Did you know Parsec has a library? Did you know that you are free to borrow books from the Library? Want to know what books are available?

Now the library catalog is available online. Browse through the stacks and then contact to make arangements to check out your selection.

Click Here for the Parsec Library.

On Wednesday September 14th, from 4:30 - 7, Jonathan Minard will be hosting a Planet Party at Assemble on Penn Avenue: including hands-on demos, space videos, and hopefully, a conversation about all the worlds in the world, i.e. exoplanets and planet formation.

Planet Party -- an evening of creative exploration, cosmic art, planet building, and conversation with astronomers and space artists. Learn how the planets came to be, how astronomers find exoplanets, what makes a planet hospitable to life, and what these new worlds tell us about the origins of our own world in the grand scheme of cosmic evolution.

Planets and people, both, come from stars: born of the elements forged when a supernova colorfully explodes. The same processes that formed our solar system are happening everywhere that there are stars. At one time, our solar system was thought to be alone. In the last decade, the list of exoplanets (alien worlds on distant stars) has grown exponentially, from a handful of easy-to-detect gas giants to a diverse array of over 1500 newly discovered worlds, and counting! There are ocean worlds, and planets of solid diamond, giants bigger than Jupiter and light as a feather. In all the billions of stars in the billions of galaxies, there may be quadrillions of planets! It looks ever more likely that some harbor life.

The diversity of these worlds and the boundless possibilities they represent offer a stimulus for creativity. An unknown planet is a blank canvas on which to project your imagination and invent a world entirely your own.

The Many Genres / One Craft book launch will be on Friday, June 24 from 7 - 9 PM in the McKenna Center at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA.

Several PARSEC Members have chapters in this genre writing book--how many can you spot?

If you can't make the book launch, ordering instructions are online here: http://manygenres.blogspot.com/p/ordering.html

We're dusting off an old favorite of ours, written primarily by Ann Cecil, entitled "20,000 Leagues of Music". It is the story of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea set to the tunes of The Sound of Music. There is something for everyone in this musical! Fish! Steampunk! Fish! Cthulhu like Squid!Fish! Scientific terms like "umbellularia"! And did I mention fish!?

Auditions to be held March 29th, April 1 and April 3 at the Home of Heidi Pilewski and Kevin Geiselman and Tuesday, April 5th at the Home of Karen Yun-Lutz and Kevin Hayes from 6:30 - 9 pm at both locations.

Please e-mail for directions and to let us know you are coming!

Recent events have lead to issues with PARSEC email. Some email addresses are no longer available, some only temporarily so. Some links further down in the website (such as Confluence) may have mistakes as we try to sort things out. In the meantime, this announcement will have a bunch of email addresses that should be used to contact various people within Parsec.

: The Parsec Webmaster
: The Parsec President
: Inqueries concerning Parsec Ink
: Inqueries concerning Confluence
: Inqueries concerning Confluence programming
: Inqueries concerning the writing contest
: Inqueries to the Parallax Scond Players
: Submissions to the Parsec newsletter

http://www.utimes.pitt.edu/?p=14743
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Celebrate-Ann-Cecils-Life/188672924492901

President: Matt Urick
Vice President: Kira Heston
Treasurer: Sarah-Wade Smith
Secretary: William Hall
Commentator: Ann Cecil