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My Hadfield story...
Nov. 5th, 2013 04:51 pmSome time ago, I preordered Chris Hadfield's An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth from Amazon and ever since it arrived, I had been giving thought to how, exactly, I might get him to autograph my copy (now that he appears to be spending all his time in Canada). Then today, I found out—quite by accident—that he was in town for some postflight medical workups at JSC and would be doing a book signing over at the Gilruth Center this afternoon. I glanced at the clock, did a little mental arithmetic, grabbed my copy of the book, and jumped in the car (as the house is located mere minutes away from the signing venue). Within an hour, I had exchanged words and a handshake with Col. Hadfield, and he had autographed my copy of his book.
Seeing Hadfield in person brought my mind back to April 1996, when I flew to New York for an interpretation assignment that started by meeting Mir-20 crewmembers Yuri Gidzenko and Sergey Avdeev at JFK and escorting them into midtown, where we met most of the crew of STS-74: Ken Cameron, Bill McArthur, Jerry Ross, and... Chris Hadfield. Thomas Reiter, representing the European Space Agency and the third member of the Mir-20 crew, arrived later in the day.
During dinner the first night, at a place not far from the United Nations building, someone suggested I act as proxy for Jim Halsell, the lone STS-74 crewmember who could not make this so-called "public affairs" trip. I understood the suggestion to be a bit of a joke, and demurred. Later that evening, upon our return to our hotel, I was included in an unusual "dessert" ritual that involved a copious quantity of Courvoisier cognac, a large glass, and a paper straw for each participant. It was that kind of group.
We all visited the UN the following day, and said visit included a tour of the Security Council chamber.
A UN staff member acts as tour guide in the UN Security Council chamber. The tourists are (left to right) Thomas Reiter, Jerry Ross, Chris Hadfield, Bill McArthur, Ken Cameron, Sergey Avdeev, Yuri Gidzenko, and me.
Over the course of the assignment, which also took us to Washington, DC (where among other exploits I ended up as the interpreter at a reception held at the Russian Embassy, go figure), the thing I remember most clearly about Hadfield was a friendly sort of needling he would subject me to from time to time all during the trip. Whenever an unusual word would come up in conversation that was not being interpreted—if, for example, someone would call something a "doodad"—Chris would turn to me and ask "How do you say 'doodad' in Russian'? Sometimes I knew the answer; sometimes I didn't. I understood this to be good-natured ribbing on his part, but there was also something else there... a genuine curiosity as to how one would express some particular word in Russian.
Over the years, I found many of the astronauts and cosmonauts shared, to one degree or another, this kind of unflagging interest that addressed a deep and abiding curiosity, and I very much enjoyed working with them, in part because of that attitude.
Ad astra...!
Seeing Hadfield in person brought my mind back to April 1996, when I flew to New York for an interpretation assignment that started by meeting Mir-20 crewmembers Yuri Gidzenko and Sergey Avdeev at JFK and escorting them into midtown, where we met most of the crew of STS-74: Ken Cameron, Bill McArthur, Jerry Ross, and... Chris Hadfield. Thomas Reiter, representing the European Space Agency and the third member of the Mir-20 crew, arrived later in the day.
During dinner the first night, at a place not far from the United Nations building, someone suggested I act as proxy for Jim Halsell, the lone STS-74 crewmember who could not make this so-called "public affairs" trip. I understood the suggestion to be a bit of a joke, and demurred. Later that evening, upon our return to our hotel, I was included in an unusual "dessert" ritual that involved a copious quantity of Courvoisier cognac, a large glass, and a paper straw for each participant. It was that kind of group.
We all visited the UN the following day, and said visit included a tour of the Security Council chamber.
A UN staff member acts as tour guide in the UN Security Council chamber. The tourists are (left to right) Thomas Reiter, Jerry Ross, Chris Hadfield, Bill McArthur, Ken Cameron, Sergey Avdeev, Yuri Gidzenko, and me.
Over the course of the assignment, which also took us to Washington, DC (where among other exploits I ended up as the interpreter at a reception held at the Russian Embassy, go figure), the thing I remember most clearly about Hadfield was a friendly sort of needling he would subject me to from time to time all during the trip. Whenever an unusual word would come up in conversation that was not being interpreted—if, for example, someone would call something a "doodad"—Chris would turn to me and ask "How do you say 'doodad' in Russian'? Sometimes I knew the answer; sometimes I didn't. I understood this to be good-natured ribbing on his part, but there was also something else there... a genuine curiosity as to how one would express some particular word in Russian.
Over the years, I found many of the astronauts and cosmonauts shared, to one degree or another, this kind of unflagging interest that addressed a deep and abiding curiosity, and I very much enjoyed working with them, in part because of that attitude.
Ad astra...!
