Good morning, and welcome to Nevada Weekly. I'm Terrie Nault. My co-host, John
Marcshall, is a little under the weather today, wasn't able to join us, but I'm
glad that you could join us for what will be a very informative show. First up,
we'd like to tell you about a new Women's Center that opened here in the
UNR campus. Our reporter, Rick Oxybie, talked with co-founder, Anne Howard, about
the purpose of the center and about some of the programs that are offered. Rick Oxybie; A few
years ago there was a Women's Resource Center on the UNR campus. It was a
meeting place for women and had a library of women's books and
publications, but because of remodeling of the campus the center disappeared.
Since then, the Director of Women's Studies, Dr. Anne Howard and the Dean of
Student Services, Dr. Roberta Barnes, have been looking for a meeting place for the
older women's students of UNR. Finally, on September 5th, a university owned
house across the street from the campus became the Women's Center and the older
women students had a place to go. Anne Howard; Our purpose is to have a kind of gathering
place for women where small women's group, the women's groups. I don't mean
groups for small women. Small group meetings of women can take place where
there can be counseling for women who want to come back to school, where that
library could be, where someone could go in casually and read in special women's
topics, where we could refer people to groups who might be helpful to them. This
is the general purpose for it. Rick Oxybie; Okay, what kind of women would come to the Women's
Center? Are you looking mainly for women that may be divorced or married or
widowed that want to start again, want to get any new education? Anne Howard; Well, of course
these are among the people we're most concerned with. There are what are called
by the government displaced homemakers or, again, another term they like to use,
is reentry women. This always makes me think that these people are coming
through the atmosphere, but these are the people we're particularly concerned with.
Since we're a university group, any woman on campuses, of course, welcome over there
and our volunteers, for example, range in age from about seventeen to ages which women
don't tell their age. We are particularly concerned with these older women who
come back to school because we have to accept the fact that the university
isn't generally geared toward people in their late adolescence and early twenties,
even though now a majority of our students are over twenty-five. Now, women,
particularly, who may have been divorced and find themselves without any skills
for a job, women who may have been widowed and find children that they must
support and find themselves unable to deal with these requirements, are welcome
at the Women's Center. We try to help them. We have academic counseling
available. We try to direct women to occupy to the correct institution. The
Women's Center, as a matter of fact, is a joint venture, in many ways, with Truckee
Meadows Community College, where we have gotten a great deal of help out with,
from Pat Miltenberger, the Dean of Students up there, and our efforts have
been primarily to try to appeal to these women, who find sometimes the terribly
youthful atmosphere on the campus a little shocking, yet as a shock to them
that is, yet we don't like to suggest that there is an age limit. Many of these
women are just very well to returning to school. Some of them go back to school
with their daughters. Others, on the other hand, feel, as many have told me, "well I'm
the oldest person in my class. I don't think I can move as quickly as these
young people", when actually in the long run it seems to me that the more mature
student is, most frequently a very reliable, very responsible, very
productive student, so we're looking to help these people, particularly, those who
feel a little insecure coming back into a world some of them have never
been in before and we tried to meet their needs. Rick Oxybie; Where are some of the
programs of the Women's Center will be offering? What kind of activities when
you have there to help the older women adjust? Anne Howard; Well, right now we are the place
for the student services departments, has sponsored a series of noon time workshops
for returning students, that have covered such topics as budgeting, academic
requirements, study skills, how to respond to stress. These have been held Wednesday
noon for well, that's open to women and men. Last time, we had a couple of men and
a few women. People bring their lunches and various people on campus speak to
these groups. We have, starting next week or the week after, a group of a series of
programs on the discipline for displaced homemakers, again, that strange term, which
are being co-sponsored by well, primarily sponsored by Truckee Meadows Community
College and alternate programs will meet at the Women's Center and at Truckee
Meadows Community College and, again, these are geared to helping people adapt
to the change in their status, which they acquire when they go back to school. Rick Oxybie; Do
you see any problems? Do you foresee any problems in getting a lot of women to
go there and making this a success? Anne Howard; Well, most of all, people have to know that
it's there and that there are people participating. We don't have any money to
speak of. This is funded on a good deal of optimism and charity. We've had a lot
of cooperation from the University, but not very much money. This is, of course, an
old story. We do work with volunteers and, I think, there are always problems with a
volunteer group. It's great if you immediately have a public response, but
very few things get started immediately with a public response. We feel that we
need to let people know that it's there, especially those women who may be helped.
Now, some women's groups are already interested in us. The Committee to Aid
Abused Women, for example, is having its training sessions at the Women's Center,
and so, we hope that women's groups will spread the word and we hope, soon, to
have a gathering of them what's known nowm as
the Women's Network in townm which is very informal group of mostly
professional and business women, who meet for lunch once a month, and we hope that
in November, we will have this group meet at the center and, perhaps, after that so
that more people will know about it. We like to think that we're going to work
on the matter of individual referral, anyone who has a question is certainly
welcome to call our center. Our hours are limited and we just got a
phone about three days ago. So, a good many people don't know about us yet. Rick Oxybie; Although
the Women's Center was without a telephone during its first month of
operation, Dr. Howard says the response has been encouraging. Women's groups have
been attending the programs at the center and some twenty volunteers are
helping to plan more programs. The center welcome suggestions from groups that
would like to help women build their own programs. Some older women returning to
school are confident and successful at UNR, while others have a difficult time
adjusting to the new environment. Dr. Howard sees the Woman's Center as a
place where the successful woman's student can talk to the insecure one and
show her that she can do it too. For Nevada Weekly, this is Rick Oxybie, reporting.
Terrie Nault; The center is open from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Monday through Friday and
Wednesday evenings from 7:00 to 10:00. It's located across the campus at 1201
North Virginia Street and if you'd like more information, do call the center at
seven eight four four six one one and men, Dr. Howard said, you are most welcome
too. On our next story, we'd like to introduce you, once again, to Art Johnson,
who is Director of our Atmospherium Planetarium. Art attended a meeting of
planetarium directors in Los Angeles. He's president of that organization and
while he was there, he was able to obtain first-hand information and photographs
of the recent Saturn flyby. He talked with Jock Scocroft about this exciting
event. Jock Scocroft; Art, you and your fellow planetarium people gathered at Griffith
Observatory in Los Angeles, I understand, to and see what unveiled at the Saturn
Saturn flyby, the Voyager 2. What did you learn? What
surprised you? Was it lot of excitement? Art Johnson; Well, indeed it was. The meeting I went to,
incidentally, was the Pacific Planetarium Association's Fall Conference, so we did
more than just look at Saturn pictures, but I don't think any of us there would
have would have missed the Saturn portion of the program. Of course, there
were lots of surprises. Its it was almost literally like discovering a new world
because we had never been to Saturn before with equipment this good that
could give use this clear. We had a hint about a year ago when the Pioneer went
by Saturn. You may remember we did go near Saturn once before with a
spacecraft, but the quality of the TV cameras on board the Voyager, having been
manufactured many years after the Pioneer ones, just gave us such superior
pictures that in a very real sense we were seeing the planet for the first
time. Jock Scocroft; The things that seemed surprised people were the rings and the moon's, not
Saturn, itself. Art Johnson; Well, that's right the rings and moons probably were surprising
because we can see their surfaces and their nature much better than we can
that of the clouded, banded, shrouded, ball of the planet Saturn. When you and I were
in school, we learned that Saturn had, I think, nine moons if I recall rightly and
Jupiter had twelve. Well, now, of course, we say Jupiter has fourteen and as far as I
know Saturn is believed now to have at least fifteen moons, which makes it the
most moon-y. Excuse me, that's not the right choice of words, but that's the
most moon endowed planet in the solar system, as far as one can tell. It turned
out when we were kids we thought Saturn might have three rings, like the circus.
Now, we think it may have as many as a thousand of, which three, aren't on center.
Their shifted. Their their middles don't coincide with the middle of the planet,
but the other nine hundred and ninety seven rings do. Jock Scocroft; Then, this comes into
conflict with some considered laws of physics, does it not? Art Johnson; Yes, it seemed to. It
was said by one of the researchers, I guess, before a press conference at the
time, "Gee the laws of physics as we understand them don't seem to work here".
It's tempting to say, of course, in a big banner headline that Saturn breaks
natural laws. Well, I'm sure it doesn't. It's just that, perhaps, we didn't
understand the laws well enough or there may be new laws we didn't know
about before. I tend to think the former is true. I was just talking with Jordan
Marche, who's on our staff, and has a degree in astronomy so we assume he's
the most knowledgeable astronomer on the premises and he is of the opinion,
perhaps, these rings, the ones that are offset here, are very recently formed. Now,
the theories about how Saturn's rings got there are several, but essentially
they all kind of boil down to the idea that some other object came too close to
Saturn to survive. The mathematician Roche, about a hundred and fifty years
ago, showed that if you get a moon larger than about two or three hundred miles
and it gets too close to the parent body, the gravity of that planet will pull the
moon to pieces and if you'll think about that, here's the parent body over here
and here's the moon and what you've got is a differential gravitation, that is
because this side of the moon is closer to the planet than that side is, they get
different amounts of pull and eventually you get a stress buildup in the moon
fractures and fragments and we think this may be how the rings of Saturn form.
So, these three eccentric rings, as we call them, may be newly formed. We don't
know. Why there should be a thousand of them? Why they don't all blend into a
nice homogeneous ring? We don't quite understand yet, nor do we understand that
outermost ring, the F ring, which seemed to have knots and kinks and braids in it,
again, things that that oughtn't to be there but are. Jock Scocroft; There's some talk of a
shepherd the satellite or a shepherd moon. Art Johnson; Yes, there are satellites as it
turns out, just outside and just inside, where the F ring is and it is currently
being discussed and speculated that, perhaps, their gravitational forces kind
of work as shepherds to keep that funny little kinky, and that's the right word
for the F ring, in place. We'll have a picture of the F ring for our viewers on
the monitor, I think, in just a second. Jock Scocroft; The Voyager, this is Voyager 1. Now, Voyager 2
is coming along soon. Art Johnson; It's already on its way. Both were launched within a few
weeks of one another, but because they took somewhat different paths to get
there, going by Jupiter, Voyager 2 won't arrive until next August, I believe,
but Voyager 2, if it survives, will really be a bonus spacecraft bonus because a
we've already been decided once so anything we get is kind of gravy out of
the second one, but also a bonus because it may be targeted to go out to the
planets Uranus and Neptune, so we may get three, four planets for the price
of a six-pack per person. That's how it worked out, as it turns out. Somebody who
likes to talk statistics figured out that for every taxpayer, this entire
mission cost the equivalent of a six-pack of beer. Jock Scocroft; Alright. Yeah, I know
what I get with a six-pack of beer. What do you suppose I can expect to get apart
from better understanding of the universe? Do you see any practical
applications to anything that's been learned on this mission?
Art Johnson; Well, almost certainly. One point that everybody likes to make, but it's a good
one, is that not one dollar of the cost of the mission was spent out in space at where
Saturn is. It was all spent here, presumably, giving good people jobs. Then, one can
speak about simply the altruistic motives of that humans have about
wanting to learn about their environment. One can talk about the, so called,
spin-off technologies because a lot of the research that went into designing
the television cameras, the electronic components, and other things have had
applications here on our home planet, making our life quality better. One could
go on. Some people believe that it is the fact that we humans are curious about
our environments that has allowed us to survive. Without Columbus's voyage, or
without curiosity on the part of Louis Pasteur, or without curiosity on the part
of a hundred other scientists. Our quality of life wouldn't be what it is,
certainly, and some don't think we would even have survived as a species on the
planet without this peculiar desire to explore and find out more about the
universe. Jock Scocroft: Of course, there are these wonderful pictures that came out from
the Voyager 2. There were other tests run as well. Did we get any surprises, well
first of all, with the nature of some of these tests, and did we get any surprises
there? Art Johnson; I think so. Some of those data, incidentally, have still not been
released. Of course, what happened was, we swooped past the planet in about two
days, that real close encounter part of the mission and far more data were being
gathered than could be analyzed and understood so quickly, so a lot of it was
computer tapes and is even now being subjected to its first scrutiny, but yes,
some things were found other than picture data that were surprising. We
found out that Titan seems to have a lot of nitrogen in its atmosphere. We used to
think differently, incidentally, we found also that Titan has a very smoggy opaque
kind of an atmosphere. It had been very greatly anticipated that Titan would
give us all kinds of beautiful picture surprises. It didn't. It was very cloudy,
very hazy. Jock Scocroft; You seemed to be disappointed in Titan. Art Johnson; Yes, but just the fact that it's
different from what we thought, is interesting, and we did find out what its
atmosphere is made of. I mentioned that several new moons were discovered. We
found out things about the magnetic field of Saturn, which weren't known
before, information about the internal makeup of the planet, some things have
been learned, although that's sort of a tough nut to crack, if you don't actually
go into the planet deeply, you can't really know for sure what's down there.
We do know that Saturn is the only planet of the solar system with a
density less than that of water, which means it has to be made up of
lightweight stuff, mostly just gases or liquids because when you compress a gas
greatly, it becomes a liquid or even a solid. Jock Scocroft; Now, some of these new moons that
we discovered, for instance, the there was one that was horribly pockmarked. Someone
said that uh... Art Johnson; Right, Nemis is the moon, I believe. It has a crater on it, about one-fourth
the diameter of the moon itself. Now, that's a little surprising that it could
have survived that crater formations. It's, we believe these craters happen
when space rocks crash into something and make a hole just like a bomb crater
on Earth, when you throw a pebble into some gooey mud, you make a crater.
Well, this crater is so big that it's a wonder that its impact, the meteoroids
impact, didn't actually fragment the moon. It's a wonder that the moon survived at
all, but there it is and you can see that great big eye blinking out at you. It
looks like an eye, a big crater on that moon. Jock Scocroft; And, that that moon apparently had
been undisturbed. All the craters that, apparently, had been made had been
preserved, that there'd been no erosion and no corrosion. Art Johnson; Right, that's what one
expects when you have a moon such as this where there isn't any atmosphere.
If a moon is too small, it's gravity is weak and so weak that it won't hold an
atmosphere, and atmospheres allow us to have erosion.
Without an atmosphere on Earth, we'd have no storms, no dust blowing around, no
running water, and so even as on our own moon, of course, a little moon that has no
atmosphere won't erode very much, and so craters that formed four billion
years ago will be visible right along with some that might have happened this
week. Jock Scocroft; Did you, what what aspect of this whole thing thrilled you the most? What uh...
Art Johnson; Oh, personally, I guess, it would have had to have been the rings. There's one
beautiful picture and, I think we'll be seeing it on our screens, that shows not
a thousand perhaps but hundreds and hundreds of individual moons and just
just the breathtaking clarity of this picture astounds me because I can
remember so well when I was in the seventh grade and got my first telescope
and we looked at Saturn, my gosh you could just about tell that, yeah there
was a ring there, and that was was neat. Galileo was the first person to see the
rings of Saturn but his telescope was of such indifferent quality, being first in
the world, you know, and made from old spectacles and things. All he could see
was kind of a hazy blur at either side of the globe of the planet, so he wrote "I
wonder why it is that Saturn has ears?" He thought he could see ears on
the planet Saturn well. Then, a few years later, we were in such a
position the earth was, that we saw the rings edge-on and they're so thin that
seen edge-on they almost disappear. In fact, to Galileo they did, and so he
wondered what had become of the ears of the planet Saturn. So, to me the the rings
and the discoveries about them, the clearer views of them, were the most
exciting aspect of the mission. Jock Scocroft; Now, there's not much money in the in the
till for long-range space research, deep research. Hypothetically, if we had the
money, if we had a program that was going out, another program to follow Voyager,
what would it be and where would it go and what would it find? Art Johnson; We do have one
more program, Jock, that is likely to be funded, at least certain aspects of it
are, and I think it's going to fly, literally, that is the so-called Galileo
probe to Jupiter and the name of it, of course, honors the man who first really
got a good look at Jupiter. That will go in a few years and, I believe, we'll send
some sort of a vehicle into the Jovian atmosphere, if I understand the plans
correctly. That's very good because Jupiter is
prototypical of all the outer planets. It's the first and largest of the gas
giants. All the planets from Jupiter, all the way out through Neptune, are kind of
alike. They're all very gaseous worlds, whereas all the ones closer than Jupiter
are more like the earth. They have solid rocky surfaces, most of which, we can see.
So, to explore Jupiter more is going to give us a kind of a a model or a
detailed picture of one of the gas giant planets and that should kind of help us
to know what the others are all the way up through Neptune. Pluto is the one that
we really got to go see because Pluto is different.
Pluto's another rocky planet. It's also been found recently to be at the
very tiniest. We used to think that mercury was the smallest, but recent
discoveries with Earth-based telescopes told us that Pluto is even smaller and
it's got a moon called Chiron. It's very very strange little world at the very
edge of the solar system, so far away that it's light takes five-and-a-half
hours to get back to the earth. Why is there a weird little rock like planet
out there after all these big gas giants? Nobody's quite sure. Some say a captured
asteroid. Others have different ideas, but Pluto would be a fun world to go to with
a spacecraft. Jock Scocroft; We're doing some research to the course the space shuttle is is
near space, not not far space. The Russians have been doing a great deal of
manned manned space probing in the in the near near space. What are they
getting out of this? Are they getting ahead of us, so they scooping us on a lot
of technical things that we should be up on? Art Johnson; Sure, it is a highly judgmental word, I
don't know, we all have our opinions. I suppose they're doing an awful lot of
discovery about humans in space. They certainly have far more hours of space
experience than we have. What their long-range views are are not totally clear.
One talks about the idea of eventual space colonization, manufacturing in
space, some ideas which, incidentally, we'll be exploring in one of our
planetarium shows this coming spring, pardon me.
So, there are ample things for humans to explore out there. Jock Scocroft; Are they sharing this
knowledge with us, what they're what they're gleaning out there? Art Johnson; Some,
certainly, but even a couple of cooperations are going to maintain
proprietary information and I'm quite certain they're not telling us
everything that they're discovering. Jock Scocroft; You sort of precluded one of my questions.
What can we expect to see at the Atmospherium Planetarium, in regard to
the jubilee, the flyby the Saturn flyby? Art Johnson; We'll have some pictures on display
there and probably a show next fall. My voice is starting to to go on me here,
Jock. This has never happened before on television, excuse me. Jock Scocroft; The Atmospherium
Planetarium, of course, on the University of Nevada-Reno campus, is a fascinating
place that suggests that you get up there and check out the the program. "The
Star of Wonder", which would be playing through Christmas time, right.
Thank You. Terrie Nault; The University of Nevada-Reno is very proud of its new marching band,
the first marching band the universitie's had in a long long time. It was a success
and our reporter, Rick Oxybie, takes you behind the scenes to tell you
a little bit more about the band. Rick Oxybie; The scene is the 1980 University of Nevada-
Reno homecoming parade and for the first time in nearly a decade, it is being led
by a UNR marching band. After such a long absence,
the band's revival was the direct result of the renaissance of the UNR football
program.
Because of the renewed interest in UNR football,
many enthusiastic supporters pushed for and helped fund the band.
Besides the homecoming parade, the band has performed at halftime of every home
Wolfpack football game, and it led this year's Nevada Day Parade in Carson City.
In January of this year, the development and direction of the band was handed to
UNR music professor, A.G. McGranahan the Third, known by his
students and others as Mac. He had to order new uniforms and equipment and
hire graduate assistants before September 6th, but the toughest obstacle,
was recruiting members. Mac McGranahan; Going around the high schools, trying to talk up a program
that has never existed, that's, you know, it's kind of difficult to do, so mainly
in area high schools here. We did a lot of recruiting by mail, by phone, trying to
get interested seniors to make their decision to come to UNR and be in our
band program. Rick Oxybie; After organizing and recruiting the band, McGranahan was faced
with the task of taking a hundred and sixteen students, forty-five of which had never marched before, and
preparing them for the first performance which was only three weeks away. Mac McGranahan; We
started before school was in session. It was about an eight-hour day for eight or
nine days and then we began our regular schedule, which now, is we rehearse as a
band from 4 o'clock to 6 o'clock in the evenings Tuesday through Friday. Monday
we're off. Rick Oxybie; Getting the routines down for halftime shows was often very
frustrating for McGranahan and his band, but it was often fun at the same
time. Mac McGranahan; Scott, hey hold it. Sing your parts this time. Just sing em'. Ready.
Here we go.
[Miscellaneous]
Rick Oxybie; Directing the band on the field is drum major, Dan [inaudible],
a music major, who hopes to teach music in the future. He enjoys his role
with a band and doesn't really mind the practice time doesn't fit into schedule well.
Dan; It does take a lot of my time, so I have to take a light load in the fall, but I
enjoy it and I don't regret taking it at all. Rick Oxybie; McGranahan says the public's response
to the marching band has been terrific. He thanks the tremendous support of
enthusiastic boosters and especially his graduate assistants, Larry Machado, Shelly
Smithwick, and John Whacker, for the appreciation the band has received.
Things have gone relatively smoothly for McGranahan and the band in their
first year together. They had no real problems until the middle of the season,
anyway, when they were caught in an embarrassing predicament at the
homecoming game. Mac McGranahan; Problems, actually, we didn't encounter any problems into our
homecoming game and we were out on the field past one o'clock and we cost our
team fifteen-yard penalty. That's the only major problem I know of at this point.
Rick Oxybie; The 1980 football season is over and the new band has done its last UNR halftime
show, but if McGranahan gets his wish, the marching band will have another
performance to prepare for before the end of the school year. He hopes to have
the band represent Nevada at the inaugural parade in Washington, DC. Nearly
ten years ago, the UNR marching band died because of a lack of interest and
funding. Will the new bands suffer the same fate as its predecessor? McGranahan
doesn't think so. Mac McGranahan; I think it's a tradition. I think it's here to stay for,
probably last forever.
Rick Oxybie; For Nevada Weekly, this is Rick Oxybie, reporting.
Terrie Nault; Thank you for joining us this morning, hope you enjoyed the show and be sure to
tune in on Sunday December 21st and that's at 6:30 p.m. for Nevada Weekly's
Christmas Special. John will be back. We'll be looking for you then. Have a
good day.
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