StoriesHere Podcast

A conversation with Dr. Jeff Hall, Director
That Frequently Asked Question, ‘Where is God?’, is one of many the staff hears at the Lowell Observatory, especially during astronomy nights.  In this wide-ranging conversation with Lowell’s Director, Dr. Jeff Hall, we talk about everything from that to Venus and Mars, space debris, the connection between music and astronomy, and much, much more.
The Lowell Observatory is a time machine, from its study of the origins of the universe, to a future of life on other planets, to the hurdles we may be putting up with so many spacecraft in the sky.  To learn more and support the observatory, go to Lowell.edu.
And here’s a story about the total solar eclipse discussed in this episode.

This episode is an intriguing conversation with Dr. Kirsten Ellenbogen President & CEO at Great Lakes Science Center (GSLC), Cleveland, Ohio, United States, on Lake Erie.

The Center has been named one of 15 museum finalists for the nation's highest honor for the field: the 2021 Institute for Museum & Library Service Medal. https://greatscience.com/great-lakes-science-center

Here's a bit more background on Dr. Ellenbogen....."As third President and CEO of Great Lakes Science Center, she has launched Cleveland Creates, a strategic initiative developed in collaboration with corporate leaders to change the community’s narrative around advanced manufacturing and technology for diverse middle-school youth and families. Great Lakes Science Center is a non-profit, educational institution that envisions a community where all people value science, technology, engineering, and math to inform decision-making and enrich lives. It is home to the NASA Glenn Visitor Center, the nationally recognized MC2 STEM High School (grade 9) and features hundreds of hands-on exhibits, daily demonstrations, and the OMNIMAX® Theater."

And here's a short video introduction to the Center...

https://youtu.be/NnDdmpIyYrU

The world's largest children's museum holds lots of stories.  Here's a fascinating conversation about many of them with Jennifer Pace Robinson, the Executive Vice President of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.

Did you know she's helped design children's museums all over the world?  Find out what that's like, and how children's museums are really for adults too.

Thank you to our StoriesHere Advisor Alice Parman and Audio Engineer George Davidson.

Hear more fascinating conversations with museum leaders in other StoriesHere episodes.

Direct from the world’s only superhero and comic museum, this is a heroic conversation with Allen Stewart, Director and Founder of the Hall of Heroes – Superhero Museum in Elkhart, Indiana.  You'll appreciate Allen's insight and knowledge, along with some surprises, about the history of Superheroes.

Superheroes are important in so many ways….discover how they've changed and why they've endured for so long.

Learn more about the Museum at https://hallofheroesmuseum.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/hohmuseum/.

StoriesHere is a volunteer project based in Eugene, Oregon created by people who think museums are important and fun.  Our mission is to highlight a variety of museums through conversations with their leaders.

Special thanks to Alice Parman, Advisor, and George Davidson, Audio Engineer.  The host is Wayne Parker.

Here’s a surprising, funny and important conversation with Louise Reilly Sacco, Permanent Acting Interim Executive Director, Museum Of Bad Art in Boston, MA, US.

Website: museumofbadart.org and Facebook:  Museum of Bad Art.

MOBA – Museum Of Bad Art – ‘art too bad to be ignored’.  The world’s only museum dedicated to the collection, preservation, exhibition and celebration of bad art in all its forms.  Our growing collection of works of Bad Art awaits your discerning eye.

The World’s Ten Most Unusual Museums You Should Visit – The Culture Trip

Only Top TEN?  A newspaper in New Delhi says it’s one of the world’s SIX must-see museums.

You won’t want to miss this surprising conversation with Louise, and tell your friends!

‘Sunday on the Pot With George’ – John Gedraitis

‘Lucy in the Field with Flowers’ – Anonymous

Today we have a conversation with Jane Turner of the Children's Museum of Atlanta.  The title is a comment of hers about how children see the world.

Jane is the Executive Director, Children’s Museum of Atlanta, 275 Centennial Olympic Park Dr., Atlanta, GA  30313, Phone (404) 659-5437 - Website: childrensmuseumatlanta.org

Here is a comment from the Museum about play...

Play is freedom. Play is creativity. Play is important. Children’s Museum of Atlanta empowers kids to “create their own learning adventures” and be free to play.

Thank you to Julia Clinch, Brave Public Relations for the help in arranging this episode.  The podcast Host is Wayne Parker, Advisor is Alice Parman and Audio Editor is George Davidson.

For more information on children's museums, contact the Association of Children's Museums at https://www.childrensmuseums.org/

With museums facing so many challenges, and opportunities, what a great time to talk with Elizabeth Merritt.  She is the Vice President for Strategic Foresight and Founding Director of the Center for the Future of Museums at the American Alliance of Museums.  

Host: Wayne Parker; Advisor: Alice Parman; Audio Editor:  George Davidson

Show Notes

American Alliance of Museums www.aam-us.org on Twitter @aamers

Center for the Future of Museums www.aam-us.org/programs/center-for-the-future-of-museums/ on Twitter @futureofmuseums

Subscribe to CFM’s free weekly e-newsletter Dispatches from the Future of Museums  bit.ly/dispatchesfromthefuture

The Umbrella Cover Museum: https://www.umbrellacovermuseum.org/

Woodlawn Plantation https://savingplaces.org/places/woodlawn#.X_84JBZ7mUl and it’s work with Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture http://arcadiafood.org/

And a blog post from Woodlawn’s director about this work: https://www.aam-us.org/2011/02/01/saving-the-historic-house-while-saving-the-world/

Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/newsroom/media-kits/sfw-introduction-and-mission

Museum of Tomorrow, Sao Paulo, Brazil https://museudoamanha.org.br/en

Blog posts about their AI chatbot IRIS+ :

https://www.aam-us.org/2018/06/12/iris-part-one-designing-coding-a-museum-ai/

https://www.aam-us.org/2018/06/19/iris-part-two-how-to-embed-a-museums-personality-and-values-in-ai/

Facts about America’s Museums

https://www.aam-us.org/programs/about-museums/

The Dunkleosteus fossil at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History that made Elizabeth pee her pants as a toddler

https://www.cmnh.org/dunk

This StoriesHere episode features a conversation with Jennifer Grant Warner, President and CEO of Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta, Georgia.  Stories range from the very different experience of being in an old growth forest, to how to pronounce Argentinosaurus (I failed). 

Below is a little background from their website on why the title refers to ‘The Audacity of Hope’.  Then join our conversation to learn about this place in Atlanta ‘Where Science, Nature and Fun Make History’!

"In the late 1800’s a young woman named Emily Harrison played in one of Atlanta, Georgia’s woodlands. Later in life, she would help preserve 65 acres of land that she played on, which she called “Fernbank.”  As Atlanta grew and became more urbanized, woodlands were disappearing.  In 1939, with the assistance of other “conservation‐minded environmentalists,” she purchased Fernbank Forest with its creek and forest of ferns.   

Fernbank Museum of Natural History may be the only natural history museum to ‘grow’ out of the forest.  The museum opened in 1992, and in 2001 the museum became the first to display the world’s largest dinosaurs as a part of their permanent exhibition."

This conversation is with Laura Fry, Senior Curator and Curator of Art for the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  The discussion includes topics from "Did the Supreme Court really give eastern Oklahoma back to the native Americans?".....to what kids can teach us about art, the role painter Thomas Moran played in establishing our national park system, and the rare opportunity to plan a completely new museum.

And how a museum with the largest collection of American western art is a bit of a hidden gem.  Perhaps that will be changing with the construction and opening of an expansive new building.

And more about the Museum from their web site...."Thomas Gilcrease, a citizen of the Muscogee Creek Nation, established Gilcrease Museum in 1949 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Today the interdisciplinary collection contains more than 350,000 items. The museum represents hundreds of Indigenous cultures from across North and South America, with material culture and archaeology ranging from 12,000 BCE to the 21st century. The collection includes more than 350 years of American paintings, sculptures and works on paper, including the largest public holdings of art of the American West."

Some remarkable stories from this conversation with Dan'l Lewin, a leader of the computer revolution. This episode ranges from Steve Jobs to professional wrestling to art, and the story and promise of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

This episode is also featured in Jonny Evans' wonderful article in Computer World.

Transcript

StoriesHere Podcast Conversation with Dan’l Lewin, President and CEO of the Computer History Museum

Parker: This is Wayne Parker of StoriesHere, and today’s episode is a remarkable conversation with the President and CEO of the Computer History Museum, in the heart of Silicon Valley. That’s Dan’l Lewin, and Dan’l is spelled d a n ‘ l. We’ll start with my question about the late Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer, who was such a legend and an enigma to many people. And Dan’l knew him about as well as anyone, both professionally and personally. So I asked if Dan’l could sit down on the porch with him for a talk, what would that be like, what questions did he think they might ask each other?

You knew the late Steve Jobs professionally and personally about as well as anyone. If you could sit down with him on the porch for a talk, what would that be about, what questions do you think you might ask each other?

Lewin: I think Steve would probably be focused very very intently on putting the control back in the person's hands. And right now some of the business models that have emerged have really relegated the individual to the product and I think he would have some sense of responsibility. It's trying to put that promise back in the system. That's what I would think and I would want to talk to him about that.

Parker: That’s Dan’l Lewin, computer pioneer and now President and CEO of the Computer History Museum. Hello, this is Wayne Parker of the StoriesHere Podcast. And we’re speaking with him remotely at his office at the museum, in Mountain View, California in the heart of Silicon Valley. And Dan’l, that’s spilled D A N ' L ,was a leader at Apple, co-founder with Steve Jobs of NeXT, and later head of the Microsoft presence in Silicon Valley, along with a number of other roles.

And there are three related trivia questions in this episode. I put Dan’l on the spot and he got all of them right, so you can hear the answers from him a little later.

Here are the questions:

- What was the name of the first personal computer?

- When was it first sold, and

- Where was Microsoft founded (hint: it wasn’t in the Seattle area)

Let's get to this wonderful conversation.

Dan’l, thanks for being with us today.

Lewin: Glad to be here.

Parker: So your background, for people that don't know, you were at Sony and Apple and you were at NeXT and Microsoft. Could you tell us about how you got to Apple and then how you got to NeXT from there?

Lewin: Sure glad to again Wayne. Thanks for having me. Well as you mentioned I worked initially, it's Sony I was coming out of. College in 1976 in the very early part of 1977 went to work for Sony at a small office in Cupertino, California, which everything South of San Francisco down to Monterey Bay Area and it was the beginning of would consider the microprocessor Revolution which evolved very rapidly into the personal computer the irony of.

Taking that job which came about through serendipity and her college roommate. Was that a week after I started the two Steve's jobs and Wozniak left the garage and rented the office space next to my little 600 square foot office where there were were five people and within about a year of joining that office.

I was running the office and looking after what is the core of Silicon Valley and then again from South San Francisco down to Monterey.

This episode is an important and fascinating conversation with Judith Margles, Director of the Oregon Jewish Museum.

OJMCHE

In June 2017 Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education opened the doors of our permanent home at 724 NW Davis Street, on the North Park Blocks in downtown Portland. The museum’s main gallery features rotating exhibitions of national and international stature. Three core exhibits anchor the museum: Discrimination and Resistance, An Oregon Primer, which identifies discrimination as a tool used to affect varied groups of people over the history of this region; The Holocaust, An Oregon Perspective, a history of the Holocaust that employs the stories of Oregon survivors; and Oregon Jewish Stories, an installation focused on the experience of the Jews of Oregon. The museum also features a robust series of public programming including films, lectures, musical events, and programs in support of exhibitions. In addition, OJMCHE has a museum shop, a café, and a children’s play area.

OREGON HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL

The Oregon Holocaust Memorial situated in Portland’s Washington Park is free and open to the public from dawn until dark every day of the year and is ADA-accessible. The Memorial serves as a permanent reminder of the Holocaust, the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews and millions of others by the Nazi regime and its collaborators from 1933 to 1945. By teaching the lessons of the Holocaust and visiting the Memorial, we pay homage to those who lost their lives during that period.

This is Wayne Parker, having an important conversation today remotely with Judy Margles, who is in her office in Portland, Oregon, where she is Director of the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education.

The Museum tells the important stories of many oppressed peoples, and she’s going to start today with one about African Americans in Oregon.

Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site Conversation with Sean Kelley – Senior Vice President and Director of Interpretation.  This is Part 2 of our conversation.

These are remarkable stories....here's a bit of history that's discussed in the episode:

“A group of prominent Americans were horrified by the conditions in the jails. They met, just after the American Revolution, in the home of Benjamin Franklin. They had a great 18th century name for their organization: “The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons" and they were the first prison reform group in the world. They believed convicts needed time alone—in silence, to rediscover their good nature. The early prison reformers saw solitary confinement, not as a punishment, but an as opportunity for reflection. A chance to become penitent.”

....but they were wrong, at least in the way Eastern State was built and operated:

"There is but one step between the prisoner and insanity.” Inmate James Morton

Senator and POW John McCain - "It’s an awful thing, solitary,” John McCain wrote of his five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam—more than two years of it spent in isolation in a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot cell, unable to communicate with other P.O.W.s except by tap code, secreted notes, or by speaking into an enamel cup pressed against the wall. “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.” 

Charles Dickens - "I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body". 

As Hawthorne relates, Dickens visited several prisoners, including one who was about to be released after two years in solitary confinement. Dickens remarked to his guide that “they trembled very much.”

Charles Dickens wrote that the two sites in the United States he most wanted to see were “The falls at Niagara” and the Eastern State Penitentiary. 

Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site Conversation with Sean Kelley – Senior Vice President and Director of Interpretation.  This is Part 1 of our conversation, and these remarkable stories continue in Part 2.

Note from Wayne Parker, Host of the StoriesHere podcast.  "Many years ago while working for the State of California, the newly created SolarCal office, I made an official visit to San Quentin prison with a number of state prison officials.  San Quentin is a maximum security prison and we toured the entire facility, including the death chamber.  The goal at the time was to see if prisoners could be involved in helping produce solar panels in the state.  After the tour we met in Warden George Sumner's office, and he was very emotional, saying 'you have to give me something for them to do'.

That story relates to Eastern State, and the mindset of people left continually in solitary confinement with nothing to do.

Here's a bit of history of Eastern States that's discussed in the episode:

“A group of prominent Americans were horrified by the conditions in the jails. They met, just after the American Revolution, in the home of Benjamin Franklin. They had a great 18th century name for their organization: “The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons" and they were the first prison reform group in the world. They believed convicts needed time alone—in silence, to rediscover their good nature. The early prison reformers saw solitary confinement, not as a punishment, but an as opportunity for reflection. A chance to become penitent.”

....but they were wrong, at least in the way Eastern State was built and operated:

"There is but one step between the prisoner and insanity.” Inmate James Morton

Senator and POW John McCain - "It’s an awful thing, solitary,” John McCain wrote of his five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam—more than two years of it spent in isolation in a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot cell, unable to communicate with other P.O.W.s except by tap code, secreted notes, or by speaking into an enamel cup pressed against the wall. “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.” 

Charles Dickens - "I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body". 

As Hawthorne relates, Dickens visited several prisoners, including one who was about to be released after two years in solitary confinement. Dickens remarked to his guide that “they trembled very much.”

Charles Dickens wrote that the two sites in the United States he most wanted to see were “The falls at Niagara” and the Eastern State Penitentiary. 

This interview with Eric Richardson tells the story of the Mims House, a 'Safe House' in Eugene. Many people are surprised to learn that blacks weren't welcome to stay overnight, even into the 1960s.  Eric grew up knowing the Mims family and is President of the Eugene / Springfield Chapter of the NAACP.