Where science and tech meet creativity.

There are certain moments that get burned into your memory. for me, one of those moments is the morning of August 4, 2008. I was sitting on the floor in Lynn Cominsky’s house getting ready for a teacher training workshop at Sonoma State. Flipping through my email I was stopped cold by a message that Jeff Medkeff, the Blue Collar Scientist, had died of Liver Cancer. While I had never met him personally, he was someone I knew as a fellow doer and teacher of astronomy. He was an asteroid hunter and blogger, and a mentor to countless observers and also to young new media communicators of science. He was a kindred spirit and someone I respected.

And he was gone.

That year at Dragon*Con, the podcasting track (which was conjoined with the skeptics track back then) passed the hat and raised money in Jeff’s honor. That was the start of what would grow into the yearly Atlanta Star Party, a charity event that has previously raised money for the Leukemia Foundation.

This year, this charity in honor of Jeff asked if they could use their event to raise funds for CosmoQuest. This is one of those things that left me without words. I said yes, but yes is to little of a word to encompass all the things I felt but lacked (and still lack) the words to say.

On August 29, 2013 the Atlanta Star Party will take place at The Emory Math & Science Center (400 Dowman Dr., Atlanta, GA 30322). Speakers will include: Phil Plait, Nicole Gugliucci, Derek Demeter, and me. You can learn more and buy tickets here.

I am still without words to describe how I feel about this. All I can say is “Yes. Thank you.”