11.9.22 Updates
11.9.22
Brooklyn, NY
Yesterday was Election Day. I voted around 8pm at the polling place on my block, located within an apartment complex. There was a table at the front door with volunteers who double checked that my address matched our polling place. I waited on a short line to enter the ballot area, where another volunteer checked us in, using my license. I signed my signature on the iPad. Another volunteer handed me the ballot and explained that there are two ballot sheets and that I have to fill out both sides. While I was waiting to receive the ballot I overhead volunteers on the other side of the room discussing the ballot counting machines. “I wonder if the same machines return to the same locations each time”, wondered one volunteer. I marked my votes and insterted the scantron-like sheet into the counting machine. After both ballets were accepted by the machine I turned to leave and a volunteer stopped me and presented me with a sticker. I had done my civic duty. I felt no great sense of duty or accomplishment, just that it was something I had to do, like going to the DMV but, unlike the DMV, the process was simple, clear and there wasn’t a room full of people waiting.
Earlier in the afternoon, I did some writing about the weekend which I mostly spent reading, relaxing and taking care of a few things which I’ve been neglecting, like archiving my writing and photos - general housekeeping work which I often neglect. On Saturday, though, I saw an art exhibit at Amant entitled Siren (some poetics).
The exhibit included mixed-media works, audio, visual, text, poems, sculpture, tapestries and paintings. Most of the works explored the meaning of the word siren, as object, Exhibits like these, especially when there is a text or written element, help to open my mind up creatively and demonstrate that one can, for example, write a poem, display it over a piece of video or audio and exhibit it in an art gallery. I am intrigued and interested in exhibits like this as I feel this is something I want to explore in the future, but I have no experience with traditional art like painting or sculpture so I envision text or audio based works.
I also continued reading Lansing Lamont’s Day of Trinity about the history which led to the Manhattan Project’s nuclear test at Trinity in Jornado del Muerto, New Mexico.¹ I began the book about a month ago but quickly cooled on it - I don’t particularly enjoy the writing style but gradually I continued reading and found myself about 100 pages into the book. Now I am interested in the story and can’t put the book down.
I’m currently on a chapter which details the events of early 1945, before the test at Trinity in July 1945. I have a sense of the massive scale of the Manhattan Project, both scientifically, financially and morally. I’m still finding it difficult to wrap my brain around nuclear fission and some of the other science which was happening at Hanford, Washington, which was creating Plutonium and Oak Ridge, Tennesee, where Uranium-235 was separated from U-238. I watched a simple but informative documentary last night about the Project which helped reinforce the key people involved and the challenges which had to be overcome to complete the Project’s goal of creating an atomic bomb before the Nazi’s.
Lamont’s book is the third in a series of books I plan to read on the subject of atomic & nuclear weapons, the Manhattan Project and other tangential subjects. These books are research resources for a fictional writing project I’ve been working on more fervently over the past few months. There’s still so much more to read on the topic but I am enjoying the process.
I’ve also been diving into another project recently. As I’ve discussed previously, I volunteer with New York City’s Department of Records (DORIS) oral history project in which I interview participants about their lives in the City. I’ve been a part of the project for over a year and genuinely enjoy speaking with fellow New Yorkers about their experiences. I always learn something about this city we call home and have heard some pretty interesting and surprising stories. In December I may have an opportunity to interview a distinguished member of our NYC community (who I will not name now because the interview is not 100% confirmed). Though I’ve interviewed about a dozen people, I’m not a trained oral history interviewer. I want to learn some of the real science and training behind this subject before the upcoming interivew, so I’ve been diving into anything I can find online including PDFs, YouTube videos, and university seminars. I think I am most interested in this topic because of the storytelling aspect. I want to hear people tell their stories and capture these stories so they can be archived within the City’s records. I’ve got a steep learning curve here so my other projects - like the afore-mentioned fiction I’ve been writing - will have to be put on hold for a while. I will , however, continue blogging and sending out my weekly newsletter, Five Bullet Friday.
Until next time,
KW
Footnotes
Lamont’s book Day of Trinity is credited with being the first popular account of the Manhattan Project and was a NY Times bestseller at the time of it’s release.
