So Close, Yet So Far Away!

Why should you gather your children or grandchildren next Tuesday or Wednesday to look up into the twilight skies, very near the moon, to see a comet called Pan-STARRS?
by Charlie Leck

I suppose, just for the heckuv it! But there are greater reasons. A family together, outside, beneath a crescent moon at dusk, is not a bad thing, if not a wonderful thing.

We are told to wait until “the sun is fully below the horizon to scan for the comet in the darkening twilight.”

It would be a wonderful time to be with my grandchildren. Baseball games, water parks and Disneyland are great, but this is even better. In fact, it may be the real “greatest show on Earth!”

Tell the little ones that this comet is thought to be billions of years old; and, perhaps, explain what a single billion is. Tell them that Pan STARRS originated way out in space, well beyond the planets Neptune and Pluto. It has never passed the earth before. Imagine! In billions of years it has never passed Earth before.

And you would even think of missing it!

Wish, if not pray, for clear skies. Then, at the moment the sun sets below the horizon, look to the western skies and find the moon. Near the moon you should see it.

Then, after the sighting, go for the hot chocolate. It beats the champagne! Tell the children that an even bigger comet will be within view this coming November. Astronomers say that the comet ISON will be viewable and may even outshine the moon. Make a date to be together for it!

The viewings will humble us, making us realize, I hope, how finite and minuscule we are in the reality of everything.

Now, you’ve been forewarned. Don’t miss it.

This, I expect, is the most important blog I’ve ever written!

If you want a little preview, and an explanation of what is coming, here’s a brief but thorough web site you can visit to see photographs and learn more about Pan-STARRS.

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To the Stars

Enough people suggested I rename and update the design of  my blog, that I finally just did it!
by Charlie Leck

"What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?"
Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

I have been blogging here, at this site, for exactly one year now. In that time I've faithfully pounded out a lot of well-meant and sincere words and thoughts. There are well over 150 blogs archived here and several dozen more were written on a former site and were not transfered to this spot.

So many of my readers – mostly neighbors, family and friends from around the country – suggested I give my blog a more distinguished name and a more contemporary look, that I just went ahead and did it. This current look is the result of extensive market tests by a distinguished New York consultant and is the work of a Chicago design firm – JUST KIDDING!

The idea is all mine. Ad Astra is Latin for “to the stars!” It is my ultimate destination and it seems the ship of life, piloted by Kilgore Trout, is right now moving at extraordinary speed toward the outer edges of the universe and then we’ll be released to go beyond. These blogs are my musings – my reminiscences, rants and raves – as this journey proceeds toward its ultimate destination.

I’ve explained here previously, these are for the record – a record by which my grandchildren and their grandchildren may know their old and odd grandpa. If others get some enjoyment from these along the way, or find them informative and interesting, so much the better.

I want to make sure I leave a rather crucial message for my grandchildren. It came first from the mouth of Elliot Rosewater and the pen of Kurt Vonnegut. Rosewater, one of Vonnegut’s glorious fictional characters, and certainly not a cleric, was asked to baptize two babies. He objected, saying that he couldn’t, wouldn’t, and didn’t have the right. The mother pleaded with him and he relented. Rosewater’s wife was aghast when he told her; and she asked him what he said. His reply is my message for my grandchildren:

“'Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies – God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
[Vonnegut, Kurt: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater]

I’m pleased that several hundred people come here from time to time to read these ramblings. I’m even more pleased that I’ve made so many good friends among the blogging community. There are so many good amateur bloggers out there that it astounds me. When I read some of their excellent writing, it gives me hope that we might indeed be moving toward a more decent and rational world where kindness, justice and peace will rule the day. It will not happen in my lifetime; however, from out among the stars I will be paying attention and will rejoice when the world decides to turn away from madness and toward hope. My constant prayer is that my grandchildren will know a world devoted to kindness.

END

About Kurt Vonnegut
One of my daughters teaches English at the college level. She is quite astounded, I think, when I list Vonnegut as one of my favorite writers. As Vonnegut, himself, might have said: “So be it!” Of course, I read Slaughterhouse Five first and that hooked me. I simply waited for everything else to come out after that and grabbed hold. I’ve read all his published work since then, except for a work that was recently posthumously published. I’ll pick that up one of these days, too. Vonnegut got very experimental with some of his later works and the quality of his writing (or story-telling) fell off. Nevertheless, I just kept right on reading.

I have a first edition copy of each of Vonnegut’s books and that is a very important corner of my library.

Another of my daughters is teaching English at the junior high school level. I have a feeling that she’s never read Vonnegut. Too bad! I think any high school kid would love to meet Elliot Rosewater and Kilgore Trout. My goodness, they are two of the great characters of fiction. I actually get the shivers whenever I think about those two guys.

I think I would assign my junior high schoolers the pleasurable assignment of reading Breakfast of Champions and God Bless You Mr. Rosewater. My they were fun stories.

I remember how Gilgore Trout, an outstanding science fiction writer, thought mirrors allowed us to look into another universe that was an exact duplicate of our own. He thought mirrors leaked out information about that simultaneous universe and so he called mirrors that – “leaks.” If he was having a beer with some guy and that fellow said he was going to take a leak, Trout thought he was going to steal a mirror.

Oh well, you had to be there!