though my life spins along happily down here, i often like to look up at the stars at night - when i’m out walking pi around the apartment complex before i go to bed, when we’re out running, especially out on a drive in the country..
today i prepared a mailing which i will send out tomorrow to try to drum up some business; tonight, a great band rehearsal (no one could hear our performance of a couple of hora munteneasca and not dance), and after a brief but enjoyable visit with scott & co and a more-brief trip to the grocery store, i took pi out for her last walk of the night, and had once again a chance to look up at the stars. though they change over the year, i get a deep sense of stability from them. knowing that these are the same stars that anyone i’ve ever known has looked up at helps keep me grounded in something a little firmer than i think many are fortunate to find.
there was once a constellation of notable importance to me - or so i thought. turns out it isn’t really a constellation, but a part of one. (i got curious tonight; it does remain of notable importance)
[http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/constellations/Hercules.html]
the part that i’d always looked for and found makes kind of a ring-shape. a ring of stars… just a part of hercules. another page here [http://www.csulb.edu/~gordon/constel.html] talks about the mythology behind the constellations. interesting stuff.
one thing i regret about city life is how the light pollution prevents us from seeing so much of the night sky. when we were little, things were still sparse enough around here that you could make out the milky way faintly at night. not so anymore. i guess things change.
it would be sad if our grandchildren couldn’t see anything at all, though.
I'm a 30-year-old 
I can tell you that the stars are very bright where I’m living. I lived in the Bay Area for a long time and never really noticed them. Now that I live out in the desert I catch myself looking up at the stars all the time. The other night I had to climb my antenna tower to fix my WAP11. As I was climbing up I felt as if I was climbing into the heavens. I felt like I could touch the stars. I was only 60 feet from the ground, but it felt like thousands.
February 13th, 2003 at 7:45 pm
In our neighborhood we can see some stars on a clear night.
In Manhattan, except by the water, there’s too much light pollution.
February 14th, 2003 at 10:02 am