October 13, 2004
Ups, downs, chocolate, and an unexpected guest
Spent a long and interesting day at The Tech. Started off quite early because I had to drop my car off for a day of tweaks and repairs (ugh). Then I got there and learned that our favorite AG was holding a press conference or something at the museum (and using our volunteer briefing room as his holding area! ick!) The KRON4 article says that "Ashcroft, one of the most polarizing members of the Bush administration, made a fairly subdued appearance at San Jose's Tech Museum of Innovation. There were no signs of protestors anywhere in the museum vicinity." -- but when I left after my shift to go have lunch across the street with Julia, we saw a whole bunch of very active protesters in front of the Fairmont Hotel, a very large effigy of Mr. Ashcroft in the park, and quite a few decked out folks having lunch. Apparently at noon he was addressing the Software & Information Industry Association there. Had they given us some warning I might have gone out and protested as well (which is probably why we weren't warned and why they made sure we didn't leave our bags or anything in the lockers in the briefing room while he was there...) Speaking of Ashcroft, I see the Campaign for Reader Privacy (from the Association of American Publishers and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression) recently delivered 180,000 signatures collected at bookstores and public libraries across the country, asking Congress to amend the Patriot Act "to restore the privacy of our bookstore and library records."
Anyway, school groups are in swing so it was quite a busy morning. I got to work on two floor programs -- a build-your-own-roller coaster (with a marble for the car) and a build-a-building-out-of-paper-and-popsicle-sticks that will withstand an earthquake on our shake table in bedrock, gravel and wet sand (which shows very cool liquefaction action). Dreamt up some fun ideas with Candace about cool things volunteers could do in the galleries.
Had lunch with Julia at the art museum cafe and noticed signs for their new exhibit so I'll have to swing back by there soon. Had meetings there most of the afternoon, not all of which went very well.
And then there was a great thank you party for all the ASTC volunteers -- complete with another chocolate fondue fountain! That, and a really great conversation with Peggy at the end made the middle part of the day fade into the background. It was so great to see all the folks that had come to work on ASTC and it now finally feels like we can put the whole conference finally behind us.
