Vol. 91, March 12th, 2024 Published a Day Early Online
Extra to a Memory
You should have seen the wedding. Well, picture it with me, an imaginary passenger in my little red car, winding along rain-slicked back roads on an almost-spring day that March loves to tease with.
She walks down the aisle, blonde, radiant, dress white as the pear blossoms down by the stream. Her beaming groom waits in his stately tuxedo, strong like the cliffs by the bend in the lane. We all watch from our seats in rapt attention.
The preacher preaches, music plays, prayers are prayed. Hush! A moment of silent reflection.
I tend to deal in mud, in broken things, and trying to fix them. Today, we’re guest at something beautiful, the Why, the fruit of the labor, the reason we all strive, and must continue to do so. What a reminder to keep trying. What a blessing to gather for a friends’ wedding.
Fresh flowers adorn the tables, bubbles dance in champagne glasses. The sunset peeks through a crack in the clouds as the father of the bride gives a toast. Picture it with me. We’re extras today on the movie set of someone’s memory. The candles sputter down with a fragrant glow.
Go ahead, snag seconds of the mac ‘n cheese, and blueberry lemonade.
A blurry phone shot becomes neoclassical art: “The Send Off on a Rainy Night” - Urban, Walmart Android, 2024
Happy Birthday, The Gutenberg Bible
A letter from Enea Silvio Piccolomini dated today mentions the bible printed a year before (1455). Talk about a game changer!
Carol’s Appalachian Word of the Week
Carol from Roanoke sends this one along.
Poke: Paper bag– “Please put these groceries in a poke for me.”
HAY There, Folks!
Melly the neighbor horse says hello in this sweet selfie we got for you.
Book of the Week
“The Cat in the Hat”
Published today in 1957, Dr. Seuss’s smash deserves another look–and happy birthday wishes. While you’re at it, read a few others. Don’t forget the marvelous.
Quote of the Week
“Man’s maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play” –Friedrich Nietzsche
Write to Us!
The Nighthawk is a new old-fashioned way to connect, published weekly. You’re invited to write back, or just enjoy reading. Let’s have some fun! It’s a social paper! Send stories, etc to: PO Box 783, Rustburg, VA 24588 or Joshurban@protonmail.com
Letters from Josh
(A weekly update from Josh Urban’s adventures on the farm and in the city. #177)
Appearing in the Altavista Journal, etc: Spring Skies
Howdy, folks, and welcome back to the show. Old Man Winter is a stubborn fellow. The pines look bleak against the gray sky, and it’s not time to put the coats away yet. Spring makes progress, though. The frogs sing through the night, and maples bloom red to match my injured ankle. There was a misunderstanding in beehive #4 about property rights, and the guard bees, mad as hornets, found a way past my socks. “OW! I’m hit, Sarge!” Get off my lawn is a feeling shared by many creatures.
When the clouds clear, there’s good news written in the stars. The springtime constellations shine–sort of.
Looking east on a fine evening when the frogs are tuning up, you might notice an emptiness in the sky. Leo the lion prowls higher each night, and the Big Dipper swings up in the northeast, but...Why aren’t there more stars? Things seem a bit sparse.
Winter’s skies dazzle, and it’s more than the cold. Some of the brightest stars in the sky are visible then, and the same goes for summer. There’s a lot of ‘em, too. Spring and fall are quiet times above, and there’s a nifty reason.
Our Sun is one star out of 100 billion in the Milky Way, our home galaxy,. If you took a spaceship and blasted farther into the outer limits than Deep Purple recording “Space Truckin’”, and looked back, you’d see it to be a spiral–a giant cinnabun.
Since we live in an arm of this giant cosmic pastry, we’re too close to see the spiral shape. When we notice the Milky Way in the winter and summer, we’re looking across the cinnabun (galaxy). It appears as a band of hazy light on a clear dark night, and there’s a lot of neighbor stars in the view. This is the downtown, the shopping district, the party scene.
In the spring and fall, we’re looking away from the galaxy instead of across it. With fewer local stars and clouds of interstellar dust to block the view, we’re peering into deep space, towards other galaxies far, far away. Grab a pair of binoculars, and scan off the “east coast” of Leo. You might spy a few bits of fluff, looking like ghosts of stars. Those are galaxies millions of light years distant, unrelated to our own Milky Way, each containing hundreds of billions of stars themselves. (Humanity didn’t realize this until the 1920’s, when Edwin Hubble and his pals figured out things were a lot bigger than previously thought.)
I like the quiet of the spring sky. It means that the glitzy summer nights are on the way, but more than that. The dimmer sky is a distance I’m looking across. Sometimes I lug out the telescope, and track down a few of these faint galaxies. Taking a peek at starlight that’s traveled across space for 30 million years is a charge, and always does me good. The news of the world fades, except the frogs, singing down in the horse pond, keeping me company on the night watch.
Old Man Winter might cling a bit longer, but take a look to the east, and notice that spring is on the way. On a clear night, you can see for a few hundred trillion miles.
Catch you on the flip side,
Josh
Looking east towards Markarian’s Chain. View similar to a backyard telescope. Dots are Milky Way stars. Fuzzy patches are galaxies 50 million (+) light years distant.