'Plan' might be a retrospective, rescuing word really - did I have a PLAN for the tortuous, crooked path I've taken in home planetariums that in several ways culminated in last night's show? More like a vague dream of long vanished childhood windows, a bemused preteenager under O'Hares flightpath peering up into the suburban Chicago night sky through a telescope without a finder (a telescope on a telescope?) A somewhat outlandish youth, but then we all were back then with our Edmund catalogs, Erector sets, Heathkits .. we built things at Scouts, we built things in the basement . we took old cake boxes from Topps across North Avenue and built bedroom planetariums. I see stars I once exclaimed. And today I still want to see more. More stars.
Finally last night both my theaters worked in tandem as dreamt up some time ago - many revelations ago to be exact, that I couldn't build a planetarium itself big enough to hold groups of people all at once. I couldnt cover science and history and modeling and music and constellations and cosmology and comets and castles and starlit villages and pyramids and Titanics .. just by looking at stars. So blessed with not only a barn but the stubborn desire to put up buildings BEHIND said barn, to first lean them to it (lean-toos are very American I once told a bemused regional planetarium group in a ballroom in Cleveland), and then stand them up behind THOSE with four by fours sunk as far into the earth as a post hole digger and I could muster. But I wanted adults, and I wanted children, and I wanted groups of all types . and I've had them, Rangers, religious groups, scouts, home schoolers, the idle curious. So not one theater would do - make it two - no wait make it three. I've got a barn. I'm crazy. A little.
So last night a group came down from another State, had a picnic in a nearby park, and rolled into the driveway, 4 cars strong, the last one missing the driveway twice before finally being flagged in like some errant plane at an airport. There were oldsters, youngsters, about 20 in all. Not in a school bus like last time - not in suburbans and escalades like last year, but down from another STATE because, their leader said, he had fond memories of attending a large planetarium in his youth, had got on the internet, and found my little outdated site and emailed me. There was a twist, they were bible based, offered (and accepted!) to send me some 'gospel in the stars' books which I ingested and added to my modest repertoire - without going into spirituality in specifics here, suffice to say that many infuse spirituality into the stars. I am a STAR guy I explained at the outset. I dabble in the other sciences and arts, but only a passion just to SEE them leads a person to take a patch of former pasture and raise up what surely is some kind of homemade temple to seeing stars. Whatever your spirituality or lack thereof, that resonates I think with just about everyone. Everyone has passions. Mine are just in the barn.
So as said for the first time we spent an hour in the Sumner Star theater - and talked about EVERYTHING .. the sun, the galaxy, why we make signs of the stars, the great pyramid - the circumpolar imperishables. The adults had sophisticated questions about how galaxies form .. the kids came up to touch the telescopes ... later they hit the childrens build a planetarium table I had set up at the last minute and played with Quaker Oats tubs, flashlights - wanting to know how to BUILD one... I saw that long ago Chicago kid with his cakebox then .. and I knew somebody somewhere would continue the tradition of building one. I talked about EVERYTHING .. and they wanted to know .. how you built them .. who used the old commercial starballs i had - about the toy ones on the market . they wanted to see Khufu, the mummy in my pyramid - a small girl came up to me in the darkened field afterward and said - I like that mummy - do you want to play tag?.
Then we spent an hour in the Sumner Skies planetarium itself, and I explained as best I could the utterly twisted path that had brought them, the first group to sit in there, into being. How it had started out with failed domes.. then become a full dome accessed through a haunted house passage.. so black inside that a bat had lived there - a snake had been found beneath the carpet .. and then a wall knocked out and a theater reborn into a half dome with extended audience area .. then last winter that half dome taken down and a new taller roof added, the backyard strewn with debris for months as I simulated a dome - they laughed at all my descriptions of the PROCESS - it was just as important as the stars themselves.. the stars were part of the story, but I was part of it too - making planetariums out of traffic barrels, going to Dollar Tree every day of my life coming up with things .. they laughed when I gave the unofficial name of this dome, the doggie dome, named after the ferocious coon dog that had howled cross the fence at me through almost the entire construction period.
They were fascinated with the stars in the theater .. no special effects whatsoever. Just those stars. They were fascinated with Steve Smiths copper cylinder - asking dozens of questions .. later in the darkened yard two men would PITCH ME an idea on how to build a dome .. the thought of patrons proposing dome construction techniques blew me away .. they told me how clear it was up in Kentucky from whence they hailed .. I joked I'd like to come see that - they may take me up on that who knows. It is a dream of mine to own a tiny patch of land in dark skies.. We went down the Zodiac - the books they'd sent gave me that approach and it worked simply because it discussed constellations I had avoided my entire LIFE - Aquarius - Capricorn .. because we cannot see them from city skies we pretend they dont exist.. I felt like I had finally given a complete sky show - and we barely mentioned the Big Dipper ... but they know Aries .. Virgo .. Coma ..
When they finally left - and they paid me, I felt a stage in my planetarium career had been reached .. I might build more, I might not. But I felt fully functional. I learned things. Dont have a rigid plan - you can plan for months and then throw it out the window as I did the moment you look up and see twenty people sitting in your building waiting to see what you've got. Talk about EVERYTHING .. but your stars and how you got them and WHY you got them to me is most important. They will want to know. These visitors did. So whatever plan has come together - it didn't really come together the way I planned it. It planned itself. And I just followed along, that passion trail. I'm glad I did.
Finally last night both my theaters worked in tandem as dreamt up some time ago - many revelations ago to be exact, that I couldn't build a planetarium itself big enough to hold groups of people all at once. I couldnt cover science and history and modeling and music and constellations and cosmology and comets and castles and starlit villages and pyramids and Titanics .. just by looking at stars. So blessed with not only a barn but the stubborn desire to put up buildings BEHIND said barn, to first lean them to it (lean-toos are very American I once told a bemused regional planetarium group in a ballroom in Cleveland), and then stand them up behind THOSE with four by fours sunk as far into the earth as a post hole digger and I could muster. But I wanted adults, and I wanted children, and I wanted groups of all types . and I've had them, Rangers, religious groups, scouts, home schoolers, the idle curious. So not one theater would do - make it two - no wait make it three. I've got a barn. I'm crazy. A little.
So last night a group came down from another State, had a picnic in a nearby park, and rolled into the driveway, 4 cars strong, the last one missing the driveway twice before finally being flagged in like some errant plane at an airport. There were oldsters, youngsters, about 20 in all. Not in a school bus like last time - not in suburbans and escalades like last year, but down from another STATE because, their leader said, he had fond memories of attending a large planetarium in his youth, had got on the internet, and found my little outdated site and emailed me. There was a twist, they were bible based, offered (and accepted!) to send me some 'gospel in the stars' books which I ingested and added to my modest repertoire - without going into spirituality in specifics here, suffice to say that many infuse spirituality into the stars. I am a STAR guy I explained at the outset. I dabble in the other sciences and arts, but only a passion just to SEE them leads a person to take a patch of former pasture and raise up what surely is some kind of homemade temple to seeing stars. Whatever your spirituality or lack thereof, that resonates I think with just about everyone. Everyone has passions. Mine are just in the barn.
So as said for the first time we spent an hour in the Sumner Star theater - and talked about EVERYTHING .. the sun, the galaxy, why we make signs of the stars, the great pyramid - the circumpolar imperishables. The adults had sophisticated questions about how galaxies form .. the kids came up to touch the telescopes ... later they hit the childrens build a planetarium table I had set up at the last minute and played with Quaker Oats tubs, flashlights - wanting to know how to BUILD one... I saw that long ago Chicago kid with his cakebox then .. and I knew somebody somewhere would continue the tradition of building one. I talked about EVERYTHING .. and they wanted to know .. how you built them .. who used the old commercial starballs i had - about the toy ones on the market . they wanted to see Khufu, the mummy in my pyramid - a small girl came up to me in the darkened field afterward and said - I like that mummy - do you want to play tag?.
Then we spent an hour in the Sumner Skies planetarium itself, and I explained as best I could the utterly twisted path that had brought them, the first group to sit in there, into being. How it had started out with failed domes.. then become a full dome accessed through a haunted house passage.. so black inside that a bat had lived there - a snake had been found beneath the carpet .. and then a wall knocked out and a theater reborn into a half dome with extended audience area .. then last winter that half dome taken down and a new taller roof added, the backyard strewn with debris for months as I simulated a dome - they laughed at all my descriptions of the PROCESS - it was just as important as the stars themselves.. the stars were part of the story, but I was part of it too - making planetariums out of traffic barrels, going to Dollar Tree every day of my life coming up with things .. they laughed when I gave the unofficial name of this dome, the doggie dome, named after the ferocious coon dog that had howled cross the fence at me through almost the entire construction period.
They were fascinated with the stars in the theater .. no special effects whatsoever. Just those stars. They were fascinated with Steve Smiths copper cylinder - asking dozens of questions .. later in the darkened yard two men would PITCH ME an idea on how to build a dome .. the thought of patrons proposing dome construction techniques blew me away .. they told me how clear it was up in Kentucky from whence they hailed .. I joked I'd like to come see that - they may take me up on that who knows. It is a dream of mine to own a tiny patch of land in dark skies.. We went down the Zodiac - the books they'd sent gave me that approach and it worked simply because it discussed constellations I had avoided my entire LIFE - Aquarius - Capricorn .. because we cannot see them from city skies we pretend they dont exist.. I felt like I had finally given a complete sky show - and we barely mentioned the Big Dipper ... but they know Aries .. Virgo .. Coma ..
When they finally left - and they paid me, I felt a stage in my planetarium career had been reached .. I might build more, I might not. But I felt fully functional. I learned things. Dont have a rigid plan - you can plan for months and then throw it out the window as I did the moment you look up and see twenty people sitting in your building waiting to see what you've got. Talk about EVERYTHING .. but your stars and how you got them and WHY you got them to me is most important. They will want to know. These visitors did. So whatever plan has come together - it didn't really come together the way I planned it. It planned itself. And I just followed along, that passion trail. I'm glad I did.
