In the Footsteps (Part 10) December 7, 2011
Posted by Lofty Ambitions in Other Stuff, Science.Tags: Art & Science, Books, In the Footsteps, Museums & Archives, Music, Nuclear Weapons
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Thanksgiving Dinner in France
Late on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, we overpacked our suitcases and headed out on the highway. Five hours later, we had checked into our Las Vegas hotel and were in search of the food you can find at the wee hours in the city that really does never sleep. On Monday, we made our now-annual visit to the Atomic Testing Museum on Flamingo Road.
The Bellagio’s Dancing Fountains
We’ve written about this museum before HERE. This time, the museum boasted a special exhibit called “Building Atomic Vegas” that fits perfectly with our ongoing series “In the Footsteps.” This week, we’ll walk you through some of the highlights of that exhibit by sharing some of our photos.
Building Atomic Vegas, Atomic Testing Museum
Casino Owner Benny Binion (1904-1989) greets visitors.
Here’s a Las Vegas postcard featuring the Desert Inn, with a nuclear test blast rising in the background.
The museum’s permanent exhibit displays an array of pop culture memorabilia. Here’s that Atomic Fireball you may know from childhood and a book called Our Friend the Atom, which was also the name a Disney film.
Perhaps the most striking item in the “Building Atomic Vegas” exhibit is this mannequin. She was used in civil defense tests at Yucca Flats in 1953.
The mannequin’s injuries, the scrapes and the dislocated arm, were sustained in a nuclear test blast.
Las Vegas High Schoolers of the 1950s and early 1960s had nuclear blast drills and cheered their teams with atomic pom-poms.
Many Las Vegas residents were issued dog tags for identification, in the event of an atomic bomb attack.
Soldiers sent into ground zero after a nuclear test blast were issued masks. Films we’ve seen also show soldiers being brushed off with brooms after being exposed to radioactive fallout at ground zero.
Far from the Nevada Test Site, which was renamed the Nevada National Security Site last year, the name “atomic” was popular in the 1950s. Here’s a snapshot of New York phone book listings from 1950.
In 1957, a beauty contest led to the naming of Miss Atomic Bomb.
The Stardust Casino opened on July 2, 1958. What is a nuclear blast but a harnessing of the star’s energy? The Stardust closed on November 1, 2006, and was demolished the following March.
This Apollo spacesuit is part of the “Building Atomic Vegas” exhibit because Apollo 11 astronauts trained in their spacesuits at the Nevada Test Site in 1965, a prelude to walking on the Moon.
Read the notes in pencil on this atomic blast preparation pamphlet. It was at the Nevada Proving Ground (the name changed to NTS at the end of 1954) for Shot Simon on April 25, 1953.
President John F. Kennedy visited the Nevada Test Site on December 8, 1962. Here’s a rare photo of him with half of Lofty Ambitions.
Liberace played Las Vegas during its atomic era. At Wisconsinite, Mr/ Showmanship died in 1987. His Las Vegas museum closed permanently on October 17 of last year.
Yes, this suit is the one Evel Knievel wore in his ill-fated attempt to jump the Caesar’s Palace fountains on his motorcycle on New Year’s Eve 1967. He suffered multiple fractures and remained in a coma for 29 days after the accident.
Near the end of the exhibit, after Evel Knievel and Liberace, is this Mk/B53 Gravity Bomb casing, on loan from the United States Air Force. This shell for a bunker-buster thermonuclear weapon is a reminder of the foundation of “Building Atomic Vegas.”
The exhibit “Building Atomic Vegas” runs through January 5, 2012. For the video of the press preview for this exhibit, click HERE. If you’re in Las Vegas this Friday, December 9, check out the lecture on “Salvador Dali and Nuclear Art.”
Guest Blog: A Year-End Round-Up December 5, 2011
Posted by Lofty Ambitions in Guest Blogs, Information.Tags: Art & Science, Books
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Lofty Ambitions has been posting pieces by guest bloggers for more than a year now. We’ve been grateful to be able to share a wide range of voices, ideas, and topics with our readers, all the while remaining focused on the blog’s main interests of aviation and space exploration, science of the twentieth century and beyond, and writing as a couple.
With the holidays coming up and the calendar year’s end nearing, we decided to use this December guest blog spot to point out some of our guests’ books, just in case you have some holiday shopping to do or need a reading treat for yourself. We also have some non-book suggestions too!
To see all guest blog posts, click on the menu tab for “guest blogs.”
RECENT AND FORTHCOMING BOOKS BY OUR LOFTY CONTRIBUTORS:
The Boiling Season by Christopher Hebert, a novel due out in March
Welcome to Shirley by Kelly McMasters, a memoir about growing up nuclear
Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl by Sandra Beasley, a memoir about allergies that is a Goodreads nomination for Best Food & Cooking
Celluloid Strangers by Eric Wasserman, a novel set in post-WWII Los Angeles
The Time It Takes to Fall by Margaret Lazarus Dean, a novel set on the Space Coast
Friendly Fallout 1953 by Ann Ronald, nuclear short stories
The Resurrection Trade by Leslie Adrienne Miller, a poetry collection (Y is forthcoming)
the weight of dew by Daniela Elza, a poetry collection due out in April
Truth, Lies and O-Rings by Allan J. McDonald, nonfiction about Challenger
Challenger Revealed by Richard C. Cook, nonfiction
The Berlin Candy Bomber by Gail Halvorson, nonfiction
AC/DC’s Highway to Hell by Joe Bonomo, nonfiction
OTHER ACCOMPLISHMENTS TO CHECK OUT:
The film Welcome to Shirley, based on Kelly McMasters’s memoir, made it into Sundance Film Festival this year. Watch the trailer HERE.
Ken Kremer had slideshow featured in Scientific American in August. View those photos HERE.
Lylie Fisher is showing some of her artwork in the exhibit The Space Between at the American Center for Physics gallery in College Park, Maryland, through May 4, 2012.
The Roger and Roberta Boisjoly Challenger Disaster Collection is housed at Chapman University. You can access the finding aid HERE, but there’s a lot more materials to come as they get sorted and catalogued from the many boxes from Roger’s garage.
Joe Bonomo has a piece in the first online issue of The Bellingham Review.
Christopher Cowen’s An Article of Hope was shown at the Atlanta Film Festival and L.A. Jewish Film Festival.
WE ALSO RECOMMEND the work of our new colleague Tom Zoellner. He joined Chapman University’s faculty this fall, and we’d already read his book Uranium, for which he made an appearance on The Daily Show. Tom’s new book, A Safeway in Arizona: What the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Tells Us about the Grand Canyon State and Life in America, is due out later this month and is available for pre-order at Powell’s HERE.
Tom and Anna will appear together on the panel “Fallout & Facts: Creative Nonfiction in the Nuclear Age” at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference on March 2, 2012, in Chicago. Both Tom and Anna will sign books on March 3 at the conference bookfair (Table D-21), which is open to the public that Saturday. Other “Fallout & Facts” panelists include Kristen Iversen, M .G. Lord, and Jeff Porter—all of whom have books available or forthcoming soon that are of interest to us here at Lofty Ambitions.
