I spent the first few weeks reading, non-stop. I didn’t concern myself with photos and diagrams at first. I was too absorbed digging through a mystery that spanned the entire Milky Way. Slowly, I branched away from the text to learn my way around The Reader. The search functions have opened a lot of doors, as have the active bookmarks.

My humble blog is far simpler, by comparison, but I would like to point out a few features that may help you get the most out of it. I dearly wish that the lady who gave me The Reader had spent a few moments to explain the device to me. This is my attempt to extend a courtesy that I never got.

On the right, below the photo from my NASA badge (it is two years old, I’m afraid this project has aged me considerably since that shot was taken) you will see a repository of photos that I’m digging out of The Reader. I recognize some as being from Earth orbit, and a few seem to detail future advances in space exploration. Due to my work with NASA on future propulsion systems, these photos are significant to me personally, as well as professionally. I’ll try and get at least one up per day by setting up my tripod and taking a high-resolution photo of The Reader’s screen.

Below this there is a handy tool for following the blog. Subscribe, and you will automatically get updates. I’m hoping to be faithful to the site, but it is hard to tear myself away from learning about Molly’s life. I’ve promised my wife, however, to try and decompress more often. Sign up and see how well I fulfill that promise.

Next item down is an archive of every post I make. If only The Reader had its chronology so well-organized!

Following the archives is an interesting collection of entries from a folder named “Bel Tra.” I believe that this is the name of an alien race that devoted their time to an authoritative charting of the Milky Way. I’ve kept up with my old friends at NASA and several of them are as geeked out over this data as I am over the photos further up.

The final item is a link to a Twitter account I’ve set up for Molly’s journal entries. These are carefully dated, which makes posting them in order a breeze. Her writing starts very early, back when she was seven years old, but I’m going to be starting my telling of her story when Molly was sixteen, so the diary entries will reflect this.

That’s it. Pretty simple. Far simpler than this Reader thing. Enjoy and spread the word. By the time Molly’s story is able to be told, we will hopefully have a wide audience for her tale.