Thank you Funhouse for Saturday Science Nights!

I have a GIANT thank you to say to Jim Bredouw, the man who conceived of the Funhouse and made it a reality, and Ryan Carpenter, the new Funhouse Executive Director. They just finished hosting Saturday Science Nights at the Funhouse for the past 6 weeks, where kids of all ages were invited to come and watch the series Cosmos: Possible Worlds by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Jim and Ryan, you just did a really kind thing for the science-y kids here. You made a place for them to go on Saturday nights that elevated the talk of their evening to the level they are craving. You made a comfortable new place for them outside of their usual, daily environments of home, school, town, and movie theater. You treated them like honored guests, serving them abundant pizza, chips, soda, cookies, fancy brownies, and even offered to make us parents coffee drinks. Then this past Saturday, you gave such generous gift certificates for those who attended all six Saturdays, and entered them all in a raffle for a telescope! Treat children like that, and you will forever be held dear in their parents’ hearts! Thank you so much for your time in planning this, buying the food, sometimes even hand-making the pizza, being there with the kids, cleaning up, and starting again each following Saturday. Thank you for caring about making more outlets for enjoyable learning in our kids’ lives.

I also have a personal fondness for this because of important memories that were part of my personal foundation as a young kid and my psychological landscape as a human being. Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan originally aired in 1980, when I was 6 years old. I’ll never forget it. Even though my memories from back then are dark and faded, Cosmos is a deeply familiar, colorful, thought-and-curiosity-provoking memory from those years. Televisions were big boxes with chunky channel changers, and I only remember channels 4, 5, 7, 8 (NBC, ABC, CBS, and PBS), and maybe one or two others on our round dial that showed numbers from 2 to about 13. When you turned the dial in a circular motion on the front of the TV (remote controls were a far-away dream), which made a significant “shunk” sound, you would pass the numbered channels that only showed static in order to get to the ones that had programs. And the news and programs stopped around 11 PM or midnight, with static again until the morning.

A typical TV from when I was about 6 years old

When there was a good program, it was a big deal. Cosmos was probably the biggest deal in our family’s TV-watching life, vastly elevating the intellectual level of viewing beyond Gilligan’s Island, Love Boat, Hee Haw, Solid Gold, Three’s Company, and the like. The only other memorable intellectual show that stands out clearly in my mind was 60 Minutes.

Every week, seconds before Cosmos was about to start, I have a distant memory (one that’s so far back that it feels like I could be filling in its fuzzy gaps with all kinds of fabricated, feel-good nostalgia, but I’m pretty sure it’s real because it’s definitely there) of the 7 members of our family running in from all corners of the house and jumping into the chairs and couch in the living room, sitting silently still with rapt attention, preparing to be transfixed by the opening ethereal music of Vangelis – like none we’d ever heard before – that Cosmos became known for, eager to hear Carl Sagan talk oddly eloquently and characteristically enunciatingly about things in the universe that our hot, concrete, suburban-Dallas, cut-off-jeans, lemonade-stand, frisbee-throwing-in-the-yard, going-to-school-and-being-in-the-marching-band kind of life rarely touched on. Cosmos elevated our curious but sadly-often-untapped minds to rise out of hot suburbia, out of Texas, out of our own little one-dimensional part of the atmosphere, into worlds beyond our narrow daily planes of vision. Worlds more real, more common, than the things we were surrounded by, but felt more foreign and unbelievable due to their invisibility to the naked eye. In fact, Cosmos showed us every week how curious and untapped our minds actually were, a fact we never really articulated aloud but one I bet we all felt internally the minute the show began.

The Cosmos series the kids just finished watching at the Funhouse is now the 3rd Cosmos series since the original one aired back then, something that Carl Sagan’s wife, Ann Druyan, has been making possible all these years.

Ann Druyan (born June 13, 1949) is an American documentary producer and director specializing in the communication of science. She co-wrote the 1980 PBS documentary series Cosmos, hosted by Carl Sagan, whom she married in 1981. She is the creator, producer, and writer of the 2014 sequel, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and its sequel series, Cosmos: Possible Worlds, as well as the book of the same name. She directed episodes of both series.

In the late 1970s, she became the creative director of NASA’s Voyager Interstellar Message Project, which produced the golden discs affixed to both the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft. As creative director, Druyan worked with a team to design a complex message, including music and images, for possible alien civilizations. These golden phonograph records affixed to the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft are now beyond the outermost planets of the solar system, and Voyager 1 has entered interstellar space. Both records have a projected shelf life of one billion years.

Druyan’s role on the project was discussed on the July 8, 2018, 60 Minutes segment “The Little Spacecraft That Could”… The segment also discussed Sagan’s suggestion, in 1990, that Voyager 1 turn its cameras back towards Earth to take a series of photographs showing the planets of our solar system. The shots, showing Earth from a distance of 3.7 billion miles as a small point of bluish light, became the basis for Sagan’s famous “Pale Blue Dot” passage, first published in Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994).

During that time, Druyan also co-wrote (with Carl Sagan and Steven Soter) the 1980 PBS documentary series Cosmos, hosted by Carl Sagan. The thirteen-part series covered a wide range of scientific subjects, including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe. It was highly acclaimed, and became the most widely watched series in the history of American public television at that time. The series won two Emmys and a Peabody Award, and has since been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 500 million people. A book was also published to accompany the series. As of 2009, it is still the most widely watched PBS series in the world. Several revised versions of the series were later broadcast; one version, telecast after Sagan’s death, opens with Druyan paying tribute to her late husband and the impact of Cosmos over the years.

That’s from Wikipedia, and here’s another interesting tidbit from the same page:

An asteroid discovered in 1988 was named in Druyan’s honor by its discoverer Eleanor F. Helin. In a 2020 interview with Skeptical Inquirer, Druyan discussed 4970 Druyan and the asteroid named after her late husband, saying that 4970 Druyan is in a “wedding ring orbit” around the sun with 2709 Sagan. Druyan was presented with a plaque on Sagan’s sixtieth birthday, which is inscribed: “Asteroid 2709 Sagan in eternal companion orbit with asteroid 4970 Druyan, symbolic of their love and admiration for each other.”

Now that you’re caught up on everything Cosmos, all of that is to say how important something like a Saturday Science Night series can be in the life of a young person. It matters.

Thank you Jim. Thank you Ryan. Thank you Funhouse. You just made lasting memories that matter.

Click here to watch a 20-second video of Science Night.

In proper closure, I’ll leave you with the last words of the final episode the kids watched at the Funhouse. First, the ones spoken by Carl Sagan himself:

And finally, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s final words:

I like those rules. Here they are again:

• Question authority. No idea is true just because someone says so, including me.
• Think for yourself. Question yourself. Don’t believe anything just because you want to. Believing something doesn’t make it so.
• Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment. If a favorite idea fails a well-designed test, it’s wrong. Get over it.
• Follow the evidence wherever it leads. If you have no evidence, reserve judgment.

And perhaps the most important rule of all…

• Remember: you could be wrong. Even the best scientists have been wrong about some things. Newton, Einstein, and every other great scientist in history — they all made mistakes. Of course they did. They were human.

The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken Feb. 14, 1990, by NASA’s Voyager 1 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles from the Sun. The image inspired the title of scientist Carl Sagan’s book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, in which he wrote: “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.” ~ NASA

What’s next? The Science Fair!

Here are the details:

This year’s Science Fair is a celebration of Earth Day and Conservation Science.
However, we welcome projects from any field of science, big or small, loud or quiet. 

Elementary School Level:
Participants will set up a display of their science project (roughly 3 x 3 x 3 feet). Please put your first and last name(s) somewhere visible on the display. While adult assistance is expected, the student must be able to explain the project to the Funhouse Commons Wizards (judges) on the day of the fair. All participants will receive an award and a prize. 

Middle/High School Level:
Participants will set up a display of their science project (roughly 4 x 4 x 4 feet). If more space is  needed, please describe it on your registration form. Please put your first and last name(s) somewhere visible on the display.

All levels are open to all students on Orcas Island.
All entrants will receive a certificate acknowledgement of their work, and prizes will go to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners from each category.

Prizes are as follows:

High School: 1st $500, 2nd $350, 3rd $250
Middle School: 1st $250, 2nd $150, 3rd, $100
Elementary School: 1st, $100, 2nd $75, 3rd $50

In addition to the monetary prizes, the honorary Richie Moore “Rocket Ship of Wonder” award will be granted to the top 3 best-in-show projects. 

You will be able to set up your project on Friday, April 26th, from 5:00pm – 6:30 pm. If this doesn’t  work, please call Ryan at the Funhouse to make other arrangements. You need to be with your project on Saturday, April 27th, so you can answer questions the Wizards (judges) or other visitors might have.

All applicants must register by Friday, April 26th. 

If you’d like to help make this Science Fair a blast, you can donate here.

See you there!!

If you’re new to the island or don’t know the background of the Funhouse, this is from their website:

The Funhouse was founded in September 2000 by local activist Jim Bredouw. He and his wife Anne wanted to construct a facility designed to inspire, teach, and enchant kids, believing the philosophy that the best return on investment isn’t always measured in dollars. Investing in the future of children was the smartest investment they could make.

Originally, The Funhouse, a 501 c(3) organization, was designed and used as a children’s science museum. It served not just as a tourist destination, but as an educational workshop, a homeschooling center, a location for field trips, parties, and community meetings, and as one of the primary hangouts of Orcas Island youth. It was a place where young people could enjoy each others’ company in a safe, stimulating, and constructive environment.

To read more about the Funhouse, click here.