There was an eclipse earlier this week, maybe you heard of it. My school was able to watch it and we hit 94% totality in Algonquin, Illinois. My Son Charlie went to Sycamore, Ohio which was in 100% totality for a cubing event. They provided glasses for all their participants and took a break from the competition to experience the eclipse.
He just came home yesterday from the event and we haven't had a lot of time to talk about it yet. I was able to find some footage on You Tube, maybe you've heard of it (I know I just made that joke in paragraph one), of the Eclipse as it appeared in Sycamore on Monday.
For The A to Z Challenge this year, I am focusing on everyday holidays. Each day there are multiple unusual things to celebrate. Every day of the challenge I look for an event taking place that day and pair it with the letter of the day. I have also made up 5 holidays to coincide with the vowel days of the challenge. At the end of each post I will share a special song of the day for that day's letter. At the end of the month, these songs will be assembled in a to z keepsake playlist on Spotify. Every day is a celebration, let's unwrap today's together.
This gets the Leap Of Dave A to Z challenge Spotify playlist to about a third of it's capacity.
That's all for today. Leave a comment about why you like Scotland, Science, both or neither.
To go to the home of the A to Z challenge click here, to see the 2024 master list of participating blogs click here. Enjoy the 2024 A to Z challenge, and Happy Holidays!
Hello and welcome back to A Month at the Movies, my contribution to the A to Z challenge for 2023.
This year I am copying from a myriad of other A to Z challengers by reprinting the same synopsis about my theme with every letter. You can skip over this part if you want to.
I love movies and have decided to share with you a movie each day that I have enjoyed to one degree or another. With each entry, I'll give a brief synopsis of the film, share a positive and negative review from Rotten Tomatoes ( a website, I didn't use much at all until preparing for the challenge), discuss its resiliency (the theme of the A to Z challenge this year), and other tidbits like whether the film may appear in my top 100 film list, which I have been revamping this year. I think that's enough in the way of introduction, considering you'll be reading it (hopefully) 18 more times this month.
Film: Hidden Figures (2016)
Director: Theodore Melfi
Trailer for Hidden Figures ...
Hidden Figures tells the story of Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan who were among a group of African American Mathematicians who worked at NASA during the time that John Glenn orbited the earth.
Positive Tomato: Hidden Figures puts the familiar period-piece lens on an overlooked part of space history without glossing over the ugly bits while still feeling hopeful for what science and technology can achieve when the best and the brightest can participate. Nathan Matisse - Ars Technica
Negative Tomato:
Hidden Figures will likely satisfy on the actress' strength, but Taraji - and her audience - deserve better than focus-grouped pablum. Chris McCoy - Memphis Flyer
The film stars Taraji P Henson as Katharine Johnson, Janelle Monae as Mary Jackson, and Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughn. The cast includes Kevin Costner, Aldis Hodge, Jim Parsons, Kirsten Dunst, and Mahershala Ali.
Katherine Johnson - NASA 1966
Resiliency: Each of the 3 main women featured in this movie gives a clinic on resiliency. It would be hard to boil that down into one moment or one quote.
My mind always goes back to the scene where Mary Jackson has to go to court to convince a judge for her to take engineering classes at an all-white school. She says to the judge:
I plan on being an engineer at Nasa, but I can't do that without taking them classes at that all-white high school, and I can't change the color of my skin, so I have no choice, but to be the first, which I can't do without you sir. Your honor, out of all the case you gonna hear today, which one is gonna matter hundred years from now? Which one is gonna make you the first?
Top 100: There is no uncertainty. This movie is definitely in my top 100 films of all time. The only question is where. I would not be surprised if it makes it into the top 75.
A to Z Connections: This is the second film in the challenge to depict a space program (Gattaca). It is also the fifth film to deal with a character or characters fighting against some sort of discrimination (Breaking Away, Chariots of Fire, 42, and Gattaca).
For Captain James Tiberius Kirk space was the final frontier.
For William Shatner, the actor who portrayed him on network television, Saturday Morning cartoons and multiple motion pictures space was just another step in a long and illustrious career. The 90 year became the oldest person in space on October 13th ,making the trek from science fiction to science fact.
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