kiatomyheart
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Latest Posts by kiatomyheart
LaRue Burbank, mathematician and computer, is just one of the many women who were instrumental to NASA missions.
4 Little Known Women Who Made Huge Contributions to NASA
Women have always played a significant role at NASA and its predecessor NACA, although for much of the agency’s history, they received neither the praise nor recognition that their contributions deserved. To celebrate Women’s History Month – and properly highlight some of the little-known women-led accomplishments of NASA’s early history – our archivists gathered the stories of four women whose work was critical to NASA’s success and paved the way for future generations.
LaRue Burbank: One of the Women Who Helped Land a Man on the Moon
LaRue Burbank was a trailblazing mathematician at NASA. Hired in 1954 at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory (now NASA’s Langley Research Center), she, like many other young women at NACA, the predecessor to NASA, had a bachelor's degree in mathematics. But unlike most, she also had a physics degree. For the next four years, she worked as a "human computer," conducting complex data analyses for engineers using calculators, slide rules, and other instruments. After NASA's founding, she continued this vital work for Project Mercury.
In 1962, she transferred to the newly established Manned Spacecraft Center (now NASA’s Johnson Space Center) in Houston, becoming one of the few female professionals and managers there. Her expertise in electronics engineering led her to develop critical display systems used by flight controllers in Mission Control to monitor spacecraft during missions. Her work on the Apollo missions was vital to achieving President Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the Moon.
Eilene Galloway: How NASA became… NASA
Eilene Galloway wasn't a NASA employee, but she played a huge role in its very creation. In 1957, after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, Senator Richard Russell Jr. called on Galloway, an expert on the Atomic Energy Act, to write a report on the U.S. response to the space race. Initially, legislators aimed to essentially re-write the Atomic Energy Act to handle the U.S. space goals. However, Galloway argued that the existing military framework wouldn't suffice – a new agency was needed to oversee both military and civilian aspects of space exploration. This included not just defense, but also meteorology, communications, and international cooperation.
Her work on the National Aeronautics and Space Act ensured NASA had the power to accomplish all these goals, without limitations from the Department of Defense or restrictions on international agreements. Galloway is even to thank for the name "National Aeronautics and Space Administration", as initially NASA was to be called “National Aeronautics and Space Agency” which was deemed to not carry enough weight and status for the wide-ranging role that NASA was to fill.
Barbara Scott: The “Star Trek Nerd” Who Led Our Understanding of the Stars
A self-described "Star Trek nerd," Barbara Scott's passion for space wasn't steered toward engineering by her guidance counselor. But that didn't stop her! Fueled by her love of math and computer science, she landed at Goddard Spaceflight Center in 1977. One of the first women working on flight software, Barbara's coding skills became instrumental on missions like the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) and the Thermal Canister Experiment on the Space Shuttle's STS-3. For the final decade of her impressive career, Scott managed the flight software for the iconic Hubble Space Telescope, a testament to her dedication to space exploration.
Dr. Claire Parkinson: An Early Pioneer in Climate Science Whose Work is Still Saving Lives
Dr. Claire Parkinson's love of math blossomed into a passion for climate science. Inspired by the Moon landing, and the fight for civil rights, she pursued a graduate degree in climatology. In 1978, her talents landed her at Goddard, where she continued her research on sea ice modeling. But Parkinson's impact goes beyond theory. She began analyzing satellite data, leading to a groundbreaking discovery: a decline in Arctic sea ice coverage between 1973 and 1987. This critical finding caught the attention of Senator Al Gore, highlighting the urgency of climate change.
Parkinson's leadership extended beyond research. As Project Scientist for the Aqua satellite, she championed making its data freely available. This real-time information has benefitted countless projects, from wildfire management to weather forecasting, even aiding in monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic. Parkinson's dedication to understanding sea ice patterns and the impact of climate change continues to be a valuable resource for our planet.
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Untitled painting by Daniel F. Gerhartz/ excerpts from 'Text me when you get home' by Kayleen Schaefer/ 'Hinds feet' by Daniel F. Gerhartz
2025 GRAMMY Nominations for Sabrina Carpenter and Short n' Sweet
scenery in suzhou and hangzhou of china by 陈帆fotochen
Women in Engineering
So I don’t really post personal stuff on here (ie never do) but I just need to get something off my chest and I don’t know where else to put it. Bear with me for a bit or skip it entirely.
At the start of last week I began my engineering graduate scheme (won’t mention the company for obvious reasons). This has been the culmination of working towards an engineering career for 10 years now - since I was a teenager. GCSEs, A - Levels, a Year in Industry, Summer Internship and a 4 year Masters degree later is all it took. But suddenly it just feels numb. And I think I know why.
I am the only woman in the room.
I always knew in some regard that I would be in the minority. I went to an all girls engineering specialist secondary school, and though up until I was 16 I didn’t have a single guy in my lessons, I knew. From searching for role models of my gender and finding none, to all my engineering teachers being male and being surrounded by male only teams with my all-female electric racecar team at tracks, I was aware that I was in a sweet spot and that going to uni would be a different matter.
However, I got to uni and it wasn’t that bad. My course was big, and though women were still in the minority, there were about 20% girls, more than I was expecting. I made some great friends of every gender, and though I did have a few run ins with sexist prats, mostly everyone was pretty supportive.
And then this. I came into a grad scheme full of hope. To enter a room of only 10 people - and I was the only girl. Guess the 10% rule holds.
I don’t know why it’s hit me so hard now. Maybe it’s because I did an internship there last summer and there were about 30% women on it. Maybe it’s just stress from starting a new job. Or maybe the lockdown loneliness is getting to me. But I can’t quite explain the feeling of being worn down and demoralised after having 8 days of introductory talks and having only 1 being led by a woman - who was from the commercial department. Not a single female engineer.
Even being introduced to my team and the office - there was not a single female engineer on my team, let alone on my floor. I know there are a few in the company, but it’s just really isolating to start a new job with a sinking feeling of how it’s going to be an uphill battle.
I guess I don’t have anything insightful to say at the end of this. I know I have to keep going - I’ve wanted this and I will get it no matter what. I can only hope that I can kick down a few doors in my career, and at least make an easier path for those who follow, so that they may go further that I will.
I think a lot about what it is to be a woman in science, but I have the inherent privilege that comes with being a white woman to shield me from the worst of it. I had an absolutely eye opening conversation with classmate of mine last year, and I’d like to share it with y’all.
This other lab member of mine became a great friend of mine around the time I decided to switch labs. She had a different PI and was a year ahead of me, so I was comfortable bringing my concerns to her. Her support was instrumental in my decision and my current happiness in my new lab. She presented in a lab meeting the day I went to the director of our grad school and requested a change in PIs, so I missed it. I knew she had been nervous (it was meant to prepare her for for her preliminary exam) so I asked her the next day how it had gone.
Now. To put this in context, I need to explain my old PI. He was an almost eighty year old white man, and if it wasn’t his opinion, it was wrong. He was very, very bad at being a PI. He was also probably worse at being a co-worker. I recall at least three lab meetings that devolved into him yelling with another PI, and several student presentations that he was terribly mean and unnecessarily fixated on insignificant details. So it comes as no shock that he went after my friend.
My old PI (who was not involved in bacteria research AT ALL) had taken some issue with the strain of bacteria she was using, one that was selected based on clinical relevancy. This had resulted in a dissolving of my friends presentation into him interrogating her about this strain, interrupting her explanations and generally getting louder and louder and louder until her PI stepped in. Upon hearing all of this, I apologized profusely for his behavior and asked how she was doing now. She expressed to me how she had struggled to remain calm, and how she was ultimately grateful to her PI for de-escalating the situation.
Now here’s the part that hit me hard: my friend explained to me that she was grateful mostly because she wasn’t sure how much longer she would have been able to withstand his nonsense without raising her voice, to which I responded, “he would have deserved it. You were right and he was wrong, and it’s beyond time he was put in his place. He’s not your PI, and he’s not on your committee, so I think you would have been wholly justified in standing up for yourself.”
“If I’d had raised my voice at him, even a little, I would have been labeled an angry black woman, and everyone in that room would have written me off as a stereotype of my race.”
Oh. Ohhhhh. OH that hit me in the heart and the brain and the soul and I’m shocked I didn’t get a bruise. My sweet, strong, smart friend, who was a mom and a wife and a brilliant student and a kind soul, had to weigh every word out of her mouth with a gravity I couldn’t understand, and had never considered until that moment. And it probably says a lot about my white privilege and my bubble I’ve grown up in that I was 24 years old before this came across to me. But this conversation has lived in my head ever since, and my perspective of the world shifted because of it. I think what made this particular incidence so eye opening to me was that being interrogated by this man over stupid details was something that happened to me regularly, and had just pushed me over the edge. Realizing some level of privilege had protected me all along from it being worse was enlightening.
I’ve benefitted my whole life from white privilege (a thing my family doesn’t think exists). I’m nowhere near perfect as an ally or a friend or a person, but I want to be better at standing up for and alongside those who need the protection my privilege offers. I share this now in case it resonates with someone else the way it did with me.
Black lives matter. Black people matter. Your hearts matter and your ideas matter and your feelings and your dignity and hurt and anger and fear. It shouldn’t require stating but it does, and I am so so sorry for your pain, for every situation I wouldn’t think twice in that you have to navigate carefully. I’m sorry, and I stand with you.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s flight harness is transferred from the mock-up structure to the spacecraft flight structure.
Your Body is Wired Like a NASA Space Telescope. Sort Of.
If our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope were alive, its nervous system would be the intricate wiring, or “harness,” that helps different parts of the observatory communicate with one another. Just like the human body sends information through nerves to function, Roman will send commands through this special harness to help achieve its mission: answering longstanding questions about dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanets, among other mind-bending cosmic queries.
Roman’s harness weighs around 1,000 pounds and is made of about 32,000 wires and 900 connectors. If those parts were laid out end-to-end, they would be 45 miles long from start to finish. Coincidentally, the human body’s nerves would span the same distance if lined up. That’s far enough to reach nearly three-fourths of the way to space, twice as far as a marathon, or eight times taller than Mount Everest!
An aerial view of the harness technicians working to secure Roman’s harness to the spacecraft flight structure.
Over a span of two years, 11 technicians spent time at the workbench and perched on ladders, cutting wire to length, carefully cleaning each component, and repeatedly connecting everything together.
Space is usually freezing cold, but spacecraft that are in direct sunlight can get incredibly hot. Roman’s harness went through the Space Environment Simulator – a massive thermal vacuum chamber – to expose the components to the temperatures they’ll experience in space. Technicians “baked” vapors out of the harness to make sure they won’t cause problems later in orbit.
Technicians work to secure Roman’s harness to the interior of the spacecraft flight structure. They are standing in the portion of the spacecraft bus where the propellant tanks will be mounted.
The next step is for engineers to weave the harness through the flight structure in Goddard’s big clean room, a space almost perfectly free of dust and other particles. This process will be ongoing until most of the spacecraft components are assembled. The Roman Space Telescope is set to launch by May 2027.
Learn more about the exciting science this mission will investigate on X and Facebook.
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Deniz Burnham
A former NASA intern, Deniz Burnham started her career as an engineer on an oil rig in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and went on to lead operations on drilling rigs in Canada, Ohio, and Texas. https://go.nasa.gov/3wDpfBo
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A section of NCSX, a fusion reactor so ambitious and advanced for its day that it was cancelled while half-built, in 2008. Each of those massive squiggly copper magnets — of which there were many — had to be held to sub-millimeter precision through many thermal cycles in liquid nitrogen. The vessel is solid inconel. What a beast!
Somebody remind me to write up a more thorough post about the history of stellarators at some point.
Engineer Karen Leadlay working on the analog computers in the space division of General Dynamics, 1964.
Nora AlMatrooshi
Nora AlMatrooshi, the first Emirati woman astronaut, worked as a piping engineer before becoming an astronaut candidate for the United Arab Emirates. https://mbrsc.ae/team/nora/
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Paris, Exposition Universelle (Structure (inside the Palace of the Air, Paris, World Fair), 1937. Florence Henri. Gelatin silver print.
Short N Sweet Tour / MSG
Along the Jialingjiang嘉陵江 in chongqing of china by 山越记
chinese gardens in winter by 糖果味道
滕王阁tengwangge, The Pavilion of Prince Teng, Nanchang, Jiangxi province of China
Shangri-la香格里拉, yunnan province and Daocheng Yading稻城亚丁, sichuan province in china
SABRINA CARPENTER performing at the Short n' Sweet Tour
|| Lizards
Benny x Lu full blurb
Without thinking, because she is twenty four now and has been to the beach and has swam with friends and has lived a life, Lu shucks her dress, her shoes, her slip and dives into the lake, nylon undergarments ruined and only just sufficient to be considered a covering. It’s fine, it’s normal, she comes up to the surface and she knows, somewhere far back in her mind she knows, her chest and its scar is visible but it doesn’t matter. The sun is bright, the water is reflecting so strongly she has to squint and through it all Benny is tossing his hair out of his eyes and laughing between puffs of exertion at treading water. He is laughing at having jumped in, at the fact she went for it, too. It doesn’t matter that her body is on display, as a gruesome curiosity or an incitement to desire.
She is swimming with Benny and it’s all just fine.
It makes the moment so utterly enjoyable Lu feels like all her longing to be out here, to be surrounded by this big vast world— it’s been close to right, very near what she’s needed, it’s just made a little better with him and that’s unfortunate as he lives in Chicago. Benny shouldn’t be in the city, he should be in a sparkling lake with minnows assaulting his feet and diamonds of water caught in his lashes.
They’re laughing at each other, so much so they’re close to drowning, and they don’t have to say why. It’s perfect.
She could count each of his lashes as she swims around him, so close and so circular she’s half minnow herself, Benny’s eyes don’t leave her face and he’s stopped laughing enough to look mildly wary at her antics. She’d like to count his lashes, she realizes, she never really thought of how many there were, distracted perhaps, by his beard at other times.
Back when he had a beard: she knew that about him. Back when she stuffed cardboard into her brassieres: she knew that about her.
She keeps circling him and can’t make any progress on counting his lashes because he begins to laugh again, but it’s short and aggravated and she waits for him to explain it, she knows he will.
“What’re you, half mermaid?” there’s quashed competition in his voice, he’s betrayed at her leaving off their giggle fit to actually swim.
“You sure aren’t.” she laughs back, his neck is almost fully in the water, “Those big strong shoulders can’t hold you up? Am I going to have to tow you to the rock?”
Benny takes the teasing well, his face clears if anything, quick to laugh at himself. “You’ve got an advantage, you come here a lot. I’ve been rottin’ in the city.”
Lu gives an approving nod at his conclusion, it aligns with her own. “Yes, so you’ve gotta fix that. You should come out here more often.”
He doesn’t need to come here. Here with her.
There’s all manner of woods and water and nature just outside his stupid city but that’s not an option somehow, not with the way he’s here with her when he could be in the woods with Jack or out on a boat with Maureen. He chose here, instead.
“Yeah, I should.” Benny just agrees because they don’t have to say all that, say that it feels right and different. It just is for now and they can let it be.
She watches him lay back in the water, floating along with the gentle ripple and his ears are below the water and his eyes are on the big blue sky above them and Lu thinks that’s a perfect idea so she floats back too, staring at the sky they once knew so well, wondering if he misses it like she does- in a way that’s half agony of separation and absolute terror of ever being made to reunite with it.
Bucky doesn’t get that; he’s still flying.
Ida and Gale would still be if their governments weren’t so shit to them.
Jack never wanted to but he’d done it for the country, for his people, because it was right. From how often Benny and Jack see each other, like they’re dosing each other up by sheer proximity, Lu guesses they shared that singular motivation.
She turns her head, one ear clogged and filled with water, her other cheek so far into the lake it’s almost lapping up her one nostril; but she can see Benny floating near her, he has his eyes closed.
He gets it, she thinks, heart so full she could cry from happiness for once.
“-don’t you want to fall asleep like this?” she wants to ask him, says it aloud only because she knows his ears are under the water, his face doesn’t even twitch, his eyelids are smooth without a crease of a squint or a frown around them, his nose is ever so gently upturned and Lu wants to place her hand under his head, keep him like this forever, let him enjoy it like she does, “You could, I’d keep you up, make sure you don’t drown.”
When Benny turns his face to her she blushes hot even in the freshwater lake, he looks like he’s caught her at something she shouldn’t be doing, a chiding look of kindness but it reminds her she shouldn’t be treading water and staring at his face like she loves him. If only he could see himself. He’d understand it then. Anyone would.
It’s Benny. And it’s perfect and before he pulls his head up fully he lets himself sink a little and does a slow lazy flip in the water and she feels him tickle her foot on the way back up.
It’s much the same laying on the toasty flat limestone rocks on the lakeshore. Benny and her, burning their backs on the rock, tender bellies getting scorched by late afternoon sun, underwear drying out as crispy as the grass. He’s got his eyes closed again, lashes fanned out on freckling cheeks. And Lu is watching him once more and thinking how much she’d like to be a couple of lazy lizards with Benny.
She snickers at the thought.
“What’s that?” he hums.
Lu shakes her head, disbelieving that she’s about to embarrass herself like this but at least he still has his eyes closed, “I was thinking that we’re a pair of lizards.” And that she’d like to keep being a lizard with him and have a lizard family.
Benny doesn’t laugh at her, his nose crinkles in a mildly disgusted way but he looks like he’s gotta agree despite it all, she feels so fuzzy by that. “I think my back is gonna stay on the rock when I sit up.”
The clasps of her bra are digging into her spine but, otherwise it’s burning and fabulous and she wants to stay forever. The look on his face, lazily tilted towards hers on the rock with his eyes half masted and open, agrees so eloquently Lu wants to— she doesn’t know. So she settles with reaching out and resting her hand on the browned meat of his pretty shoulder. Benny’s eyes droop further and they chide her ever so gently for the fire it ignites in them both all at once, and Lu would love to be two lizards and stay here forever.
a very big tree in gongqing forest park共青森林公园 in shanghai
early fall in chinese suzhou gardens by 飞行圆
|| Radio ||
Requested plot points? ☑️
Circa: early February 1944
Immediate previous fic: Favorite Escape
Summary: when your hodge podge radio won’t work, who should ya call? Probably the flight engineer
Warnings: usual universe warnings apply, 18+ but nothing very alarming really happens in this one, references to others are made, some potential slut shaming in the beginning if ya squint? perhaps some queer baiting but it’s the Buckies rolling around on the flooor, they’re one massive queer bait lbr, it’s not me. Also. My shit Crystal Radio making descriptions- don’t come for me I haven’t made one and I spent five hours falling down a rabbit hole as to how the guys made them in the camps and at the end of the day I said: screw it! And went with one of the Brit’s scenarios 🍻
Edited only by my tired little eyes, full warning and have mercy 💋
Also, just a note I feel compelled to make- this fic centers around women in the army, in a war, which they’re spending under dire conditions in a POW camp. Yes there is love here, there is also hierarchy and discipline and the enforcement of that does not make one character or another necessarily callous or less loving. They are their ranks first and foremost as all signed up for.
“They’re forging papers, you know.” Maureen broached the topic to Egan one day, late February and when her cheeks were still bruised from Ida’s book.
Bucky paused his tracing of a map, sooty finger trailing along a river with the same incomprehensible name as its twin running parallel, he didn’t know anything about papers or anyone making them and she knew that. “Who?”
“Good ones. Identification, passports.” She enumerated.
“Who?”
“The Poles. The ones with the-“
“-the liquor.” he finished for her, remembrance and condemnation heavy in his wry tone. “The ones you stayed out all night with.”
“Stayed long enough for them to get drunk enough to show me.”she replied, without heat, which was surprising.
“Some grand plan of yours, huh?” He bit back a laugh, it was a fine way to cover her ass for being insubordinate. It was a way he’d likely try if he was in her place.
“No.” she swore instead. “Just luck, I happened to see them. They got careless. Maybe an answer to all Jack’s prayers.”
“Yeah. Anything to give that rosary a break.”
“Yeah.”
“You asked them?”
“What for?”
Bucky regarded her with thinning patience but something kept him from snapping, the feeling of a riddle still to be solved. “For some papers.” he clarified, measured and intent, she knew how much easier that would make their plans for Ida.
Maureen shook her head, glancing down at her twisting hands, “I didn’t want to-“ her mouth twisted too, “-I wanted to ask a superior first.”
Bucky considered that for a moment, slightly touched at her newfound wisdom, “Why not ask Buck?”
She shook her head again, auburn hair curling under her chin just so, even here in the stalag she had some traces of the old charm. “He’s got too much to worry about for me to be bringing in hypotheticals.” she was so upset by something she would not even meet John’s eye and he felt a slice of remorse for how he hadn’t even noticed the ground down change in her since she got here, his drinking buddy and the soft fleshed rival of merry old English days was a gruff and battered and sullen woman; being a red blooded American male, he regretted that dismal change. “And I'm worried about what to bargain with. What can I promise? We haven’t got much and I don’t have— there’s not much anyway, but what we’ve got I didn’t wanna promise. Not without-“ she still hadn’t met his eye, he tracked hers; a furious roving of pale blue back and forth across the floorboards and it made Bucky itch.
“Who signs these papers?” Bucky asked, thinking the logistics through, knowing she’d perk up if he brought them up.
“Haven’t a clue. Maybe they haven’t figured that part out yet. I don’t know. I just know they’ve got papers.”
“Good ones.”
“Yeah.”
“We haven’t got much.” he agreed, clicking his teeth in thought, “What’d you give them for the liquor?”
“They just invited me.”
“Didn’t have to lend a hand or nothin’?” he balked and Maureen threw him a glare that seemed more hurt than rage, and chastened by a voice inside that sounded much like his mama’s, he amended with sheepish humor, “Hell, feel like lending a hand myself these days, if it’d get me a whisky.”
Her gnarled fist curled white in her lap, she managed hoarsely, “They just wanted to talk about home. To someone who hadn’t heard about it a million times before.”
“They got cigarettes?” he asked.
“As most common payment for their booze -they’ve got enough to insulate their shack three deep.”
“Cigarettes won’t cut it then.”
“I’ve been thinking.”-
“Yeah?”
“The radio. I’m the only one who doesn’t think it’s worth the risk but, I know, it doesn’t matter, it’s happening. Gale’s going to keep trying. And if it works-“ she rubbed at her eyes, tired and unsure, “-that’s quite the bargaining chip.”
Bucky nodded slowly, eyes narrowing as his smile grew a touch broader, “News of the outside world.” he was half in agreement, “Buck asked for a week. Been four days.”
“He’s stumped.” Maureen retorted instantly. “And he’ll stay that way and he’ll go nuts and you’ll go die going over the fence and then he’ll have no reason left not to die too.”
Bucky whistled, low and chiding, “You’re full of rainbows today, Candy.”
“You know who he oughta ask.” she shook off the barb. “But he won’t. And I don’t want him risking it for this thing anymore than anyone else, but you all want it so bad, and they’ll shoot us for it if it works or not. I’m not asking her. But you would. Might as well get shot for it working, right? Isn't that what you said yesterday? You know who he should ask.”
Bucky’s keen eyes showed the moment it dawned on him, his eyebrows shot up and his mouth sagged and he ran a weathered hand over his face, “Awww shit, Candy.” came garbled behind his palm. “Ah shit.” he said again with conviction as he shoved the hand into his pocket, wretched acknowledgment of her point clear on his face.
“I didn’t want to suggest it, told Ida it’s a fucking dangerous thing and I’ll never forgive if— but you all—“
Bucky grounded aloud, “Nah, nah she’s -Lu would solve it.” he muttered, shushing her. “Demarco really pummeled you the other day, huh?” he added, and that got her to meet his eye, she looked spooked and a little incensed, “Saw him fuckin’ you up behind B compound but sheesh, s’like he hollowed you out worse than a jacolantern; yer shifty as hell.”
“He-“ Maureen still felt like blanching at the memory of Benny’s terribly correct opinions, his disappointed eyes and his fist full of her flight jacket asking her what in the living fuck was wrong with her besides a concussion, a sick childhood and an ever nauseating jealousy of Buck Cleven’s paternal time and effort, “-he had some admonitions. After…after the other night.”
Bucky hummed, shitty smirk taking up residence on his face, “How ‘bout that.”
“I’m gonna be better.” she muttered and Bucky felt for her, could almost taste the echo of his identical and hollow determination to climb the mountain of bad habits when weak from spuds and pneumonia. He told himself the same every morning and fell into bed condoning his failure every night, like a ritual.
“You’re gonna get us those papers.” he corrected, shoving off the wall to come near her, give her the full Major treatment and maybe a friendly hand, “And you can promise your drinkin’ buddies news from the radio.”
Maureen nodded in understanding, no joy or animation left in her green eyes. She used to enjoy a bit of subterfuge, now she only felt hollow misery at the thought that she'd dragged Lu into this, too. This risk she hated so much and yet no one cared. Lu would be glad to be dragged in, it’s true, she was itching at the chance to be useful and to make Gale proud, it’s how the girl was wired. It’s how most girls were wired, Maureen supposed, desperate to make Gale Cleven approve. Lu’s enthusiasm wouldn’t make the sight of her being made to kneel in the mud and have a bullet put in her head any easier, wouldn’t make Maureen feel any less responsible for it when her lifeless body thudded to the earth.
All that lovely goodness stamped out.
Over a radio.
Bucky’s hand felt too hard and too big on her shoulder. He had gone before the vision cleared, mud and wire and the freezing main square at Ravensbruck fading back to the musty bunk room. Maureen shook herself and stood up to make herself somehow appealing, reamniante some semblance of the cheerful rashness that had led her to the Polish combine in the first place: she found it hard to inspire. She’d like to count that a victory but she knew better, she wasn’t reformed she was just tired.
A washed face and a fake smile and the promise of news from outside would have to be enough to bank all their risks on, it would have to be.
“Crank,” she greeted the man in the hall, flashing him clean, water brushed teeth and her gentlest, freshly soot lined eyes, “I’ve been tasked by Major Egan with an errand, spare a minute to babysit me?”
__________________________________
Bucky finds Buck Cleven in his own bunkroom, Demarco outside on watch and that’s all Bucky needs to know to guess the radio is out and Buck’s working like a fiend yet again to make it work. Sure enough, he’s hunched over the table with it, mittened hands shaking from cold and exhaustion and a sheen of sweat on his forehead despite the paltry sweater he wears.
Bucky walks in and Gale gives him a soft, acknowledging glance before continuing to his work. Bucky takes up his usual place behind Buck’s left shoulder to watch and Buck, being used to it, goes on.
“My little Kriegie Marconi, huh?” Bucky allows the nagging impulse he has felt for weeks while standing in this position to finally exert itself, and his forefinger lifts and swirls in the curling gold strands of hair at the nape of Gale’s neck, his friend almost bolts away but then seems to choose a prey’s tactic and just stills, goes very still and Bucky scritches the scalp beneath his grab in assurance he don’t meant anything by it. He doesn’t think he does, at least.
Gale, wary and with a voice close to mechanized it’s so stilted, inquires with ever-present politeness, “You alright Bucky?”
It’s better than that whole ‘major’ business; getting called Major as if that meant shit anymore. “Yeah, ‘course I am.” Bucky rakes his fingers through the hairs there at the nape of that dainty neck, scritches the scalp with all four of his main ones, and uncovers a white long scar sliding round once he lifts the hairs there. “Why wouldn’t I be? Gonna be a father soon.”
Buck does jerk then, away from his touch and wheeling his chair around to glare at Bucky; it’s an impressively executed little pirouette and John misses the feel of his warm neck and oil soft hair. “Jesus John.” he reprimands.
“We’re gonna get outta here Buck.” John swears, he’s so sure of it because he cannot in all his thinking and predicting ever imagine a scenario where they don’t, and he chooses to think it’s not delusion but a good omen. “Ida’s gonna have that baby and when it’s safe we’ll all meet up.”
Gale is looking at him like he’s his own father again, Bucky knows that look, it always makes him equal parts ashamed and desperate, “Jus’ like that.” Gale mocks in a husky gust.
It’s devastating, and it’s intended to be, and Bucky could bear that with better humor if he could still touch Gale and his hair. “Just like that.”
Gale hums and it’s a mean sorta vocalization that makes Bucky’s heart thud and his skin prickle hot, it’s the kinda noise you kiss off a person, he thinks, but it’s Buck and so he doesn’t know what to do with it. “It’s gonna get you killed.” Buck is saying instead and Bucky lets him, “I know you all think she’s cracked up and maybe she has but it wouldn’t hurt to listen to Kendeigh sometimes when she’s tellin’ ya shit that a five year old could accurately guess, -goddamn it.”
His voice rose to a strong rage by the end and Bucky takes a chair opposite him, sick of standing there like a dumb dog waiting for his scolding to be over. “So what.” Bucky challenges him, “We just wait around and Brady pops out a child and the krauts let us keep it and it’s our new mascot and we all sing zippidy doo da, huh? Huh, Buck?”
Gale’s hands fell away from his face with a slam to the table, a shocking degree of anger showing for a split second and it gave Bucky an odd degree of gratification. “I jus’ want you to find a plan with better odds.”
Bucky sniffed and leaned forward, went in for the kill and Gale was looking at him like he expected it, like it was his turn to play daddy to everyone here and Gale for once was so beaten down he wouldn’t just allow the changing of the guard, he was close to angry at its lateness. It made Bucky’s heart thud.
“I’ve been listening to Kendeigh.” Bucky refuted briefly, “And we’ve got a plan.” Gale gave him a tired look of encouragement to go on, “How long’s it been since you slept? Huh, well, we got a plan. Practically perfect, or it will be, just need the radio.”
“Ain’t giving this away.” Gale said, “Not for anythin’, even useless.”
Bucky patted the table top in easy assurance, if he could have reached Buck’s thigh, he’d have patted that instead, “No, no, don’t need to give it away, just need it to work. So,” he softened his voice and his eyes tightened, “I’m callin’ Lu in.”
Oddly, Gale does not fight it. Not aloud, at least. There’s an anguished look of hate on his face and Bucky mirrors it. It’s for this place and the fucking awful choices they have to choose from every goddamn day.
“You run this by Ida?” is all he asks.
Bucky pops his flaking lips audibly, “What, need us both gangin’ up on you to agree? She’ll sign off. Smith’s an officer. Gotta remember that sometimes, Buck.”
The way his Buck swallows hard and dry contradicts his words, “I do remember that.”
“Really?” Bucky’s mouth gives a soft smile of doubtful incredulity and Gale’s mimics it, mournful but a smirk all the same, “Feel like she should answer to ‘Gale’s Baby’ these days. Lieutenant Smith who?”
Gale scoffs, “Careful now.”
“No really, she’s an officer and she wants to be treated like one. It’ll do her good to have work. Her kinda work.”
“Could get her killed.”
“Layin’ in her bunk could do that.”
Gale grunts, its sounds like an agreement.
“So I say Lieutenant Smith gets put on radio detail. Like her goddamn job description suggests. Huh, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Gale lets out a shaky agreement.
“Aaaaand,” Bucky draws it out as he rises again and saunters over to Buck who is ready for him and loose this time, “how bout I go back to bein’ the one you’re frettin’ ‘bout all the time. Got me almost jealous of the girl. How ‘bout I do. Huh?”
Gale’s scoff is fond as anything as he looks up at John with cheerful derision, “And you ‘bout to be a father? Make me an old man? Fuck no, ya looney.”
“Alright.” Bucky concedes with hands up in surrender before lurching forward and grasping Gale’s rickety chair back by its wobbly spokes and hefting it partially off the ground, beautiful and outraged prude of an occupant still seated in it, “Then I’ll play daddy and put you to bed, how ‘bout that.”
“John Egan for fucks sake-“ Gale’s fists pounded on the meat of his shoulders and his outraged protests wafted against Bucky’s neck and his jabbing knees collided with the meat of his thighs and Bucky hadn’t felt so close to him or so happy to be alive since England.
“Major sir, the hell is goin’ on?” Demarco’s tame inquiry from the safety of the doorway made them both lose their grapple and they collided together onto the floor, bunk bed barely missed by their heads and the hapless chair mixed up between their limbs.
Bucky grinned, hip sore from his fall and kidneys suffering from Buck’s trapped elbow there, “Puttin’ Goldilocks to bed.” he replied.
DeMarco processed that and the scene before him with grave sobriety before saluting lazily and turning to go, “Right on, sir.”
John did his best to rise up without further pinching Gale who was indeed trapped beside him and beneath him, chair legs wound between a lanky human leg in a puzzle that Bucky realized might take some caution to untangle without harm. Strangely, Buck wasn’t moving, he was just looking up at him like a cat would their clumsy master who has done somethin’ stupid which was a surprise to neither. It was so innocuous a look and so nostalgic, it winded Bucky with the realization he hadn’t seen it in ages, just as he hadn’t felt his boney ribs against his own and the feel of his elegant hands yanking him around in a fight. This miserable place really was stomping out the glow in the best people.
“Ya know Buck,” he ventured, clearing his throat for extra casualness, “I’ve missed you.” When Gale only kept looking up at him, perfect porcelain face with its unsettling scars and wary eyes without a lick of storm in them, John Egan grabbed his shovel and dug his own grave a little deeper, drug a finger down his cheek. “Missed all this.”
Bucky didn’t know what he meant by “this” but it felt safer and worse all at once, since he did miss Buck but he and Buck never used to hang out on floors with a chair as chaperone. Mercifully, Buck neither points that out nor moves away, acting very much like he needed to heaped on the floor with Bucky and a stray chair every bit as much as John did. Like it’s doing him good.
“And you couldn’t’ve jus’ said.” Gale murmurs with the softest eye roll of the century and Bucky feels like beaming and it must show in his face so strong and bright after a sunless winter that after a flash Gale’s cheeks flame from it and he averts his eyes.
“I dunno Buck, could I?” Egan asks one blushing cheek and Gale hasn’t got a good reply for that, so they just lay there on the floor.
“Go on now, get off me.” Gale doesn’t shove at him, he presses his hand to John’s forehead like he would a dog and John goes, obedient as one.
———————————————————————-
They found Lu with Murph and Benny and Brady, measuring out what seemed to be lot lines between Love Shack #9 and the next combine, boot scuffed perimeters already visible in the light snow and drawn in a decently tidy rectangle. There were guards loitering nearby, nosey as always with their cigarettes and their antsy dogs anytime someone did something out there besides piss or pace or stare at the fence.
“What’s all this?” Bucky inquired cheerfully, coming up to them with Gale, bundled and shivering behind him.
Benny looked up from tilling a furrow with his boot, right where Lu’s mittened finger pointed out. “It’s for the garden. S’posed to be spring before long.”
“A Chicago man oughta know better, Benny.” Egan snarked.
“Need us?”
Bucky sniffed, a casual set to his body that belied his quest, “Just the little one.”
Smith promptly looked startled, then eager. “All well Majors?”
“Need your advice on the color of my cufflinks with this suit.” Bucky extended his arm and beckoned her, “C’mon back in for a minute. One of you too, need a watch to go with the cufflinks.”
———————————————————————
With Benny on guard, Brady and Kendeigh having excavated the radio’s shell from the floorboard and table leg in which it resided, the Buckies stood over Smith’s small frame as she sat at the table and inspected the simplistic device with keen eyed appreciation for the construct.
“It’s really marvelous.” she assured Cleven, running her fingers over the carefully coiled wire and precarious pin.
Gale didn’t even crack a smile. “What’s wrong with it?” he asked instead.
She shook her head, a frown gathering. “Never made one-“ she cautioned.
“-but you get the idea.”
“Yes sir, I do.”
“So what’s wrong.”
Lu ran her fingers over the wire, again and again, the dusty metal not insulated, just bare copper, likely stripped from somewhere. It reminded her of early days as a cadet when they threw chicken wire mixed with hydraulic lines at herself and her fellow rookie engineers and told them to sort it, testing to see if they knew which was which. It had been so rudimentary she had wanted to laugh until she realized others were being flunked.
This was so basic she was stumped.
“Take your time, Lu.” Bucky spoke up after a burdened pause during which she could almost feel Major Cleven breathing down her neck.
“Candy, can I try with the headphone?” she asked at last, frustrated and out of her element, just a few months out of a plane and she had already lost her touch.
Maureen passed it over and Lu pressed it to her ear, not to discern what was quite obviously radio silence, but to imagine the whole process in reverse, track it down the cord all the way to the base, each possible breakdown of the conduction.
She fingered the ramshackle diode with burgeoning suspicion. “What’s your crystal?”
“That’s just…lead.” Cleven muttered.
“From?”
“Ground pencils.” Bucky supplied cheerfully.
Smith bit her lip, “We need sulfur added. Lead won’t conduct on its own.” She figured Cleven knew that, the grim and unmoving set of his mouth suggested so.
“Just- sulfur?” Maureen asked.
“If I had sulfur we could add it to the lead dust, ignite it and-“ Smith grinned at Kendeigh, knowing that she alone may have shared her enjoyment of a small conflagration from time to time, “burn it down and you’ve got something close enough to Galena. Just need a pinch of it should work.”
Bucky shoved his hands in his pockets and surveyed the mostly morose room. All except for the two girls grinning at each other over the hypothetical of a little chemistry experiment in a highly flammable wooden combine.
“We’ve got sandy soil.” Buck’s contemplative drawl spoke up, “Dunno if we could extract enough pure sulfur.”
Maureen stared back at Egan instead, “Other sectors have gotten portions of kits, chemistry kits, radio kits, they’ve been smuggled in with all sorts of stuff. Inside of a violin, oat bags. Nothing to fully build something. They might have sulfur. I could make inquiries and- well, Jack could pick it up next time the band goes over C compound to entertain the poor Aussie bastards.”
“How do you kno- nevermind, actually. Nevermind.” Bucky broke off, “Alright. Sure, why not. Ya sure that’s it?” he asked Lu once more.
She gave a helpless little shrug. “Gotta be. Or the wire’s dirty. Where’d it come from anyway?”
Gale gave Bucky a long suffering look as Bucky seemed to swell a couple inches and bounce back on his heels at the mention of his scrounging prowess. “The lamp.” he nodded above them all.
Jack Brady scoffed, short, clipped, betrayed, “That why it cuts out all the time? Strobed us so bad last night -thought the room was possessed.”
“Sacrifices Jack, sacrifices.”
———————————————————
Benny had hauled in enough water buckets to elicit some negative attention from the guards, and when the inspection came the inmates of the Love Shack insisted the drenched floors and table of the Majors’ barracks were due to sanitation post regurgitation. At night, with only one stolen torch light from Combine 15 to illuminate the endeavor, a basin of water beneath a smaller bowl in which lay their precious and recently procured ingredients, a science experiment began. The Majors and Ida gathered round, all looking as ghastly and spectral in the light of the flashlight as Brady’s fake ghost. It held the thrill of a bonfire night except for the stakes, which all in the room did their best not to dwell on.
“Zippo, Candy.” Lu gave the word and Maureen, with only the protection of Ida’s bent aviators to keep from a scorched cornea, flicked on her lighter and set the mixed powders ablaze.
It flamed up high and smelly, making Benny gag and mutter something about Meatball’s gas to a tittering Brady, and then died down to a yellow smoking ember.
“We should let it sit.” Lu surmised with a squeeze to Maureen’s only somewhat singed hand, her big dark eyes surveying the burnt bowl and their smoking experiment with glittery excitement at the possibility of success, “Let it cool, settle, maybe strain it. Can you get me a net? Oh Candy come now, get me a strainer?” she begged with a laugh as Maureen rolled her eyes at the idea of yet another trip to the Stalag Market for the most random items imaginable. If they hoped to not be suspicious, they’d need better lies or more money.
“How about cheesecloth?” Kendeigh tried not to grin indulgently- and failed- in the face of Lu and having recently been allowed to set something on fire
Lu kissed her cheek. “Cheesecloth would be perfect.”
In the end, cheesecloth did indeed prove perfect, and amongst the burnt dust of the combined minerals was a gritty little pinch full of the needed crystals. Or so Lu said, Gale agreed but the crease between his brows hadn’t lifted for two days; Bucky’s fingers had begun to twitch in antsy need to manually smooth them out. He imagined Maureen felt the same but she hadn’t said, uncharacteristically forbearant now she had some job to keep her sane. Even if it was playing fetch for Lu.
—————————————————————
“Well, this is it.” Gale muttered when the watch had been set once more, Murph and Hambone on the steps, Crank inside, Brady at the door, Benny at the window. Even Major Clark had joined them in the barracks for this final try and Lu’s cheeks were maroon from the attention even as her deft hands steadily pressed her concoction beneath its intended rod.
“Pass me the pliers, sir?” She asked and for a moment, the teacher became the apprentice and Gale fetched her the stalag forged tool, rudimentary like everything here yet the gripped and pulled and lifted same as the pliers back home. “You could check your look in this wire’s reflection.” She complimented Gale’s buffing of the copper wire.
He shrugged in turn. “Didn't wanna leave anythin’ to chance. That it?” he asked as her hands stalled and she surveyed her work.
Lu nodded solemnly. “Yes sir.”
Gale picked up the headphone from in front of him on the table like it was a gun he was about to bring to his head. “Here.” He extended it to her instead, “S’right, it was your job, you should be the first. Cmon.”
Despite her voiceless protest he pressed the headphones into her hands and Lu, never knowing how to disobey an officer, folded immediately.
For a good ten seconds everyone in the room held their breath as Smith pressed the headphone to her ear and gently wiggled the clothespin along the wire, searching and tuning, her face holding that old peaceful concentration they hadn’t seen since the last mission. She was at home with her mind tuned to another dimension. The pilots in the room knew that look, that was the look of someone at home with something that terrified them all the same, the gut swooping feeling of clearing the take off and sledding along the tops of the clouds. Wrong and strange and utterly incomparable to others, it was the closest to home one’s mind could be. Lu belonged somewhere on those electric currents and searching them out was like finding oneself again.
Then at last, Lu’s eyes sharpened out of their dreamy haze of concentration and she said, gentle as always, “It’s the BBC sir.”
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Sabrina Carpenter and Jenna Ortega TASTE (2024) Dir. Dave Meyers Styled by: Ronnie Hart and Enrique Melendez
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE — Sabrina Carpenter, 2024
JENNA ORTEGA🩸 Taste (2024) Scream VI (2023) Wednesday (2022)
Well, I heard you're back together and if that's true You'll just have to taste me when he's kissin' you If you want forever, I bet you do (I bet you do) Just know you'll taste me too
SABRINA CARPENTER and JENNA ORTEGA — Sabrina Carpenter: Taste (Official Video)