You can check out the video for Mates of State’s “I Am a Scientist” cover today at Paste Magazine.  Whoo-hoo!

Thank you to: Lindsay Van Dyke for conceiving of and directing the video, Bob Pollard (Needmore Music) for permission for doing the video, Smith College for the fantastic location, our great volunteer cast and crew, and Mates of State for a terrific performance!

Early in the planning for Science Fair, Molly Ledford was considering writing a song called “Raised By Scientists” for Lunch Money to perform.  That didn’t happen (yet?), but I really like the idea of it — it is a very specific way to be raised.  To give one hint of what it was like, at least in the Childs household, I’ll direct you to a piece I wrote three years ago about having a chalkboard in our dining room.  (Incidentally, I just repaired that chalkboard, so it will again have a place of prominence after our move to Austin.)

But for the song of my childhood to be complete, it’d have to be “Raised By Scientists and Feminists.”  To give a hint of that, as I’ve also mentioned, and as the Deedle Deedle Dees memorialized in song, I chose Susan B. Anthony as the subject of a book report, and then dressed up as her to present it — that, along with the fact that I am reliably informed that my first question to potential preschool friends was, “Are you for the ERA?,” should give you a sense of that side of our childhood.

Thus came Science Fair.  The CD, as the liner notes indicate, was inspired by the lives of my parents, Ves and Holly Childs.  My dad (an electrochemist and feminist) died three years ago today — on the summer solstice, which, that year, was also Father’s Day.  I chose today for the Paste Magazine-hosted premiere of the video for Mates of State‘s contribution to the record in part to honor the date.  And then I also asked my mom, whose background you can read about below, to write a little about being a feminist in science and engineering.  Here’s what she wrote:

I was slow in coming to the realization that I was drastically underpaid and disrespected compared to my male coworkers. It was 1964 and I was in my second year of my first off-campus job, at Phillips Petroleum Company. I was using the company’s new IBM 7094 mainframe computer to model and optimize nonlinear systems like gasoline plants, a somewhat harder group of problems than those most of my coworkers were working on.

I knew that my job title (engineering aide) was different from those of my peers (research scientist, computer analyst), though my job was similar; I thought that was because I had been hired more recently than everyone else. I was grateful to have been hired at all, though I had a solid BS degree with a double major in math and chemistry and had done better on the pre-interview tests than anyone else who had ever taken them. The matrix algebra courses I had taken, expecting them to remain entertaining but useless, had actually given me a head start on understanding the project I was hired for.

Two things happened about the same time to open my eyes. First, the project my boss and I had been working on was ready to be written about and published. Second, the company hired another “engineering aide” in my department.

I learned that my boss was hiring another person to work on our project, primarily by writing a journal article; he and my boss would coauthor the article, and I would not. I got to figure out most of the computer coding and engineering simulations and to draw the illustrations for the paper. The article was so long that there was no room even to express thanks to me.

The new engineering aide was a young man with a high school diploma and a drafting class. His job was more clerical than technical. He was paid slightly more than I was.

Because I was a woman, I was classified as a low-paid, low-prestige employee and I was not eligible to publish technical work that I had done. I was enraged. But there was nothing to be done. Sex discrimination was perfectly legal, and, indeed, expected, by everyone except me.

Starting in college, I had worked on “desegregation,” as civil rights activities were then known. I hadn’t realized that women needed protection for their civil rights too. I knew that women in the sciences were regarded as “cute” or as interlopers; a physics professor referred in a class I was in (50 men, two women) to “girls in college looking for their M.R.S. degrees.” I knew that not many women actually worked in science or engineering. But my parents had encouraged me to pursue chemistry, though my high school had offered no science at all – my mother always told me that I could do anything I wanted, and that the women in my family were strong achievers. It had never occurred to me that I might be underpaid or disrespected at a fairly won job that I was doing exceedingly well.

Partly in reaction to my own experiences, soon after our third (and last) child was born, I started working for the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have forbidden having different laws for men and women (excepting obvious areas like privacy and wet nurses). I spent ten years as a full time volunteer; another woman and I ran the field organization in Oklahoma. We lost the last legislative vote by one vote (that of a legislator who told our lobbyists he was going to vote yes, walked onto the floor, and voted no). I believe that, even though we lost, our ERA work made gender discrimination less socially acceptable.

Women still do not have constitutional protection, and job and educational discrimination continue, albeit in more subtle ways. I would really like to know for sure that my children and grandchildren will be treated fairly in school and on the job, regardless of their gender. I would particularly like to be sure that any of my beautiful little granddaughters who wanted to be a scientist or engineer, like me, would have a full opportunity to do so, and to be published when deserved and to be paid equitably. Perhaps this record will contribute toward that end.

– Holly H. Childs

I’m so grateful to my mom, and my entire family, and so proud of all of their work.  It’s not done: One, two, three.

You can pre-order Science Fair now, if you don’t have a local retailer that will be carrying it on its release on July 3.  Proceeds will benefit Girls Inc.’s science education programming.

Family Music Release to Support Girls’ Science & Engineering Education

On July 3, Spare the Rock Records will release Science Fair, eighteen exclusive tracks themed around and benefiting science and engineering education for girls.  The album will feature new and exclusive music from artists including Mates of State, Laura Veirs, Moona Luna (Pistolera‘s kids’ music incarnation), Elizabeth Mitchell, Frances England,Wunmi, Babe the Blue Ox, and many more.  (The track listing is below.)

Extensive research shows that girls, from rural areas to the suburbs to the inner cities, aren’t getting the foundational education they need to get into science fields when they grow up, and so women are significantly underrepresented in science-related fields.  The same research shows that girls are persistently given the message — explicitly or implicitly — that they can’t do science.  Science Fair will be part of changing that, both through the message of the record itself and through the financial contributions it will generate, supporting Girls Inc.’s programs improving girls’ science education.

Science Fair will be the second release from Spare the Rock Records.  In 2010, in response to the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the label released Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti, a benefit for the Haitian People’s Support Project.  Many Hands brought together nearly two dozen artists, including Dan Zanes, Pete Seeger, They Might Be Giants,Elizabeth Mitchell, Jonathan Coulton, Lunch Money, and many more.  Many Hands, named the best family music release of 2010 by Amazon and other sources, has raised $50,000 for Haitian relief.

Science Fair has as producers Elizabeth Mitchell, Molly Ledford (Lunch Money), Dean Jones (Dog on Fleas), and Bill Childs (owner of Spare the Rock Records).  Cover art was donated by El Lohse (http://artbyel.com).  Songs cover myriad subjects, from Marie Curie to butterflies to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

As with Many Hands, after-tax profits will be donated, with Girls Inc.’s science education program the beneficiary.  The release will be available in physical form (distributed by E1) and digitally (at all the usual places).

Tracks (final sequence)

1. Babe the Blue Ox – Surfin’ Minnesota
2. Moona Luna – H2O
3. The Deedle Deedle Dees and IMPACT Repertory Theatre – Time Machine
4. Frances England – Goldilocks Zone
5. The Nields – Butterfly Zone
6. Laura Veirs – Little Black Rock
7. Elizabeth Mitchell – Phytoplankton
8. Mates of State – I Am a Scientist
9. Wunmi – Rainbow
10. Cat & a Bird – Constellation Bound
11. Lunch Money – To Be a Fossil
12. MC Fireworks (with Secret Agent 23 Skidoo) – Rocket Science
13. Renee & Jeremy – (I Wanna Be Like) Madam Curie
14. Rachel Loshak – Oh Girl (with John Munson)
15. Alison Faith Levy & Rudy Trubitt – Deja Vu
16. Lori Henriques – Heisenberg’s Aha!
17. Barbara Brousal – I Wonder
18. Ashley Albert – The Science Fair.

PR Contacts: Stephanie Mayers, stephanie@sparetherock.com, 347-735-0736, or Bill Childs, bill.childs@me.com, 413-387-7267.

First, I’m thrilled to announce that Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti has now raised over $35,000 for the Haitian People’s Support Project!  Wow!

Second, you have another chance to help out and get some great music for your family.  Todd McHatton is guest DJing this week on Spare the Rock and he’s offered to donate every penny he gets from digital sales of his new record this week to the Haitian People’s Support Project.  Go get it at his BandCamp page and buy it for any amount — and all of it will go help HPSP!  That’s awesome.

(And the CD is really good, too!)

We can all agree that selling a t-shirt for girls ages 7 to 16 emblazoned with “Too Pretty to Do Homework, so my brother has to do it for me” is a terrible, terrible idea, right?  (With the caption “Who has time for homework when there’s a new Justin Bieber album out? She’ll love this tee that’s just as cute and sassy as she is.”)  The problems with that shirt (setting aside its awful design) are many — tying appearance to the need to do homework, suggesting getting a boy to do it for you.  Just terrible.

If you’ve been following the show on Facebook, you might have guessed that the next release from Spare the Rock Records will be connected to girls’ education (not yet ready to fully announce it, but soon), and this is exactly the sort of message that is damaging.  And gets me really, really angry.  I intend for this shirt to be a prime example of exactly what we need to do better in messages to our daughters.

JC Penney won’t be getting our back-to-school shopping.  Or any other shopping.

You can contact JC Penney here.  I did already.

Update: It looks like they’ve taken it down.  Good on them as a first step.  How about an acknowledgment that it was a terrible, terrible idea?  Publicly?  Screenshot of what it was is above; click on it for a full-sized view.

Update 2:  They’ve apologized, and in a pretty straightforward, non-“we-apologize-if-you-were-offended” way.  Good on them.

I occasionally forget that the Many Hands CD has had real impact, not just in funds raised for relief, but also for listeners. Then I get an e-mail like this (posted with permission):

Hello,

I’m sitting on a hammock listening to Many Hands, watching the twilight sky darken, about to make my fifth trip to Haiti, overwhelmed once again by the promise and challenge ahead of me as I head to the place of greatest need.

I work with teachers and children all over the country, bringing laptops and creativity and hope and freedom of a sort.  This trip I’ll be reaching another hundred, most of them in Cité Soleil.  I’ll also be glad-handing a bunch of so-serious types, all with power to help so many more, and most who completely miss the point … that we need to free hearts, free minds … that it’s about children being children, that they need a childhood, they need a friend.

Please pass the word to the artists that they’ve given strength to at least one steely-surfaced marshmellow man spending way too much time & money for the kids of Haiti, who listens to the songs along with his 5 year old daughter, over and over and over.

And that one beautiful twilight night in a moment of considerable doubt, Frances England made me cry the shaking kind of sob with the simplicity and truth of “What Friends Are For.”   I wish I could airdrop your CD all across Haiti so the kids there could hear what the kids here are jamming out to in the backseat on the way to their happy, healthy home.  Those kids and these kids . . . there aren’t words.

Anyway, thanks again.

Tim

—

Timothy Falconer
Waveplace Foundation

As you can guess from his signature lines, Tim works with the Waveplace Foundation; he also sent along a link to a video that describes some of their innovative work in Haiti.  Check it out:

And here’s Frances (with Elizabeth Mitchell and Daniel Littleton helping out) doing the song he mentions: