[MD] Star Gazing

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Case]
It is a sign of the times that we consider star gazing a luxury. Never in
history have people had to travel to appreciate the heavens. Learning to
recognize the various constellations in the night sky is as good a way of
learning how our forbearers thought as any I can think of.

[Arlo]
See... now that's spooky. I mean, I've said nearly this EXACT thing to many
people over the years. Case in point (pardon the pun)... a few days ago, a
conversation with a friend centered on this question... if there was ONE thing
(a book, a chapter, a verse, a paper, etc.) that you could make required
reading for everyone (not just us Americany folk, but EVERYONE) what would it
be? Now, on the Pirsig list, ZMM comes right to mind, but my argument was for
Chapter One of the Columbia History of the World. My rationale, because no
other single bounded work I can think of "places" man so interestingly in the
massive unfolding we call time. Who J-Lo's dating, or owning that shiney new
Camry, seem pale in a view of historical time that covers cycles of glaciation,
epochs of tropical climes, the formation of the planet, the solar system and
what we call the universe. (I'm coming back to stars, really). Indeed,
understanding our own "lives" as those that are unfolding during a moderate
period of deglaciation inside a larger ice age (of which glaciation is a cycle,
as are the larger periods of ice ages). In all this time, as "man" has moved
from "then" to "now", the real human condition has not changed. We all strive
for love, for beauty, to spend time with our children, to love our spouses, to
watch sunsets, and... to look at the stars. I said to my friend, nothing brings
me closer to the ancient Egyptian who sat on the Giza Plateau, nor the builders
of Stonehenge, nor the Aboringinal, nor the Inca or Maya or even Tolmec... than
knowing that the same stars *I* see, are the same stars, the same heavens,
*they* saw. 14400 years ago, a father in ancient Egypt likely looked at the
same stars I do, and thought pretty much the same things... will my children
have good lives? What is beauty? What is love? What does it all mean? The night
sky is a uniter, a reminder that "national boundries" are arbitrary and
historically meaningless. To wax poetic a bit... "Was die Mode streng geteilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt"... "What custom
sternly divides, All people become brothers, Where your gentle wing alights"
(If we think of the "gentle wings" metaphorically as the Heavens of the
Nightsky. So, having said that, I am taking a Molsen outback and looking for
Cassiopeia. The joys of living in the country.