Friday, June 22, 2018
By:
Okay, so birthdays. Shout out to Stephanie and her birthday on Monday, and all the interns pulling together with food and drinks and games to make the night special. We love you Steph. And then, luckily for Michael, his 21st birthday fell on the date of the boat cruise. What a lovely way to see the city and spend time with SPS staff, interns, and executive committee! The food was great, the staff were cordial, and it was great to meet and talk with everyone SPS. And Kim got great pictures! When I got accepted into this internship, one of my professors told me, “SPS is where all the nice physicists go”. My experience has thus far been consistent with that statement! I was honestly a little upset when we docked at 10, an hour earlier than I expected. It was one of my favorite memories of this internship thus far. SPS really knows how to have a party.
Other highlights include my first visit to the museum of natural history and the portrait gallery with some of the interns over the weekend. It's intriguing that everyone clusters around the 3rd floor of the presidential portraits at the portrait gallery, there is so much more in the gallery to appreciate. I loved walking into the UnSeen exhibit on the first floor with works by Titus Kaphar and Ken Gonzales-Day. They took these original American works and distorted them in a way to shed light on the under and misrepresented cultures in our history. These artists evoked a visceral reaction out of me and caused me to physically stop and think about our country’s long past of injustices, and about myself and where I fit in the picture. I love that it’s on the first floor, and that people stumble upon the exhibit first before continuing on in the gallery. It was a sobering and needed experience.
Let’s talk about the exhibit with artwork by Kumi Yamashita. I’m not really sure how to define her art pieces. All she did was crumple paper in the right way to leverage the shadow as the art, to form faces and human silhouettes. And it was as beautiful as it was simple. As E.F. Schumacker once said, “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.” Kumi is an exorbitantly courageous woman with austere elegance.
Noteworthy: we interns stumbled into a fancy lecture about the Cassini Mission that we were hilariously underdressed for Friday night. Still worth it even with the funny glances. Shout out to Mikayla for staying and astro nerding it up together, and having some ice cream rolls that are arguably funner to watch being made than to eat.
In other exciting news: my first demo is up on the web! I already have a new found appreciation for the art of video editing and science writing.
I am stumbling upon and through a new world of art forms this summer. It’s not nearly as put together as it sounds.
Amanda Williams