"I stumbled into filmmaking. After college, I joined the Peace Corps, serving in Liberia, West Africa. When I came home, I was very lucky to get a job working for Mississippi Education Television in Jackson. The position required the ability to write station breaks. But the challenge of writing out “Stay tuned for Sesame Street, coming up next” quickly waned. So my boss said, “Why don’t you try producing a TV promo?” That took me down into the studio and edit room, where I found the act of combining words, images, and sounds sheer magic . I loved it."
Liberia RPCV Blaine Baggett is executive manager the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Office of Communication and Education
Horn Lake: 'It's a long journey from Mississippi to Mars'
Posted by: will on Friday, July 15, 2005 - 01:02 AM
Lifestyle HERNANDO — This week NASA was forced to suspend the anticipated launch of its Space Shuttle Discovery.
At press time Thursday the launch was scheduled for possible Saturday.
While that division of NASA has dealt with some setbacks, another, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has enjoyed some major accomplishments and attention, most recently the successful landing of its rovers Spirit and Opportunity on Mars in January and in June the Cassini spacecraft arriving at Saturn for a four-year study.
DeSoto County native and former Horn Lake resident Blaine Baggett has been there for it all as the executive manager the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Office of Communication and Education, a job he’s held since 1999.
Baggett oversees the laboratory’s multiple communications activities in media relations, informal and formal education activities, television, Internet, and public outreach services. In 2005 he was awarded NASA’s prestigious Outstanding Leadership Medal. Below is an edited e-mail exchange conducted with Baggett this week.
How often do you get back to Horn Lake and DeSoto County?
BLAINE BAGGETT: All my family has moved away from Horn Lake, but I still have friends there, of course. In a good year I’ll get back to the Memphis area a couple of times. But the Horn Lake where I grew up in the 50s and 60s isn’t there anymore. All the pastures and fields where I once roamed have been swallowed whole by suburbia.
What are some of your memories of growing up in Horn Lake?
BB: Horn Lake wasn’t so much a place as it was a rural area knitted together by the presence of the school. There were two country stores, one of which also served as the post office, two churches (I always joke that Horn Lake offered a wide range of religious offerings: Baptist and Methodist), and, of course, there were the inviting tracks of the Illinois Central Railroad. I spent many an hour looking out the school windows, dreaming of taking the train to somewhere! Looking back, my memories of Horn Lake are of a fairly safe and calm environment, very pastoral and relatively innocent, at least on the surface. My best memories of Horn Lake are of teachers who cared enough about me to keep me, if not on the straight and narrow, at least out of the ditches.
What or who inspired you to become a filmmaker?
BB: I stumbled into filmmaking. After college, I joined the Peace Corps, serving in Liberia, West Africa. When I came home, I was very lucky to get a job working for Mississippi Education Television in Jackson. The position required the ability to write station breaks. But the challenge of writing out “Stay tuned for Sesame Street, coming up next” quickly waned. So my boss said, “Why don’t you try producing a TV promo?” That took me down into the studio and edit room, where I found the act of combining words, images, and sounds sheer magic . I loved it.
Why did you make the jump from working for public television to NASA?
BB: It’s actually not as far fetched as it first sounds. I oversee the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s public communications activities, which includes television production. So my skills were transferable to this position. And much of the content of my television production work, for some reason I still don’t entirely understand - I wasn’t much of a space devotee as a youth - dealt with space topics: astronauts, astronomers, rockets, satellites. So the work of NASA interests me. One of the last projects I was developing before I left public television was going to bring me back to my Mississippi roots: a series on the Delta Blues. I still regret not having done it. By the way, do you know who the most famous native of Horn Lake is? Ironically, someone who very few people in Horn Lake have ever heard of: Walter Hornton, a blues harmonica player. Could he ever blow the harp!
What have been one or two of your greatest challenges in your current position?
BB: There are days when I think about the fact that I’m sitting at the Executive Council table of the world’s premiere center for robotic space exploration and wonder: how did I ever get here? It’s a long journey from Mississippi to Mars. The people at JPL are very bright - and very demanding, of themselves and of others. Challenges? When we do a mission well - take, for instance, the Deep Impact mission that last week collided with a comet - we make it look all too easy. And it’s not. It’s really, really hard. All it takes is the smallest of mistakes to lose an entire mission. So trying to explain to the public how difficult this work is so that they are understanding and forgiving when we don’t succeed - which happens on occasion - is, I think the greatest responsibility and challenge of my job. But how many people have the privilege of going to work and getting to leave the planet (at least in their minds) without being locked away in the funny farm? That makes my work pretty special.
There has been much talk about American youth’s lack of interest, or at least success, in math and science particularly when compared to other countries like China, India and Germany. Is there anything JPL and NASA can do to reignite the interest of America’s school children?
BB: Absolutely. And JPL is in the forefront of this. Everybody, and especially young people, are attracted to space. The work of NASA can be used in the topic to teach geology, science, math, physics, you name it. We even have a pilot program here at JPL where we use a mission to the planet Saturn to teach reading skills to elementary students. And I’m very proud to oversee the group here at the laboratory that has created this literacy educational program. It’s another example of how, although I didn’t become a teacher in the classroom as I once dreamed, I have had some impact on what has been taught in some of the nation’s classrooms. And that’s a great satisfaction to me. Because if I have learned anything, it’s that the cure for what ails us as a nation can be found in a classroom.
Christopher Sheffield/DeSoto Times Editor
