Rabbit Trails and Spiderwebs

The glittering stars. It isn’t every night that the stars are so wonderfully brilliant, but the nights that are, are so stunning.   The memory of the clear nights and the time spent in the wonder of the heavens is part of the foundation that makes you feel insignificant and yet humbled by the love of the Creator.   The different times of the year when the planets come along and change the whole dynamic, spinning through the different houses of the zodiac and the constellations.   Larger and different colors, the planets lend a bit of variety to the slow-moving dance that is the star palette.   The fun times when the dipper is upside down and Drago’s tail is over his head.    It is fun to point out the constellations to the people that don’t see them.   Trying to gain clarity and placement in the midst of so many stars. Some people don’t get it.   The non-moving North Star, and the awe of the Northern Lights. Humbl...

When you see the stars When I was young my mom would take a 3x5 card and poke some holes into it and hand it to me.   She then said, “That is the Big Dipper.”   We then would go outside and look to the sky to find the Big Dipper.   Sometimes it was upside down and at other times it was only the tail near the horizon, but I knew what to look for because of the card.   The idea of patterns was at work and so we had several of the cards for the different constellations.   Some I have forgotten and some are only in the Northern sky, but they are there, even when I am not looking. I am older and when I look to the sky at night in my rural home, I have an app on my phone that locates the planets and the stars and the nebula and even the constellations that I didn’t learn as a child.   It shows the satellites, and tells about them, the names of the stars and even when they were discovered and by whom.   In one way, it is a modern version of the 3x5 c...