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Here’s the latest YouTube promo I created for North Carolina Sea Grant’s Coastwatch magazine. I took the photos and the film footage in November 2009 at Duke University’s Sarah Duke Gardens, during a community supported fisheries (CSF) delivery organized by Walking Fish CSF. I produced the clip in iMovie and wrote the script.
The clip promotes my feature story about the rise of CSFs, which you can read here.
And yes, I did say “sea mullet.” As @patriclane cheekily writes, “They don’t have mullets. They don’t have any hair style at all. I’m confused.”
Responses here and here, or look up the species on FishBase.
Scott Carpenter is the fourth American to fly into space and the second American to orbit our planet.
That may not mean much to some in today’s world, when armchair explorers with a cell phone or netbook can scan the lunar surface via GoogleMoon with a few taps of keys.
But some 50 years ago, space travel was still science fiction. Then in 1957, the Soviet Union beat out Americans in putting the first machine satellite in space. The United States felt its power and security in the world diminished by that very fact. Space travel became national security. America had to put a human in space before the Soviets.
On April 9, 1959, the Mercury astronauts were introduced to the world (video here). These seven passed the physical and psychological exams designed by the newly formed NASA. These “Mercury Seven” were to be America’s answer to the Soviets, and America’s answer to the challenge of space.
Scott Carpenter is one of the Mercury Seven, whose exploits are the foundation for all that America and much of humanity have accomplished in human space exploration. I spoke with Commander Carpenter on Wednesday.
Rushing through the open van door, the morning air was numbingly cold.
At least it was to this transplanted South Floridian, as none of my fellow students seem to be shivering as much. Nevertheless, all of us are wearing shorts, for soon we would be encased in the damp warmth of our neoprene chest-high waders and thick, almost armored wading boots. More importantly, later in the day, the northern California sun will have turned this snug, warming suit into an imprisoning cage of suffocating heat.
It was wise to wear the minimum under these blessed and cursed waders. But the synthetic rubber that forms these waterproof overalls also provides insulation from an element that is most important to our task: electricity.
