Kate McKinnon

Obama’s transition team is at NASA now, and it isn’t going well. Mike Griffin is a major tool, but I never expected him to go this far. He is stonewalling the Obama people, telling them that they aren’t qualified to sort his programs out.

We finally have a pro-science administration, and MIKE GRIFFIN stands in the way?

Sigh. Here is a story from the Orlando Sentinel, and it’s topping the Rec List at DKos too, in a piece titled: “Nasa Gone Rogue?” A quote from the Sentinel piece:

CAPE CANAVERAL – NASA administrator Mike Griffin is not cooperating with President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, is obstructing its efforts to get information and has told its leader that she is “not qualified” to judge his rocket program, the Orlando Sentinel has learned.

In a heated 40-minute conversation last week with Lori Garver, a former NASA associate administrator who heads the space transition team, a red-faced Griffin demanded to speak directly to Obama, according to witnesses.

In addition, Griffin is scripting NASA employees and civilian contractors on what they can tell the transition team and has warned aerospace executives not to criticize the agency’s moon program, sources said.

Griffin’s resistance is part of a no-holds-barred effort to preserve the Constellation program, the delayed and over-budget moon rocket that is his signature project.

You can click the link at the top of this page that says “Toronto” to see the class descriptions, and a few photos. I’ll be at BeadFX May 19-23, teaching four sessions in five days. The classes are:

Fine Silver Findings and Components: all levels, Fine Silver Metal Clay Chain: all levels, Mixed Metals! Fine Silver and Bronze Metal Clay, with Fine Silver Fusing: A two day class. Some experience with metal clay required, and Buildings, Boxes and Birdhouses: Some experience with metal clay helpful.

We are going to make riveted chain in the Mixed Metals class. That’s an incredible project.

Email Cynthia, at cynthia@beadfx.com, to get on the list for signups. I’m really looking forward to going back! I plan to see Cynthia Fawcett’s cottage on a lake, a Blue Jays game, and I definitely want to go back to Little India with Karen. I want to go up in the CN Tower again, too, to stand on that glass floor and look straight down for 1100 feet.  It’s shivery.

That’s where I’ve been for the better part of a week. I’ve had to track down money, which is something that saps my soul right out through my pores. Being a one woman band as I am, in addition to doing the work, I’m my own agent and secretary, I’m the IT department, the caterer, the catbox cleaner and the one responsible for not running out of coffee, eggs, or clean clothes for the children. Yesterday I had to follow pieces of paper on their journeys through our society, and figure out why they mysteriously vaporized, and it’s not my favorite way to spend my time.

I paid bills. The stack of them is something that seems to grow in alarming fashion, occasionally letting out a giant eruption and demanding fantastic sums. I’m in the final wrangle with the court-appointed attorney handling my mother’s estate, drawing together another little pile of pain, in the form of pieces of paper detailing the remnants of my mother’s life. The bank statements, the legal bills, the sympathy cards, the photos, all mixed up together in three plastic bins.

I find the little memos to the file as I tried to figure out what to do, and how in hell I was going to move through it all. I see again the article in the 2004 Tucson Citizen about missing persons, mindbendingly written by the man who taught me 7th grade English at Sahuarita High School, and also the only teacher who was ever cruel to me. To see an article mentioning my family’s grief, and to see it written by That Man… I find it very telling that I never noticed that it was him who wrote it until today, in another pass through the boxes, looking for old receipts.

When the attorney criticizes me or my record-keeping, as he frequently does, I want to tell him that I hope he never has to face all of the pieces of paper, each heartbreaking in their own way, that detail the loss of someone he cherished beyond reason.

I suppose that the thing to do is really, actually, go through it all, and face up to each piece, each picture, each stilted card from someone trying to express their sorrow at the inexplicable thing that’s happened. I should deal with them, and file them all neatly in little tan folders, photo albums, and scrapbooks. 

But it’s hard to face, and instead I end up simply shutting each plastic lid, and shoving the stack back under my desk. I cry for as long as I let myself, maybe an hour tops, and then I shut up and get back to work.

I had another flying dream the night before last, but this time, I had a magical jet-pack. It was still fun, but it wasn’t anything like a real flying dream. I think I worry about finding out that I have been relying on a fragile architecture, like the Wizard of Oz, and that I’ve only mistaken it for magic.

Photo: Andrew Thornton

So at times like this the people who can remind me that everything is possible, and that everything will pass, those are the people I am grateful for today.

And, of course, people who send me the Redneck Play Station, an online fly swatting game. Thanks, Dennis, you saved my morning.