By Thomas Choinacky
Photos By Mark Valenzuela
It was such a pleasure to share a classy, fun, and exciting evening at the Chemical Heritage Foundation with so many of you for our Science Fair Fundraiser. This event was one for the ages.
In prep for the event I found a lot of pleasure in assisting in the frosting of Becky’s homemade periodic table of elements cookies. Kristen was a master of precision with top layer of frosting the element names on each of them. When I was selling them as a part of the event I realized how happy I was to share information about the odd elements that I learned their names, I’m looking at you Seaborgium and Astatine.
I am honored to have an amazing array of artists from the community building their very own tri-fold science fair projects (everyone had their game faces on) that ranged from serious to completely ridiculous, including projects about water bears, personality tests, and sriracha.
For me, the event was highlighted by Elaine Tuomanen from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital speaking about infectious disease. As a lay person I learned about the limits and extremes of virus and illness. I even learned why it takes months for scientists to develop flu vaccines, but they can develop a pandemic virus vaccine in only a few days/weeks. Dr. Tuomanen’s personal story of her research for the H5N1 virus was particularly fascinating. There is a unique perspective I gained hearing about a virus that I had lived during its period of contagion to vaccine, even though the virus was mainly spread abroad.
Much thanks goes out to everyone who made the event possible and I am so grateful for all the people who were able to make it out to the event. I am proud to say that we made our goal for the fundraiser, and we couldn’t have done it without you! It was truly wonderful to see you all there and make new friends as well. It is moments like this that instill by love for this unique, odd, and beautiful artistic community in Philadelphia.
Now, I am going to try one of the Franklin Fountain ice cream petri dishes that Maria saved for me after the event!
Warmly,
Thomas
