Yuri's Night

Today was the 50th anniversary of the first person in space, Yuri Gagarin. It was also the 30th anniversary of the first Space Shuttle and the 10th anniversary of the first Yuri's Night. I wasn't at any of those, but I had been in Graz, Austria in 2000, when the UN Space Generation Advisory Council was formed, and Loretta Hidalgo (now Whitesides) had the idea for Yuri's Night. For the last ten years, I've tried to get something going in whatever town I was in for Yuri's Night. But I don't like huge parties, such as New York, Moscow, DC, and LA have, and really don't have the contacts to put on such a party. But this year I finally organized a Yuri's Night Cache Valley. It was not a huge party. In fact, it was only 6 of us at my in-laws house, and mostly we just rehashed a lot of what had been talked about at our last board meeting (although there were a few other topics of conversation). We had chips & dip & lemonade to snack on, and we finally got to meet the college student who has been working with David on grant proposals for a class this semester.