Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Strickler Planetarium: Officially Awesome

My dear husband, as you may know, holds the official title of Director of Strickler Planetarium at our alma mater, Olivet Nazarene University. The planetarium, built in the 1960s, underwent extensive renovation in the spring. The renovations, which totaled $300,000, included a brand-new digital projector, new seating, new carpet, cleaning and painting of the interior of the dome, new workroom equipment, and just basically a great facelift for the interior of the building. If you've ever been to Adler Planetarium in Chicago and marveled at its capabilities, just know that Strickler's new projector is actually an updated version of the same one Adler uses.

Stephen has thrown himself into his duties as director whole-heartedly. All this summer he worked at the planetarium, learning the system, training himself and his student operators, viewing and ordering new shows (which, I should interject here, cost anywhere from $5,000 to $8,000 apiece!), creating original shows, organizing several different grand openings, and just generally getting the word out that Strickler Planetarium is officially awesome. I am so proud of him and his hard work, which definitely paid off big time: for the first several weekends, every public show was totally sold-out.

His latest venture has been to help design and order planetarium t-shirts, pictures of which I have included below. (Isn't he a great model?) If you're interested, let me know. They cost $10 apiece and support a truly worthy cause.

The front.

The back: Latin for "The heavens declare the glory of the Lord."
Go to that website!

1 comment:

Seth Hurd said...

Of course it sold out...tower talked about it on the radio!