The auditorium at Woodlands Regional Library played host to Catherine ‘Cady’ Coleman, NASA astronaut, and her husband, glass artist, Josh Simpson. They came to the library for a talk on Thursday, 30 June 2005.
The evening started of with Star Wars characters (from Star Wars Fan Club) walking around the library and posing with excited library patrons. Guess they didn’t expect to see Luke Skywalker and Anakin Skywalker walking around the library with lightsabers.
Both Cady and Josh spoke at the event. And they were truly inspirational. What I took away from the session was that no matter how dire your circumstances are, if you are willing to try, you will definitely succeed.
Josh mentioned that he withdrew all his savings of US$306 when he was 20 to buy a furnace because he wanted very much to learn how to blow glass. Subsequently, being not satisfied in just making glass objects, he bought a boat trailer so that he can pull his furnace around to different fairs to show people what glass blowing is all about. From those humble beginnings, Josh is now a world renowned glass artist and his works are highly sought after.
As for Cady, she talked about her goal to be an astronaut and worked towards that goal with hard work and perseverence as she didn’t like physics (she has a PhD in polymer science and engineering). However, physics is an important component in being an astronaut and she just studied for it to prepare herself. She also commented that she started her learning journey when she worked in the public library in her hometown during high school. She also talked a fair bit of how important teamwork is in her job as you can’t choose who you go up into space with and they just had to work together to ensure that the mission was a success.
Though an astronaut and a glass artist do not have much, both Cady and Josh do have quite a number of things in common besides being married to each other. They both have a very strong passion about their work and place tremendous emphasis on the family unit. Even though both are extremely busy at their work, they ensure that they spend quality time with each other and their sons. And they speak passionately about their sons as well.
Cady kept mentioning that throughout her session that the Discovery space shuttle would be going to space on 13 July, 2005. Even though she is not part of the flight crew of 6 and will be performing the role of media relations person for this flight , you can still see her enthusiasm and energy as if she will be flying into space.
Really learnt alot from this evening’s programme.
The Rambling Librarian blogs about his views on the talk. He has also posted some photos.
Update: I’ve posted the photos here.
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