Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2003-02-04 04:26 am
azurelunatic) wrote2003-02-04 04:26 am
Aurora Borealis and office gossip
Anyone else ever hear of the Poker Flat Research Range? I heard a lot about it, growing up. For a while FatherSir was working out there. He talked about the stuff there, and how you couldn't drive on the road when they were doing a launch, and how one time they'd been moving the barrels of water protecting the blockhouse that the scientists hid in when there was a rocket launch, and how the bottoms had been rusted out and there wasn't actually any water in.
I got the gossip about the people around the Aurora Borealis research. Office gossip. Danny Osborne? We hung out over at his place. I baby-sat for Tom Hallinan's grandson. I heard about Neal Brown, about Akasofu, about the people down in the Seismology lab. Almost all of them are Old School, though, and have retired. It boggles me to surf the staff pages and only see a few of the familiar names. It used to be I could look at the staff in the Elvey Building and recognize names from the stories about work...
FatherSir seemed to be on remarkably good terms with most of the people he worked with. He made friends with many of the guys, and was friendly with the rest. He had a habit of declaring celebrations. He threw Solstice parties. One of his famous stunts was Hawaiian Day, which involved him wearing a lower-body wrap of loud flower-print fabric below his prominent Buddha belly, blowing on a conch shell, rolling around a cart with some variety of refreshment (I believe punch). Everybody knew him, more or less. He was a character. Still is, just not in the office anymore.
Sent an e-mail to the last maintainer of one of the Geophysical Institute websites because four of the links on their main page were down. Figured he'd like to know. He was one of the names I remember hearing. Identified myself as my father's daughter. It's a small state.
I got the gossip about the people around the Aurora Borealis research. Office gossip. Danny Osborne? We hung out over at his place. I baby-sat for Tom Hallinan's grandson. I heard about Neal Brown, about Akasofu, about the people down in the Seismology lab. Almost all of them are Old School, though, and have retired. It boggles me to surf the staff pages and only see a few of the familiar names. It used to be I could look at the staff in the Elvey Building and recognize names from the stories about work...
FatherSir seemed to be on remarkably good terms with most of the people he worked with. He made friends with many of the guys, and was friendly with the rest. He had a habit of declaring celebrations. He threw Solstice parties. One of his famous stunts was Hawaiian Day, which involved him wearing a lower-body wrap of loud flower-print fabric below his prominent Buddha belly, blowing on a conch shell, rolling around a cart with some variety of refreshment (I believe punch). Everybody knew him, more or less. He was a character. Still is, just not in the office anymore.
Sent an e-mail to the last maintainer of one of the Geophysical Institute websites because four of the links on their main page were down. Figured he'd like to know. He was one of the names I remember hearing. Identified myself as my father's daughter. It's a small state.