The Big Picture
March 26, 2002
7:11 a.m.
We spent a chilly Saturday night in an observatory at Butler University in Indianapolis. The windows were open to prevent rising heat from lensing the view, and of course the dome has that big slit cut into it so that the telescope could see out. So it was pretty cold. Beyond that, a couple college kids moderated the slide show and constellation discussion beforehand, and they were often not real good, and occasionally wrong. Still, it's almost impossible to mess up the site of Jupiter and its moons, or Saturn with its rings split in such precise beauty. Before going to the planetarium that afternoon (Saturday), Lisa and Brigid escorted me to the Indy Children's museum to see a film about the Shackleton expedition--the collection of men who sailed on a ship named Endurance in 1914 to Antarctica with plans to be the first to make a cross-continent trek. If you don't know the story, I'll not tell it to you here. All I can say is that you should go check it out because that tale is one of true human spirit. Sometimes I look at what is happening around me and I get frustrated when so many things line up in my "To Do" list. Sometimes I get disgruntled when markets take too long to respond, or SFWA gets into one of its little snits or, well, just when life gets a little too much velocity. It happens, you know? Even the greatest of optimists is subject to the occasional tussle with fear and doubt--it's just that we're generally better at masking them than some others. But the world is very large, and we are so very tiny. I find great comfort in that.   Made it through another couple chapters today.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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