Saturday at IBRRC

When the e-mail goes out requesting a volunteer to transport birds, you better be at your keyboard, because everyone loves to release healthy birds back to nature - especially pelicans!

My job was to help catch and ready 16 pelicans that were cleared for release. It was a pelican rodeo! Care is needed, however, not to maim or get maimed. Loading up the birds for their trip to the coast are a number of lucky volunteers. We are now down to about 24 pelicans - yeah!

Below, is Megan Prelinger. She was a rehab manager at IBRRC for a few years, but still comes back to volunteer or sub for the current manager, Marie.

At lunch, Megan showed us an advance copy of the book she just finished. She put about 4,000 hours into it, including research at the archives in Wahington DC. Megan explained that she had an early interest in space travel as a child of the late fifties/early sixties. Advertising and other media fed imaginations of how space travel would look, but it turned out to be far from reality. Not being able to find a book on the subject, she wrote one. I can tell you, it looks fascinating, and one of the reviewers, a props manager for Mad Men, states that he wished he had the book earlier. I am continually amazed by the talent and diversity of the staff and volunteers at IBRRC.

Megan's book is due out this May - it will blow your mind!