The volunteers are the “Thermometer Team”.

REPLY: Your wish is my command…

REPLY: This is an area where we have virtually no coverage, so yes I’d welcome the help. We have a lack of stations in Arkansas as well.

Looks like where I live (Tennessee) is virtually blank for a 100+ mile radius on the surface stations site, so if you’re not hitting that area during your travels, I’ll try to free up some time in the next 2 months to knock out one or two of them.

REPLY: What part of Tennessee?

Thanks for the flashback. I read that book in high school but wouldn’t for the life of me have remembered that quote.

Someone ought to do an “Andy Warhol” version of a Stevenson Station. (Or a Sal Dali.)

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/realtime-update.html

REPLY: It’s ole number 987

In his 1955 book, Tunnel in the Sky, RH tells a tale of students teleported to a distant planet as a two-day “field test” for their survival course. They get marooned for two years instead. Just before stepping through the teleporter, the protagonist, Rod is warned, “watch out for stobor”. During the adventure Rod suspects that stobor is some kind of monster and that every unknown creature could be stobor, When eventually rescued, Rod asks his teacher about it:

“These are stobor, aren’t they? Little carnivores heavy in front, about the size of a tom cat and eight times as nasty?”
“Why ask me?”
“Well, you warned us all about stobor. All the classes were warned.”
“I suppose these must be stobor,” Matson admitted, “but I did not know what they looked like.” “Huh?”
“Rod, ever planet has its ‘stobor’… all are different. Sometimes more than one sort.” He stopped to tap his pipe. “You remember me telling the class that every planet has unique dangers, different from every other planet in the Galaxy?”
“Yes…”
“Sure, and it meant nothing, a mere intellectual concept. But you have to be afraid of the thing behind the concept, if you are to stay alive. So we personify it… but we don’t tell you what it is. We do it differently each year. It is to warn you that the unknown and deadly can lurk anywhere … and to plant it deep in your guts instead of in your head.”

This lesson is typical Heinlein and not to be forgotten. There are stobor in every neighborhood, all different. Heinlein was making his readers alert to the fact that the world is not looking out for your welfare: it will kill you given the slightest chance. It’s a good lesson, one that lots of people you meet these days have never learned.

Google Heinlein and stobor, if this isn’t enough. Have a good trip and WOFS.

Bill