From Veneration to Verite

I watched with a somewhat strange mixture of emotions as a giant banner was draped from the roof over the side of the Moorehead Planetarium, Chapel Hill, NC. Several new shows were beginning the next day, the day I was to make my first commercial planetarium visit in over 30 years. The planetarium world I had left so long ago was etched firmly in my mind, and I wondered if I would find it still waiting for me so many years later. I had my doubts as I noticed Big Bird featured prominently on the banner. So I asked myself a question. Planetariums in the intervening years had become entertainment emporiums surely, but were visitors learning anything? I went to one of the oldest planetariums in the USA looking for veneration. Ivied walls, impossibly complex optical monsters defiantly shining forth their analog splendor. I craved the hushed corridors with dim backlit spiral arms gleaming in fondly remembered night of my own past. I was all 50's and 60's Adler, visiting the Moorehead in the summer of 2012. Looking for the past, veneration, I found verite, or the candid truth in planetariums today. I think both can live. I started with what was still there from my old cherished memories of planetariums gone by. The building, it was old and classic. The gift shop full of wonders. So far so good. Traveling into the dome itself gave that same breathless feeling - and the Moorehead had a BIG BIG dome - moreso, this was a surprise because unlike alot of planetariums, you could not see the dome from the outside. The dome was not tilted to my relief. Tilted domes were too much for me, a symbol of our faint arrogance to alter nature to suit OUR comfort. But the chairs were not round the chamber, but oriented in a semi circle, implying a clear 'stage' area. Gone was that quirky 'ballpark' feeling where different seats had different views. A depressing 'no bad seat in the house' feeling always comes over me, insanely. I grew up going to shows in arcane old theaters - ballparks with posts, odd corners - here there was no feeling of .. I HAVE to go back and get a seat next time off third base, these rightfield seats are just arent that good! Here was dull uniformity. to be continued But back to my question, did they learn anything? 'Theres the Big Dipper', shouted a young girl as we walked post-show down the sidewalk outside, pointing up at seven stars on the giant banner draped over the building. I had my answer.

Eccentric Pursuits Require Eccentric Pursuers

Eccentric Pursuits Require Eccentric Pursuers Whats more rare, eccentric pieces of art, or the people who appreciate them? Rare equipment, or someone who will seek it out, preserve or restore it, and make it available? After having spent much of my adult life pursuing and build Home Planetaria, it at last began dawning on me that I didn’t want to be the ghost in Hill House - whatever walked in Hill House, walked alone. I didn’t want to be, whoever built planetariums, built them alone. I know that’s the basis for the myriad clubs and now internet boards in existence for like ‘birds of a feather to flock together’ as they used to say. But eccentric stuff requires eccentric people. Maybe even, it’s the people that MAKE it eccentric to begin with. Somebody dreamed it up. It just didn’t appeal to enough people to become common or mainstream. Or its time in the mainstream was quickly superseded by advances that rendered the commonplace for a day the eccentric in a decade or two (think keypunch machine). So eccentric pursuits need eccentric pursuers, to MAKE them eccentric.

Its Out There - Somewhere Everything surely has strengths and weaknesses. You buy a car, you don’t love everything about it. You compromise right? Relationships in life are like that .. You take a few bad things to get the really good things. I love my new iphone but there are a few things …. I’d change. Well the same is true for star balls. Building a planetarium isn’t like a home theater it seems. There, you get the projector, the screen, the popcorn machine, ROLL THEM .. Its done. A home planetarium, at least the HPA way, not so much. After a few years I have 4 star balls rolling round the place. I didn’t set out to have four. I’d really like six. Give me time. But they aren’t all the same. Not all star balls are created equal. This isn’t marriage. We can have more than one partner. You need one you built. From scratch if you would be a HPAer. Maybe not a a main ball, but at least some tin cans or PVC should be lurking somewhere in the theater. The pros used to be this way, before the digital curse I MEAN revolution. Look at old IPS guides, they were using tin cans, slide projectors, aluminum foil. Not anymore. A lost and dying art. You need to have put in some time on one. Maybe you don’t use this one so much with an audience. But maybe once in awhile you do, and you talk about what you made more than the stars it produces. The old commercial balls. The hybrids, old ball new mounting. They will all excell in SOMETHING. And they will all be not so good at something. Maybe that Dodecahedron shows the southern stars so well . Maybe the Spitz A3P has a detailed Milky Way that you just cant build ever. Maybe the home cylinder you bought just has more stars because a guy in Arizona spent 2 years drilling them in. Maybe you can have a greatest cylinder hits show for a single group of people. You will surely be tempted to build multiple domes to house them. Hopefully you’ll come to your senses on that one! But you will see the good and the not so good in each. Some of those Orions don’t look real. This one has an amazing Big Dipper. That one, I can’t even see Scorpio. Keep building, collecting, tweaking. You still don’t have a really good Andromeda Nebula. But its out there.. Somewhere. ….

Dont Let the Purpose Dictate the Space!

Single use places used to seem romantic to me, but then I realized they spent most of their lives sitting empty. That NFL football stadium used 7 times a year. The bowling alley. Golf Course. Planetarium .. Wait - not here. Build a planetarium and what do you have? A big room where the stars can come out. But it doesn’t have to be that way. My planetarium is a listening room. I fly radio controlled helicopters in there. I sleep in there. I film videos in there. Its multipurpose. A single purpose, at the amateur level, should never dictate the space. The space should allow many many purposes.

Meditations from a Planetarium

I wrote these journals over a 5 year period contemplating, building, and sitting in a planetarium of my own construction. But it could have been anything that time has passed by. A model T shed, where a shiny newfangled machine once wheezed after a days journey 2 miles into town. A gazebo on the village green, where brass bands used to play on sultry summer evenings. Instead I sit inside an unlikely shed behind a century old red oak barn with a shiny copper cylinder drilled with 899 star holes, awaiting some visitors. It took 4 years to dream it up before the 5 years to build it. During that time alot of crazy thoughts came to mind, so here's the journal of this building. This dreaming. This loving. It couldve been anything. But its a planetarium.

Monster Builders - You Can Be Dr Frankenst

Most people seem to take life as it comes at them, standard people living standard lives. Jobs, kids, relationships, hobbies, sports, restaurants, vacations. But then there are the monster builders. Modern day Dr Frankensteins that, well, create something out of spare parts, half seen dreams, alternate realities. Some Dr Frankensteie take it big .. From dorm rooms to Facebook, but most monster builders come in all sizes. What will YOUR legacy be, sure you may strive to be that ‘good’ father, mother figure.. Fun person, helper, missionary at church. And theres nothing wrong with living life the standard way. But why not also mix in a little of that eccentric uncle who built a radio receiver out of bowling balls? That dad who had the shortwave antennas strung in the yard trees like Christmas lights? They got to be standard happy people full of goodness truly. But they also, in their own unique way, got to be Dr Frankenstein too! I built a planetarium. What have you built, or dream of building?

Everyone has a 'Blog that Nobody Read'

Not everyone blogs, or in the old fashioned sense of the word keeps a journal or diary, but perhaps everyone has a trail of thoughts that they could have put down in some fashion, over the years, of some crazy dream. I believe that in our life passions lie may secrets to living in general, sometimes the more offbeat pursuit can lead to the most commonplace and universal reflections. So it was with me and a most obscure pursuit - I built and ran my own space theater or planetarium, an arcane and obscure activity that led to an incredibly diverse amount of reflection, thought, and activity. Literally 1000 hours of thought went into it, and along with the actual instrument and theater came these 100 blog posts. I called it ‘the blog nobody read’, so in the end I was left with postcards from the edge of an insanity really. What to do with them? I began to look behind them to see what were the hidden drivers - was the ‘dome’ for example literally a metaphor for heaven itself, a piece of curved nothingness lurking in the background of my conscious thought, illuminated only by the starlight of my own contrivance? And so it went each of the 100 forgotten posts had a seed, they must have had a source, a meaning that was perhaps able to be lifted out, dusted off, and applied more universally. It was worth trying. Otherwise, my Really Obscure Blog would have been in vain. After diligently and patiently revisiting each milestone contained within, perhaps TBNR was worthwhile after all. Like the voice of a river, or the voice of the God of your understanding, maybe it took time and effort to HEAR let alone understand. So like Sidarrtha before me, I sat beside this river of 100 thoughts cloaked in this most unlikely of pursuits, and tried to listen to what it was telling me. As it turns out, that was quite a lot! Come with me now down that stream, and maybe it will speak to you as well.