Brilliance and Barry

As Fall Color Show 2022 winds down, it seems like the finale is even grander than the peak of this year's edition.

The cleansing rains have opened up the opportunity for every autumnal hue to show off at its very best.

We didn't have a lot of sunshine yesterday, but some of the color I witnessed while driving around was jaw dropping. 

Twas truly, as the Irish love to say:  Brilliant. 

And, "brilliant" comes in many forms, not only with the work of Mother Nature but also the work of the human mind. 

  

This morning, I am really proud to feature an example of brilliance walking around on two legs.  Here's the scoop: 

Several years ago, while on a visit to Seattle, I stayed at a hotel down the street from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. 

Aware that one of my former students was running his own lab within the center, I sent him an email telling him that I was staying nearby.

Within minutes, I received a response, telling me he would come down and meet me and take me on a tour. 

Dr. Barry Stoddard graduated from Sandpoint High in 1981.  And, yes, I had him as an honors English student during his sophomore year of high school. 

The excitement of years later going on a personal tour with him at the famed cancer research center is, for me, difficult to put into words.  

I do know, however, that I was impressed and proud and thrilled, not only to see Barry after all these years but also to see firsthand what the seeds of education can plant, especially when benefitting mankind.

Barry and I did a lot of catching up that day, including discussions of his wife, his musically inclined sons and his beloved Seattle Mariners.

It was definitely a memorable experience as is every encounter with former students who have succeeded in wonderful pursuits. 

I learned something about Barry yesterday while reading an email he had sent overnight. The email subject line read "Barry Stoddard wrote a book! Would you like to take a peek? Maybe pass on a good word or two?"

Yes, that was news but unsurprising, considering Barry's gift of intelligence. 

The real news, for me, came in the subject matter.  

I had no idea that Barry had lived a fascinating, high-level and intriguing adventure long before he started his own research lab in Seattle. 

Below is a synopsis from the back book cover, which he sent me in yesterday's note.

  In the late 1980s, at the height of the Cold War and the Reagan administration's corresponding hardline stance toward “The Evil Empire,” it was unimaginable that American scientists might quietly partner with the Soviet Union and its space program, particularly as the Soviet Bloc was breaking apart and communism throughout Europe was crumbling.

Against that backdrop, a tiny start-up company named Payload Systems, housed in a rented room above a hardware store in suburban Massachusetts, forged a secret deal to place American scientific payloads aboard the Soviet Space Station MIR. 

The agreement was born out of sheer desperation after the Challenger explosion and grounding of the US space shuttle program. It was negotiated and approved, behind the backs of NASA and Congress, with the help of separate groups of US government officials inside the Commerce and Defense departments, all while maintaining complete secrecy about the company's plans within the talkative circles of Washington, DC.

 On a cold grey morning in February 1988, the company founder met with three graduate students and their professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with the intention of putting his plans into action with the unpaid assistance of those young men.  "Baikanur Man," written by one of those students, recounts the subsequent five-year saga that played out across the USA, Russia, and Khazakstan, all while the Soviet Union collapsed in front of their eyes. 

Within its pages, a forgotten yet true story is recounted of how science, comradery, hardship, drama, and occasional lunacy led to the first American experiments and payloads to fly on Russian rockets during the final days of the Cold War.

 

~~~~~

 Barry also sent me the manuscript.  In its first chapter he lays the groundwork.  He tells of moving to Sandpoint where his father Chuck, a former military man and trained forester, worked for McFarland Pole Co.

He also mentions the local education system and devotes some time to a Sandpoint High School physics instructor and former Air Force pilot shared side stories which unbeknownst to Barry at the time, foreshadowed experiences he would have as a research scientist. 

Having known, worked with and admired Colonel Dave Parker, I thought it would be fun to include the snippet below. 

from Baikonur Man

by Dr. Barry Stoddard

 "Mr. Parker was a retired Air Force commander and pilot who had retired to Idaho and taken up education later in life. There, he enlivened his lectures with stories of how the physics of gravity and aeronautics had played out during the course of his military career.

Included in his many tales were descriptions of parabolic “bounce flights” that he had spent a portion of his Air Force career running out of Ellington Field in Texas.  Those flights were designed to provide short, reproducible periods of near-zero gravity for budding astronauts and future space researchers. 

To accomplish that feat, a military transport jet was flown as fast as possible while violently ascending and descending in a rollercoaster trajectory. As he explained to his students, as the plane flew over the top of each parabola or “bounce,” the contents of the plane would rise and float around in the interior of the plane’s cabin due to the upward centrifugal force of the plane’s path precisely balancing out the gravitational pull of the earth below.

The pilots of those flights maintained the effect of zero gravity with low-tech approach:  as they flew over the top of each bounce, they adjusted their trajectory while ensuring that a plastic ball in a clear plastic tube, which was taped to the plane’s console, floated between two stripes drawn near the middle of the tube.  

Over the course of about two to three hours, the plane would carry out several dozen such circuits in the sky.  Colonel Parker concluded his understated description, delivered in a slow, deep southern drawl, of what sounded like the world’s greatest amusement ride by stating that almost everyone who took that ride for the first time suffered severe stomach upheaval and distress.

I had no idea, as I listened to his instruction and stories, that I would one day live through that very experience in preparation for my time as an American space research scientist." 

It seems to me that Barry's book, set for release in the spring of 2023, will be very timely with the current Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Hard to conceive that when so many aspects of this world seem tenuous that opposing forces can still find ways to tackle important projects for the common good.

You can learn more about Baikonur Ma by clicking the link.  A teaser:  Barry's endorsements are nothing to sneeze at. 

Also, Barry assures me that when pre-ordering starts, he'll let me know, and I'll pass along the word. 

I've also included a short You Tube video featuring Barry in his role as a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Center.  

After I mentioned watching this, he sent me a note with a poignant message:   Getting involved in a project that led to a treatment trial for glioblastoma was a pretty big deal for me, because my mom passed away from it 25 years ago now.

 https://baikonurman.com/

Dr. Barry Stoddard:  

He's from Sandpoint, and we couldn't be any prouder.

Fred Hutchinson's Dr. Barry Stoddard works to understand the form, motion and mechanism of molecules and then puts them to use for biotech and medical applications against cancer. 

And, finally, once again, it's a GREAT DAY to be a ZAGS fan. 

The season begins tonight with the ZAGS taking on the Volunteers from Tennessee. 

Tip off is at 6 pm., PDT. 

Tonight's game is a Pay for View. You can livestream it for free, I believe.  Or, you can check with your television provider for the channel and how to sign up to watch. It varies. 

One thing doesn't vary:  it's a big day for the ZAGS Nation worldwide.  

Let the season begin!