Laura’s Journal: The Last StarFest

Posted on by snukes

Transcription of the photographed journal pages can be found below! Also, photos!

A photograph of a hand-written journal page. The heading is written in turquoise ink with purple stars, moons, and planets doodled around it. One of the planets looks like an easter egg, but is probably meant to be Jupiter.
The front page of the "StarFest 2022: This is the Way" program booklet, showing a collage of characters from The Mandalorian.
A photograph of a hand-written journal page. The handwriting is in black ink. A round sticker titled OSIRUS-REx Lockheed Martin and depicting an artist's rendering of that satellite is in the lower left corner of the page.
A photograph of a hand-written journal page. The handwriting is in black ink. A bio of Dr. Erin MacDonald cut out of the program booklet, including her photo, is pasted on the left side of the page surrounded by tiny hand-drawn hearts. A full transcription of the bio is at the bottom of the blog post.
A photograph of a hand-written journal page. The handwriting is in black ink. A panel from a brochure is pasted on the right side of the page. It reads: Lecture and Slide Show Presentation: "SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS: The Return of the Nemesis-Nibiru System Intersecting within Our Solar System" Ancient Gene Wars and the Biochemical Manipulation of Humankind A collage of photos depict planets, stars, the sun, several eclipses, and strand of dna, a human(?) fetus, and ancient rock art.
A photograph of a hand-written journal page. The handwriting is in black ink. A photo of the cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show is pasted in the upper right, and a black playing card in the lower left.
A photograph of a hand-written journal page. The handwriting is in black ink. A cartoon-style sketch of a rocket ship labeled "DUBHE" is on the bottom left.
A cartoon-style sculpture of a rocket ship, resembling the sketch from the page above, except labeled "SAGAN." An auction label below the sculpture names the artist, Kyle Crutcher, and notes the minimum bid as $80 and the Quick Sale price as $135.
I’ll put this one at the top so you can compare it with my excellent drawing. 😀 Of course, this is the Sagan, which I coveted at first, but someone snapped it up at the buy-now price (because Kyle Crutcher’s art is totally worth it). I wound up with the Dubhe, which is even better because the colors match my kitchen. Someday maybe I’ll get a little jazz alien to pilot it.
Photo taken through a crowd of people of a projection screen bearing the title "THE CLOUDSHIPS: CLOUD CLOAKING SPACESHIPS OR LENTICULAR CLOUDS?" Several photos of lenticular clouds that don't look much like spaceships at all fill the screen.
StarFest: where science and speculation meet, and sometimes get very, very lost.
Two women dressed in the costumes of Isabella and Luisa from the Disney movie Encanto. Isabella looks with delight at a large, crocheted cactus she holds in front of her, and Luisa flexes the muscles of one arm while carrying a large, crocheted donkey over her other shoulder. They look GREAT.
The costumes this year were excellent, but this is the only photo I actually managed to take. Isabella and Luisa are wearing homemade dresses, which are gorgeous, but the crocheted cactus and donkey totally stole my heart.
A man (a stranger) with his back to the camera converses with Rick Sternbach across a vendor's table. Several art prints are laid out on the table.
Rick Sternbach, space artist! He was heavily involved in the design of the visual elements of the Star Trek TNG, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager series. He’s also just an all-around fascinating guy.
A stylized line-drawing of an anthropomorphized bristlecone pine tree, hunched over and wearing glasses, supporting itself with a cane, and carrying a book. Please tell me if you drew this. I want to buy it from you.
Are you Brad Guy?? If you are, or know him, please tell him I want to buy this art! It was hung at the art auction, marked “not for sale,” which… c’mon! Don’t tease a girl like that. My google-fu was insufficient to track him down.
Matt, Laura, and Dustin pose in front of a large banner labeled "StarFest, the Universe, and Everything." The images on the banner are from Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy, including space ships, robots, planets, and neon signs.
There’s a new banner every year. The banner for 2022 followed the Mandalorian theme shown on the journal page above, but it was busy when we were ready for a photo, so we went with 2019’s Don’t Panic poster, which was my favorite anyway.

Transcription:

Saturday, May 14 and Sunday, May 15, 2022
STARFEST!

Welcome to the last StarFest of… well, ever. Due to financial and practical strains, this will be the last ever StarFest, #45, which is a crying shame. This weird, wonderful convergence of people is food for my own weird little soul. Even as I wonder if I’m not actually quite weird enough to be a proper member of this community of misfits, I love that it exists.

That should have been a concluding paragraph, huh? Let me try again.

Welcome to StarFest, Denver’s home party for all things nerdy, scientific, magical, peculiar, costumed, and fanatical. Yes: Star Trek, Star Wars, comic books, model building, cult classics, and astrophysicists. Doctor Who and Futurama. Cross-dressed Disney characters, animatronic dragons, and actual robots patrolling the halls. Klingon language lessons and lectures on the Hubble space telescope. Famous actors and off-their-rockers conspiracy theorists. This event is fricking fun.

This is the third year we’ve come to StarFest. The first was 2014, with Matt and his then-wife Francy. The whole thing felt ridiculous and magical. Dustin and I came on our own in 2019, and it was fun, but maybe a little less fun than when you have friends along to share all the things that are surprising and delightful. Being back with Matt in tow this year was a perfect way rock the final event. Some highlights:

Many actual science (as opposed to science fiction) talks about the state of astrophysics, interstellar imaging, and how much our solar system costs (I’ve already forgotten – $174 trillion, maybe?)

One of the speakers was Dr. Erin MacDonald, outrageously cridentialed scientist who is also the science advisor on several Star Trek shows. We only went to her first talk on accident, killing time, waiting for Matt. I didn’t think I cared about the actual science behind Star Trek, but she is an amazing speaker. Obviously smart, but also funny and really relatable. Is my giant nerd crush on her painful to observe? I feel like a 13-year-old girl. I didn’t mean to draw those hearts up there, they just happened! I just want to be her friend. Her second talk, “Astrophysics 101 through SciFi” was also amazing and she made Futurama references, so our future deep friendship is basically inevitable. Just gotta figure out how to surmount the “she is awesome and famous and cool and lives in LA, and I’m… whatever I am living in South Dakota. We may be star(fest)-crossed.

In addition to learning some real Science, I also had a great time at the talk. of this mad-crazy Conspiracy theorist who believes (as far as I could tell) in absolutely every alien con spiracy that exists, and a few she invented herself. Aliens are gods, aliens are here, there’s another galaxy about to crash into ours and the government is covering it up. She’s written

Six books. I’d kind of want to read one, just to try to peek under the hood a little, except each one is massively long and has no pictures! (As. you can see from the pictures on the other page, they really make the conspiracy).

Saturday evening we went to my first-ever Rocky Horror Picture Show performance. If you’ve never had the pleasure (?), a performance is nothing like just watching movie. It takes something that is already weird and… indecent?… and pushes it over the top. In a fun way, I think? It was sensory overload, for sure.

Between various talks, classes (“How to Invent an Alien!”), panels (“Careers in Science!”) and sports (tribble hockey, quiddich), we browsed the vendor room and art auction. I’ve come away with something from the auction every year, and since this year was the last, I couldn’t possibly leave empty handed. I made bids on some items by Peri Chariflu, a favorite from auctions past, but this year’s winner was a ceramic space ship (also cookie jar for very small cookies?) by Kyle Crutcher. It’s the colors of my kitchen and I love it even though I have no space in my kitchen so it’s living in my bathroom.

And thus did the last StarFest wrap up, and my beloved tea mug go missing somewhere in the bowels of the hotel forever. We gave Matt and pup Gracie a final pep talk and waved them off on the second leg of their trip – the long, boring leg across the midwest to Boston, old and new home-sweet-home. We’ll head home soon, too. A quick stop to see Tommy and fam and a few Rockies first.

[End main transcription. Excerpted bio clipped and pasted onto the fourth journal page, from the 2022 StarFest program booklet:]

Erin MacDonald

Science Writer, Producer, STEAM Advocate Erin Macdonald (PhD, Astrophysics) hails from Fort Collins, CO, and did her undergraduate degrees at the University of Colorado (Boulder) where she dual-majored in Physics with Astrophysics (cum laude) and Mathematics. She earned her Ph.D. at 25 years old from the University of Glasgow (Scotland) in Gravitational Astrophysics. Her post-doctoral research with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration on gravitational waves from dead and colliding stars and black holes contributed to the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. She has taught at the college level, worked with the Den ver Museum of Nature and Science, and written and narrated numerous popular science podcasts including an Audible Original series produced by The Great Courses on “The Science of Sci-Fi” which reached the Au dible Non-Fiction Top 10 bestseller list in March 2020. In 2022 she started her own production company: Spacetime Productions to lift and share marginalized talent and stories in the industry.Currently, “Dr Erin” is the science advisor for the entire Star Trek fran chise and works as a writer and producer in Los Angeles, CA. She is an internationally sought-after public speaker, educator, STEAM advocate, writer, and technical consultant who explains complex physics and astronomy ideas to varied audiences. For more information, please visit:

2 thoughts on “Laura’s Journal: The Last StarFest”

  1. Really enjoying reading about your travels, Laura–I think you could make reading about watching paint dry something of interest. 😀

    If you dig Astrophysics (or astronomy, or stars, planets, and outer space in general), you might be interested in the YouTube channel of one Becky Smethhurst, Ph.D. (Astrophysics, Oxford University). Her channel is called, simply, “Dr. Becky.” Her latest video is on why the Earth’s auroras are always the same shade of green. I found it fascinating.

    As my friend Rick Steves (okay, I met him once on one of his tours) would say, “Keep on travelin’!” (And keep on writing!)

    Best,

    Steve Hall

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    1. Yes! I want to know why auroras are always green! Thanks for the tip (and the compliments!) – I will definitely check her out!

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