candy corn first appeared when America was largely an agrarian society. The tri-color design was considered revolutionary and the public went crazy for it. We don’t know if the fact that so many Americans had farm experience at that time, if urban dwellers found it charming or if it was some combination of the two that made it so popular. Lack of machinery meant that candy corn was only made seasonally, probably gearing up in late August and continuing through the fall. It has remained unchanged for more than 100 years and is a favorite at Halloween.

The taste of candy corn can be described as somewhat polarizing and has been a subject of wide debate.

Originally the candy was made by hand.  Manufacturers first combined sugar, corn syrup, carnauba wax, and water and cooked them to form a slurry. Fondant was added for texture and marshmallows were added to provide a soft bite.  The final mixture was then heated and poured into shaped molds. Three passes, one for each colored section, were required during the pouring process.

In 1900, it was the job of many men to produce candy corn several months of the year.  Sugar, corn syrup and other ingredients were cooked into a slurry in large kettles. Fondant and marshmallow were added to give a smooth texture and bite. The 45 pounds of warm candy was poured into buckets called runners. Men dubbed stringers walked backwards pouring the candy into cornstarch trays imprinted with the kernel shape. Originally, it was delivered by wagon in wooden boxes, tubs and cartons.

The recipe remains basically the same today. The production method, called “corn starch modeling,” likewise remains the same, though tasks initially performed by hand were soon taken over by machines invented for the purpose.

A popular variation called “Indian corn” features a chocolate brown wide end, orange center and pointed white tip, often available around Thanksgiving.  During the Halloween season, blackberry cobbler candy corn can be found in eastern Canada.

Confectioners have introduced additional color variations suited to other holidays.

  • The Christmas variant (sometimes called “Reindeer Corn”) typically has a red end and a green center.
  • the Valentine’s Day variant (sometimes called “Cupid Corn”) typically has a red end and a pink center.
  • In the United States during Independence Day celebrations, corn with a blue end, white center, and red tip (named “Freedom Corn”) can be found at celebratory cook outs and patriotic celebrations.
  • the Easter variant (sometimes called “Bunny Corn”) is typically only a two-color candy and comes with a variety of pastel bases (pink, green, yellow, and purple) with white tips all in one package. In 2014, carrot corn was also introduced for the Easter season, typically being green and orange, and having a carrot cake type flavor.
  • In 2011, there were caramel apple and green apple candy corn variants.
  • In 2013 there were s’mores and pumpkin spice variants.
  • In 2015, birthday cake and “Celebration” candy corn was introduced for the Independence Day season.

The National Confectioners Association estimates that 35 million pounds (over 9000 metric tons) of candy corn are sold annually.