Father Sky

Just a very brief note. I’ve been obsessing over this class for the past few months, but now it’s over. Only 7 people showed, (my empty classroom photo a few posts down was close, eh?), but they were involved and interested people, and for that I am thankful. I didn’t make too many mistakes with the presentation and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. I am honored to have the opportunity.

Now I need to move on. Look for fresh material to bring to this space and get back to simple curiosity and fun.

My class is only a few weeks away so I needed to get things to a state where I could do a dry run in front of my wife and daughter. Gad, even in front of them I was nervous and just flew through the material without any of the elaboration or detail I mentally told myself to do ahead of time. Still, they were very supportive and gave me some good tips. One is I really shouldn’t rely on my own discretion to elaborate, I should write it right there, in my notes. Another was to not assume anything. I’ve gone through some of this material so much over the last couple of years that I forget it’s not common knowledge. And while I was repeating the main theme here and there, it couldn’t hurt to do it even more. So to borrow (and slightly modify) a phrase from the 1992 election… “It’s the Calendar, Stupid!”

(image courtesy of Laineys Repertoire)

When I first signed up to have a blog I knew carving out time to post would be a challenge but it seems it’s even more of a challenge than I imagined. The weeks have just flown by. I did start a draft of a posting a couple of weeks ago but it never went anywhere. Well, I don’t want to admit defeat just yet. I haven’t even given it a fair shot.

So let me share something special that happened a couple of weeks ago. Last fall I signed up to be a volunteer at a local observatory. It’s a rather low-budget observatory on one of our community college campuses. It’s main purpose is public outreach and is run entirely by volunteers. Well since I’ve signed up we’ve just had one of the worst winters for sky watching. One Friday it was clear at dusk but clouded up shortly thereafter and then the event of two weeks ago was mostly clear. Otherwise it’s been nothing but clouds (or worse).

So the event on January 25th was my first real opportunity to share the night sky with an observing public at the observatory, (I’ve helped out at public star parties with the local astronomy club a number of times but the observatory is a special experience). We only had 6 people show, (there were 3 of us volunteers) but still it was a blast to show them a few objects they might have heard about, (Andromeda galaxy, Orion nebula, Pleiades, Mars) and quite a few that they haven’t, (numerous open clusters in Auriga and Gemini as well as colorful double stars in Andromeda and Cassiopeia). We had a few binoculars to hand out to better appreciate the larger objects such as the Pleiades and the Hyades but anything to the west was a challenge as it looked out over the city.

It didn’t take long for everyone to get pretty cold so the evening didn’t drag on. Just a nice chunk of time to share a few beauties, spin a story or two and send everyone on their way with a smile.

As I get better at this I am hoping to weave in some entertaining stories from mythology with the stunning sights of the season.

And I hope to be a little more frequent at this as well

My wife has had a blog for quite some time and even my daughter now has a website, so I guess I better see what all the fuss is about. My wife says she finds it cathartic… to get her thoughts, feelings, fears, triumphs and even her growth as an individual into words. I’m not exactly sure what my goal will be with this blog but I do know I am amassing a lot of information into this field of Ethnoastronomy and I want a way to organize it and build upon what I’ve discovered so far.

Why? Well I believe ancient mythology has more to offer than entertainment and how early humans made sense of their world. I believe there are still important lessons for us today and, since these traditions were with us for untold thousands of years, they teach us a little of who we really are at our core.

So, let’s see where this takes me. I’m curious and rather frightened about the forum, but I’m game.