Set That Tone!

Fromt Planetaria Obscura October 2016 issue

 Set that Tone!

I had never thought for 2 seconds about how to OPEN a planetarium show, other than - HELLO.  Good afternoon!

But then I started thinking that an overall vibe was established from the get-go.  So in Halloween month, I turned to the master - Uncle Rod.  How did he start?   Well he had utterly iconic music, but then he described what was happening… you’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind.   Those words were utterly hypnotic.  They drew you in so firmly you could literally not look away.

Hi I’m Gary, and this is my barn! Wasn’t going to have quite the same effect was it.  

I needed a grabber.

Nobody grabbed like this.

Ever.

What could I learn from it.

Hmm

What REALLY Drives 'word of mouth' for your Planetarium?

(from Planetaria Obscura September 2016)

First Unload Baggage Please
     
I’ve carried around baggage in my home planetarium career - time to unload it out of the boot (British for trunk).   What baggage, as it applies to what people will remember about visiting my planetarium?  What semi myths do I cling to?   Well, there’s ‘I’m now inspired to take up amateur astronomy’!   Probably not.  Gone I think are the days when an Edmund catalog arriving at the house set off a lifelong passion.  Then there’s  ‘I’m going out TONIGHT and see all these constellations!  No, the city of Gallatin isn’t turning off its zillion lights tonight for you.   Finally there’s ‘I learned SO MUCH about stellar evolution, I’m changing my future major! ’ Not so much, being like school probably isn’t going to resonate.   All these things of course are POSSIBLE - I had the little girl one time who wanted to direct NASA some day.  But clinging to these as my major take-aways isn’t going to get word of mouth going.  I think I need to consult the Beatles.  A little help from my friends.

What Can’t Money Buy?
             
Money can‘t buy me love?  True, but that’s another newsletter entirely.   What can’t money or equipment or lectures or information or any manner of delivery buy?  FUN is the one thing that money cant buy.  After I saw Episode IV in 77 it was so much fun I HAD TO TELL EVERYONE.   After I took a crazy picture that was so much fun to  look at and produce, I HAD TO PUT IT ON FACEBOOK.    …..  When anything happens that causes fun, be it a book, a movie, a video, a show, an experience, a game -   I submit that it’s the fun you had in experiencing it that you want to share.  You want others to see what you saw.  Why else do we take pictures? To preserve something?  Mainly, we want others to see what we see.  Experience what we experience.  Fun is the thing we love the best.  And fun is an equal opportunity employer.  It will work with any package of ingredients.  It’s the experience that will be retold over and over.

And she’ll have fun fun fun till her daddy takes the t-bird away.  Indeed.

Nebraska (How do you know when you're done?)

 Nebraska?    from Planetaria Obscura - August 2016 Issue

Having three different doors, offices, projectors, configurations, dome surfaces, chair groups, music systems, roof coverings.  I thought of it romantically but practically - why did people stop in Nebraska when they could’ve continued on to Colorado during the great western expansion?  Why did they go THAT far when Ohio was good enough.  I think maybe we go as far as we can go with something until we convince ourselves this is far enough.  Or we drop in exhaustion. This land will make a THE farm.  Others keep going till they run out of land, some never left where they were born.  Some change things over time and never settle. I just changed them till I couldn’t change them any more. And one day in Nebraska, I thought - this is far enough.  It feels right.  People love Nebraska. Some of them must.  I now love my physical planetarium.  I’m home here in Omaha.  Or is this Lincoln?  WHERE’S THE WALMART??  Oh ok.   I felt lost there for a minute….   Home is where the stars are. 

Lets Get Physical

 Lets Get Physical        From Planetaria Obscura - August 2016 Issue

Physical, I want to get physical - lemme here your building talk.  Your building talk.   I’m halfway there!  I still don’t love what I DO in the building, the shows or lack thereof, but I’ve finally built my stage. Why is that important?  Well for one, I may have to take it on the road.  If we do sell our farm in 10 years due to creeping senility, I can reconstruct this somewhere else.  I don’t want another one in some garage some where. I want THIS ONE in some garage somewhere.  It took me many many years to get this one.  I think I could dismantle most of it and move it.   Sort of like when people retire and downsize.  My parents left it all behind and bought totally new furniture.  My wife’s parents brought the same furniture to their new retirement home and set up sort of the same rooms in a new house.  I actually prefer that approach.   I’ve become somewhat obsessed with PORTABLE, after spending 30 years here thinking, feet first, only way I’m coming out of here is feet first.  Actually, everywhere you go is feet first I finally decided (unless you have a really big nose), and those feet were made for walking!  And that might be just what they’ll do.  Maybe not.   Gotta live one day at a time. But planning for 65, or 70, or 80 years of age, you begin to envision that time when the next owner says, well after we knock all that down, we’ll plant tomatoes back here.  Like I should have done maybe. But by then, if I left, and its not decided but it might happen, by then I would have set it all up in some other garage or barn.  Because it was permanent but portable.  Don’t build anything you cant put wheels on.  Or grow tomatoes in.

The Darkened Room

From Planetaria Obscura July 2016

 The Darkened Room
     

What is it about a darkened room?  Lately I go out and sit in my little homemade star theater, sit in an easy chair, turn down the lights, and.. And …. I don’t turn on the stars.  Now perhaps this is more a function of an imperfect star theater - I don’t have cave like total darkness.  I don’t have perfectly curved surfaces.  Like being outside at night, there are plenty of undulations and faint glows - but these are provided even in a perfect theater by instruments,  pilot lights, and any faint illumination we choose to introduce.  The effect is the same - even without stars, the room gets bigger. And bigger. Until you’d swear you are sitting in an open expanse. Even standing up destroys this effect - you have to sit down and imagine a little - your senses begin to trick you.  The darkened room becomes the darkened universe.  Maybe this is behind why as kids we sometimes were afraid of the dark.  That closed in sense of security disappeared.  But now to me, its soothing.

Sort of like, my spirit can never be contained.  

The Land of Make Believe

From Planetaria Obscura - July 2016

The Land of Make Believe

Make Believe - the action of pretending or imagining, typically that things are better than they really are. Like "she's living in a world of make-believe"  

BETTER than they really are, that hadn’t occurred to me.  I didn’t quite buy that, but it was thought provoking.   Would my planetarium have an undercurrent of ‘well the real sky today sucks, so I’ve got the REAL way it should look - used to look’   That might be an easy trap to fall into, as my goal of course was to impart WONDER first and teach a little second.   Well not exactly a trap, if my goal was to educate about light pollution.  Its not so easy then, constructing and operating a land of make believe maybe.  Besides, the whole name is a bit misleading. We can’t really MAKE anyone believe anything can we.  We can try to convince them, show them what we believe.

The rest is up to them.  

Plot vs Theme in the Amusement Park

From the newsletter Planetaria Obscura - June, 2016

What’s the appeal of a home made star projector?  HPA Issue 12 had this to say:

Starlab?  I don’t want one!  I want one of a kind instruments, hand labored, eccentric, quirky, and beautiful in their own unique personalities. I like instruments that grow month by month, instruments that require hand adjustment, and ones that have permanent homes rather than living out of a suitcase.  Instruments with names, not numbers  This is not to knock commercial big boys however, when recently I visited Chris McCall’s Sudekum Planetarium in Nashville, I was impressed by the way her Spitz did a kind of ballet, whirling and even back flipping at shows end gracefully.  I was probably the only one watching the stars AND their source instead of the program being presented.

So for shows like Chris’s and the ones I’ve done, the plot (the story) here was certainly the astronomical information given.  But to me, the theme (the underlining meaning) was that the heavens are a kind of ballet.  And the projector is the dancer.  I watch both.

I liked the old amusement parks, before ’theme’ parks came into being, so really I think of my planetarium as both.  Many themes live out there, as the plots play out.  But amusements?  I’m lucky to be old enough to remember Riverview in Chicago, and Chain of Rocks on the bluffs above St Louis.  How would my planetarium measure up as a center of amusement?   I can speak of the galaxy as one big steam carousel, in a carnival of night.  See how it whirls!   Are we not on some gilded horse going round and round
forever amid the flashing lights and calliope music?  Gravity provides our roller coaster rides, invisible fingers accelerating us on a fantastic track through eternity.  Quantum physics now lures us into a bizarre funhouse of curved mirrors, stretching and flattening out our realities.  A planetarium and its atmospheric hurly burly (I always wanted to say that) puts you right on the midway.

Step right up.