The Culture Channel

The Mojave desert, not the coast. My birthday present for my dad is that I'm going to spend several days going through [aviation organization]'s "archives," (repeatedly described it to me as "those boxes of stuff" so I'm kind of picturing a supply closet full of cardboard boxes shoved in at random) and offer advice on how to organize them.

This could either end in me saying "buy some archival boxes and folders, and move this stuff out from under that water pipe," or in me saying, "Holy shit, call the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and tell them you have three shoeboxes full of Neil Armstrong's pilot logbooks," depending on which former organization members' stuff it is. Option #2 is a very slim possibility, but an existing one.

On the one hand, my copy of Burt Rutan's book about SpaceshipOne has finally gotten here. On the other hand, I can't find my book on high altitude balloon flights. I liked that one - it was the most readable, with the least amount of "Elspeth tries to understand literal rocket science in order to read these six paragraphs of technical detail about the X-15."*

I hope I left it in my desk at work - I'm not looking forward to the idea of ordering a new copy off Amazon when all these books are hella expensive.


*My degree is in Library Science, not actual science. You could ask why I'm writing a paper on the development of high altitude flight - it would be a very good question. I blame my father, because he was the one who volunteered me to do it.