The Cosmos

A BIG one, this subject, and I am humbled by even mentoning it. In L.A. in the thirties and forties, we lived in a time before smog, and one of my seminal trips with my parents was to the Mount Wilson Observatory on a mountain chain near by. But the skies in our Silverlake neighborhood were clear, we could see the "stars," be intrigued by the heavens. In a trip to the desert with Uncle Jess we stayed overnight in Death Valley, among some sand dunes. After watching the kangaroo rat jump over the fire, and a fox circling around the perimeter of the campsite, things got dark, the fire went down and Uncle Jess said simply "look up." In fact that was to be a kind of theme between us, the need to look up.

Elsewhere in thie blog I mention the "holy man" who came to the Silverlake Playground (I think I've written about it already, or have intended to), One of his themes too was look up, but it was always in the day light then, and he brought some celestial diagrams to enthuse the local urchins to do as Uncle Jess advised. But the Indian man (India) had a more spiritual twist, Hindu sort of. He wanted us to know what the common (today) poster with an arrow pointing at the heavens with the news that "You Are Here" means, that you are temporary, life is very transitory, the cosmos abides, is our home.

And thus I have circled around back to those beginnings, reading a huge book which I highly recommend: Dennis Overbye's "Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos; The Story of the Scientific Quest for the Secret of the Universe," what a book. The first chapter takes place in the San Gabriel mountains near L.A., at the Mount Wilson Observatory with the great astronomer Edwin Hubble, and his sidekick, Allen Sandage, the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. What a story, including Einstein's pilgrimage there, and how the dances of discovery play out, and continue. Look up and out, understand how mankind's ride is a tiny part of things.