Memage.

[saxikath]

Kind of an interesting one:



(With some links, because I don't feel like working...)

1. Been in the really freaky chapel of bones in the church of St. Francis in Evora, Portugal.
2. Crossed the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in a canal boat.
3. Swum in Bearcamp Pond.
4. Tripped over a fire hydrant.
5. Held in my hands the letter from Edwin Hubble to Harlow Shapley announcing his discovery of a Cepheid variable in the Andromeda Galaxy, and Hubble's hand-drawn light curve graph for that Cepheid. (I wish I could link to this, but I haven't found a good one. The letter and graph are among Shapley's papers in the Harvard archives. The letter begins with "You will be interested to know that I have found a Cepheid variable in the Andromeda Nebula." -- such calm words for a major discovery.)
6. Studied Welsh in college.
7. Photographed icebergs off the coast of Greenland from a commercial airliner.
8. Designed a mural that was painted on a wall in my high school. (Now gone, I think.)
9. Crawled around in the cave at the playground in Araphaoe Ridge Park in Boulder, Colorado. (I can't find any pictures of this online, alas.)
10. Been to a wedding in the town hall of a town near Paris, officiated by the mayor of the town.

This has actually been hard to compile. There aren't that many things I've done that I can be pretty certain nobody else on my friends list has. The puzzle stuff I've done is unusual to most people -- but not to a big chunk of my friends list. Ditto for my musical and theatrical adventures. And at least one person on my friends list has lived in Colorado, so some of the things I'd choose from there aren't going to work either. Guess I have lots in common with my friends, or something!

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I wish I could claim 5 above. I've been told that Shapley's response to Hubble was "Dr. Hubble, you have destroyed my universe." It was very decent of Hubble to send that information privately when he could have sprung it on Shapley during the famous Shapley-Curtis debate.

[saxikath]

Actually, Hubble didn't make the discovery until several years after the debate. (He found the Cepheid in 1923, and the debate was in 1920.) Shapley's response letter is also in the file; I don't remember the line you cite, though. (I would imagine such a remark would have been made in person rather than in writing, anyway.)

[navrins]

I've probably done #4. And I might have had a chance to do #9 and not known it.

[zenala.livejournal.com]

I may have done #4... I've tripped over a lot of things in my life... I've seen Greenland from a commercial airliner, but I don't think I thought to take pictures that time... I painted a mural on my hall at MIT, and as of last fall it was still there...

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

I tried to learn Welsh from a teach-yourself book in college, does that count? (I gave it up. Stupid mutating initial consonants.)

[zenala.livejournal.com]

Heh, I've sort of done that, except Welsh is one of the few languages I don't have materials for...

Irish definitely has nasty mutating consonants, too, though...

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

Crawled around in the cave at the playground in Araphaoe Ridge Park in Boulder, Colorado. (I can't find any pictures of this online, alas.)


Hah! I have done this one. The benefits of spenidng a year in Boulder. ;)

[saxikath]

Damn! I figured I'd found one Colorado thing you hadn't done. :) Great playground, though, wasn't it?

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

There are many things in Colorado I haven't done. But I did spend a lot of time in Boulder. :)

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

I'm very close on #8, on 2 counts: I designed a mural in *junior* high which was painted on the wall of the school (and remained for many, many years-- I don't know if it's still there), and I designed a mural which was *supposed* to get painted on the wall of my high school (I won a design contest) but never was.

Also-- I didn't know you were an astronomy geek! Cool.