Remember that old English nursery rhyme some of us may have learned as kids?
It was catchy as well as repetitive and progressive.
"The House that Jack Built" is in the form of a cumulative tale or a chain tale or chain story. These tales do not have complex plots, but rather rely on the rhyme and repetition for effect. Each sentence in the story builds on the sentence before, making each sentence an example of an increasingly deeply nested relative clause.
Women breaking into aerospace in the 1980s meet men behaving badly.
As the story progress, the Mission Control Complexes of the S*T*C are upgrading from the Current Data System (CDS) to the Progressive Modernization System (PMS).
Many jokes about PMS, I promise. And one the characters, Monte Duff comments about this new and improved system thrusted on them, in Chapter Thirty-One:
“Otherwise, if you really want to f--- things up, get the government involved.”
In Chapter Sixty-Nine, Samantha (Sam) Matijevic Clark gets her first training in PMS.
For context, below are common techno-jargon for positions inside a Mission Control room.
MC - Mission Controller
PA - Planner Analyst
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Near the end of PMS training, Sam wrote a poem, a parody of the old English nursery rhyme and cumulative tale, This Is the House that Jack Built.
She added cartoons and illustrations about lessons she had learned in PMS class: Building Events with Transactions and Activities and Episodes and Schedule Records…yada, yada, yada…in the context of a mission control team commanding a satellite 20,000 nautical miles away in orbit.
The Event that Sam Built!
By Samantha Matijevic Clark
This is the EVENT that Sam built!
These are the TRANSACTIONS
That lie in the EVENT that Sam built!
This is the ACTIVITY
That has the TRANSACTIONS
That lie in the EVENT that Sam built!
This is the EPISODE
That contains the ACTIVITY
That has the TRANSACTIONS
That lie in the EVENT that Sam built!
Here’s SCHEDULE RECORDS gen’ed by SCO*
That’s tied to the EPISODE
That contains the ACTIVITY
That has the TRANSACTIONS
That lie in the EVENT that Sam built!
Here’s CONFLICT IDENTIFY, full of woe
Of the RECORDS gen’ed by SCO
That’s tied to the EPISODE
That contains the ACTIVITY
That has the TRANSACTIONS
That lie in the EVENT that Sam built!
Here’s the PA, all tattered and torn
Who UPDATED the RECORDS, early one morn
Deconflicting the SCHEDULE, full of woe
That was gen’ed before by SCO
That’s tied to the EPISODE
That contains the ACTIVITY
That has the TRANSACTIONS
That lie in the EVENT that Sam built!
Here’s the MC, who, without delay
APPROVED a CSP**, created one day
INITIALIZED by the PA, all tattered and torn
From UPDATED RECORDS, gen’ed one morn
Deconflicting the SCHEDULE, full of woe
That was gen’ed before by SCO*
That’s tied to the EPISODE
That contains the ACTIVITY
That has the TRANSACTIONS
That lie in the EVENT that Sam built!
This is the SATELLITE, which has great worth
That the MC COMMANDED, down here on earth
Executing DIRECTIVES, without delay
From the CSP, APPROVED one day
INITIALIZED by the PA, all tattered and torn
From UPDATED RECORDS, gen’ed one morn
Deconflicting the SCHEDULE, full of woe
That was gen’ed before by SCO
That’s tied to the EPISODE
That contains the ACTIVITY
That has the TRANSACTIONS
That lie in the EVENT that Sam built!
* SCO: Satisfy Current Objectives
** CSP: Contact Support Plan
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Child's play, right?
To learn more about a day in the life of a mission control team in the 1980s, please feel free to check out:
I had forgotten The House That Jack Built. That was a wonderful video of the whole change poem. Immediately brought to mind A Partridge in a Pear Tree.
From what I read, you must've had intimate knowledge of Mission Control at the Manned (not Womaned) Spacecraft Center. I recall visiting Mission Control when I first came to Houston to the Annual Meeting of AAAS. It was all business then.
And from my experience with women engineers, architects and project managers, there was a lot of resentment and some harassment of the women who were brave enough to enter what was considered a man's world.
When I visited with my brother and his wife about 2008, the Center had become a place of kiddy fun with very little science. Division Mission control one had to join a special tour.
Your chain poem of the Event That Sam Built, is very creative and very in tune with your character in your novel. Bravo!
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From what I read, you must've had intimate knowledge of Mission Control at the Manned (not Womaned) Spacecraft Center. I recall visiting Mission Control when I first came to Houston to the Annual Meeting of AAAS. It was all business then.
And from my experience with women engineers, architects and project managers, there was a lot of resentment and some harassment of the women who were brave enough to enter what was considered a man's world.
When I visited with my brother and his wife about 2008, the Center had become a place of kiddy fun with very little science. Division Mission control one had to join a special tour.
Your chain poem of the Event That Sam Built, is very creative and very in tune with your character in your novel. Bravo!
Ron