Ada “loooooves” pumpkins and Ada “loooooves” robots so we decided to combine the two in our latest project.

The first line of business was having Ada draw a face on her pumpkin. There was no help from me on this one aside from handing her a sharpie.

The next step was carving out the eyes and mouth for the lights. No worries, dad did that.

Ada is so proud of her pumpkin!

The messy part was over so we moved on to what Ada calls “Testing” or “Making robots”. Why does she call it testing? Well, I have an old multimeter that she uses to probe old motors and electronic components while I work on electronics projects in the kitchen. Testing went well on this particular night as we ended up with a blinking LED circuit that will end up being the robot part of the pumpkin.

Ada was so focused during this part of the project that this was all the smile she could muster.

Oh, yeah. What kind of a robot pumpkin would this be without an on/off switch.

The old guts went out and the new electronic guts went in.

 

To center the LED pupils in the eyes of the pumpkin we used old paperclips.

Annnnnd… There. All done.

Now let’s turn it on.

So I guess it’s my turn to make an addition to this blog, huh? Well then. Here it goes. I blame any and all errors on my editor (wife) and my laziness on this Sunday evening.

Most of you know that I love to read so you can probably imaging that of all the things a person could be excited about when thinking of parenthood, the one thing I’m most excited about is reading to, and eventually with, Winky.

Reading brings back a deluge of memories of my parents my childhood, and some of my favorites at that. I remember the box of Golden Books that Mom brought home and we read together, meeting aliens for the first time, weekly trips to the library with dad, reading together as a family in the living room while waiting for church to start, flying through outer space on a Tuesday night… I could go on…

My mom and sisters were into novels about real people doing real things while Dad read non-fiction and mystery. I was the odd duck in a way, being the only one in the family partial to stories with computers, robots, space ships, lasers, robots with lasers, and stories about how we’ll be able to read each other’s minds in the future.

I enjoy reading from many other genres but anything with a robot in it tugs a special little heart string. I think what I find so alluring in sci-fi is that I get to experience things that nobody will be able to experience in the near future, but still be able to dream that the future becomes a reality. I secretly hope that Winky shares an attraction to this flavor of writing but I am OK with the kid growing up to like any type of book. Besides, no matter what, there will be a short period of time I have captive audience of one to read Space Operas at. Hehehe…

My parents didn’t have the time or money to take us exotic places (and by exotic I mean outside of the upper Midwest) but with the power of books we were able to go anywhere, see anything, as well as learn and do whatever our imagination would allow. I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad knew that every book was a ticket out of Stearns County and a way to avoid getting a super expensive tickets to Mars.*

A while back I came across an article about a school for the deaf in Central America that until the mid 70s was run more like a halfway house than a school. That’s about when the story starts, with the reformation of the school and followed the students as they learned to read for the first time in their 20s and 30s. They described the experience of learning to read as “being able to see for the first time.” They had found a new way of seeing that involved an emotional communication through symbols and a connection to the world around them that binds everyone else who understands the meaning behind the same symbols.

And here is where the science fiction begins to catch up with us. Neuroscientists have since demonstrated that when you read, your brain displays analogous patterns of activity to that of someone experiencing the same phenomenon first hand. The written word is a powerful tool and it is still the closest we can get to reading each other’s minds without having to wear a special hyper-magnetic hat or drink a special chemical invented by some madman in his basement laboratory. Why go through all that trouble when you can get into someone else’s head and truly empathize with them by just reading a book?

And if you stretch that study a little further you could make the argument that you don’t always need to experience things first hand to develop a sense for the rest of the world. That makes me even more grateful to have had parents who saw the value in reading and passed it on to me.

I now find myself in a similar position in life – the same position my parents were in when they had me – lacking the resources to take a child around the world physically.  But that doesn’t bug me at all because I have the same secret weapon that they had. One more powerful than all the weapons of the Ousters brought to Hyperion. I have books and the immense power held between their covers!

I know people who have been all around the world but I don’t know many who have been to space. I’ve been there many times and I’m going to go back. Next time Winky’s coming with me.

*There was a point in high school when my parents would’ve gladly bought me a one way ticket to Mars. For Mom the excuse would be a break from getting calls from school about my behavior and dad would justify the purchase because a one way costs half as much as a round ticket.