Is it Better to be Lost or Found?

I go back and forth on how much of the night sky I should learn.  The conventional (default even) idea seems to be that the more you know, the more you enjoy!   Constellation guides have been published in great profusion for so long, a local used bookstore I frequent has at least 30 at any one time.  There are 88 constellations.  I should know them all.  And even if I can't see them all in my real sky, what excuse do I have in my planetarium sky?  I can go south without leaving the farm.  I can see Antila the Hun, and mean the Pump.  WHY don't I know them all.   I could dazzle visitors with my knowledge.  I've even written tributes to overlooked constellations like Leo Minor.   Actually come to think of it, all but about 20 constellations might fall in that overlooked category, and half of those are heard of more for astrology than astronomy.

But I haven't done that.   I fight it.    I once attended a 'constellation shootout' at a regional planetarium conference under a big dome.  The winners knew them all.   I should be a winner.   But I'm not.

So I tell myself, most people who enjoy hobbies don't know everything about them.   Most people who visit Yellowstone don't see every geyser.  You see want you want to see, or what you have the energy to see .. or... what fullfills whatever it is that drove you to look in the first place.   And whatever drives me to look at the stars is apparently NOT a deep desire to know them all!   Thinking about it, you can't know a tiny fraction of them anyway.  Inspirational songs say that the creator knows every star by name - maybe so we don't have to.   Anyway, constellations are arbitrary.   They are past records of other people in other times who saw things.   Nobody named them all, so perhaps nobody needs to KNOW them all.

There's a funny line in one of the Indiana Jones movies - he got lost in his own museum.    They use it as a joke, or an indication of incompetence, but I think maybe its just an equally valid approach to life.  Get lost in your own sky.   A favorite old song goes, lets lose ourselves, go completely astray, and find ourselves again.  I do that sometimes in my little woods out back - getting lost just for a moment has benefits - it resets our bearings, shows us how little control we really  have.  And theres a rush of familiarity when we find ourselves again which is pleasant.  Reassuring.   Makes us appreciate maybe what we stop seeing after awhile if we never get off the beaten path (which we beat, along with countless others).

So sometimes I think, its better not to know all the constellations.  To get lost and not concentrate on groupings of trees.  That way you can take it all in at once.  Its more like a living, breathing organism then maybe.  Maybe its an excuse, and I'm just lazy.   But maybe that ain't all bad. 

THESE ARE THE STARS - SHOW

I've finally created a literary nod to the stars that I will use in my shows at Sumner Skies Planetarium!  Its a throwback to old golden age astronomy books that always began with poetry - quotes - emotions as well as facts and science.   Once I got going, These are the Stars basically wrote itself, and to keep a live feel I basically went with the first take.  The video was similarly a first take, going down the script written in about an hour with two old inspirational texts and my memories.  I threw in a few early planetarium attempts, the very first stages of the current 15 foot dome and earlier 9 foot dome from the 90s.  Also there is a nod to the father of home planetariums, Dick Emmons.    I made a few speaking mistakes in the narration, most hilariously 'Corvus the Crue', who will become the mascott for my 'institution' as soon as I can make one up.

Its that live 'this is happening now' feeling that the stars always give me.

THESE ARE THE STARS - SHOW

Heres a brief introduction in the star chamber.  Its always been my dream to add live music and poetry to enhance the creative passion of the stars.  They are not just static!

THESE ARE THE STARS - INTRODUCTION

To commemorate the final renovation - the BARN AND THIRTY YEARS theme fully realized (we bought this farm in 1985) I recorded a short tour of the facilities

Tour the 2015 Sumner Skies Planetarium!

1000 Hours of Thought

There were two titles to this unlikely work, the first went ‘is that a planetarium, or is your lamp on steroids?’ - a humorous nod to the ludicrousness of creating what is essentially an elaborate magic lantern that recreates .. Creation.    It was so serious you had to laugh, like John Lennon cracking up before 'Let it Be' cranked up on the last Beatles record.  The other title was ‘1000 hours of thought’, which sort of belied anything funny.  Anything you had to think THAT many hours for was at risk of sinking under its own weight much faster than the Titanic.  But that’s almost accurate, 1000 hours of thought for each hour DOING was how this went down.  

Dave Marsh, the old boomer rock critic had the answer on page 343 of 'The Heart of Rock and Soul, the 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made', when he described for years hearing the first line of 'Surfin USA', the Beach Boy classic, as ‘if everybody had a notion’, instead of the true lyric, ‘if everybody had an ocean’ .  'If everybody had an ocean' merely sets the scene for surf music - I could well say, if everybody had a planetarium …  and describe the joys and benefits.  But if everybody had a NOTION was far different - that implies that surfing or planetariums (or whatever crazy pursuit you wish to insert here) was something far greater.  Something to ponder. Something that drives you, though you may not know exactly what it is.  Aren't we driven to do the best things in life?

It made surfing, or building planetariums, or (insert here your crazy dream) an act of will and philosophy.  Those weren’t just kids swimming around on surfboards - I wasn’t just some lunatic sitting in a barn projecting fake stars on the ceiling … we were men walking on water, pursuing some nobler purpose only we could see but one that we desperately wanted to share.  Achieving something far more weighty for our own souls.  Living a purpose and driving down a road with or without a clear view of the destination.  Me?  I just like stars, OK?  That became my motto but anything that required this much passion was surely far more.  It might seem like an ocean, but you had to have a pretty powerful NOTION to cross that ocean.   Surf music - home planetariums .. the will to beat on, boats against the current.  Something that drives you.  A way to live. This must surely be a part of the furniture of my life.  Not really a hobby at all.

So...  that lamp down on the far end table.  Has it gotten fatter????

Projecting the Night

I've got planetarium projectors - just saying that sounds a bit crazy, like 'I race lawn mowers', or I built a drum set out of trash cans or something.  But I do - and how they came into my possession is the subject of this post.  Whats a planetarium projector?  Some kind of magic lantern that creates an illusion of the heavens few people have even seen anymore, the stars from a remote dark location.  I wanted to be able to conjure them any old day, since the variables that have to line up for me to 1) get far enough from a city 2) get a clear moonless night  3) look up are like some sort of cosmic slot machine.  But now I have the ability.

In my 40's, I had forgotten my planetarium beginnings.  That's not to say I didn't visit commercial ones on occasion - when my father had moved us to the Chicago area in 62 and I found myself on the lakefront knocking on the door of this big place called Adler, I had been hooked. Before they showed movies and lasers like now, they used to just show the stars.  I liked them.  So back in those wonder years, those years of pinewood derby style cars, homemade skateboards and stilts, superballs and stromberg race sets - of course I built a planetarium projector.  I even found a kid down the street who was interested.  We had little telescopes, but my mom brought home cakes in these white cake boxes, and I took one one time and poked some holes in it with a safety pin.  I had this flashlight bulb on a wire with a battery pack - so I could go into a darkened bedroom and project little stars up on the ceiling.   Then this particular fever slept many many years, until those 40's.  Then it woke up.

I picked up the Starry Messenger want ads one day, and there was an ad for a 'drilled starball'.  The check wrote itself.  Soon I was gazing at an earth globe painted blue with a couple hundred tiny star holes expertly drilled in it from a man named Dick Emmons, North Canton, Ohio.  From this I build my first homemade star projector.  It changed my life, or resumed that life of long ago in Villa Park outside Chicago.  Once again, I could see stars.  The fever was back.

The Emmons projector was eventually donated to the Planetarium Museum in Big Bear Lake CA, where even today it hobnobs with commercial dinosaurs of another era.  I didn't need it anymore because lightning struck again.  My 'Starry Messenger' came through a second time, when the Steve Smith Copper Cylinder came up for sale.  This time I remembered it - I had read about it in Sky and Telescope as a youth, eating my chicken TV dinner I think it was, and I was enthralled.  I did whatever it took to get it back to Gallatin, which wasn't easy - a 72 hour round trip to Douglas AZ and back.  This amazing cylinder with its 80 lenses, knotty pine mounting box, was the stuff of legend to ME.  It projected a breaktaking night sky in my little dome.  But it needed a bigger dome to do it justice.   There are things in life that as soon as you get one, you need a bigger one.  Domes were the case, and here was the reason.  I entered Dome Purgatory again and began the tortuous journey already spoken of in the larger theater out back.  The Smith cylinder was mounted at least four different ways - it was used in its fork and out of its fork - its original light source eventually replaced with a self contained unit, necessitating an access door.  It acquired a dent it was moved around so much .   but each new light position - each new orientation revealed new wonders in the sky drilled into this piece of soft metal.  It was truly a thing of dreams, and remains thus to this day.

There would be a third 'classic' planetarium projector to come to my farm, I purchased from Steve Pielock an old Spitz A2, the original American commercial workhorse planetarium and to this day I haven't done it justice.  Too large and ungainly to use in my small theaters, I have savored it in pieces rather than as a whole.  The dodecahedron is a curiosity more than a usuable starball - the desk has fallen apart, and the control desk resembles the controls of a WWII submarine.  Its just cool to have around, a reminder of 50's technology that just felt solid.  Perhaps it has some role yet to be determined.  Sometimes we acquire things just to look at them and to feel how solid they are.   Such is the case with my Spitz A2.

About the time I stopped buying classic homemade and commercial planetarium projectors, Alan Clutter was good enough to donate a Spitz A3 starball to me out of the blue - or the black.    A former employee of Spitz, this gentleman had found a ball never used and it has become a cherished part of my collection, and it is rotated in and out of my theater for certain sky renditions.  It has a purity of light in its Milky Way which is quite endearing, and although it too has been so many places it now sports a few signs of wear, this is an invaluable member of my home planetarium team.

There are things however, that live on the border of memory - if we're lucky, some of these dimly stalk us from our childhood and never really go away.  Such was one planetarium 'toy' for me, dubbing it 'the holy grail' of planetarium toys from the 50's on would not prove to be overwrought - the Renwal Cosmorama was one of those dawning space age things that for me brought back an intoxicating swirl of Gilbert chemistry sets, Mr Machines and Pikes Peak Hill Climb road races right out of the bible of any 60's kid - the Sears Christmas catalog.  The Renwal Cosmorama was a plastic half dome, a tiny star projector, and some incomprehensible yet cool 'controls' that really had little practical value, but for a boomer astro nerd it was the ultimate.  Finding one finally and being able to barter for it rather than pay some outlandish price for it remains a top 5 of alltime for my home planetarium career.  There were other toys, most notable the Spitz Junior projectors of the 50s and an unending parade of toy projectors since, but nothing could touch the Cosmorama. I began customizing it immediately.

But wasn't there something missing in my home planetarium projector cannon?  I had started the Home Planetarium Association in the 90's, done 20 or more newsletters and countless online posts on BUILDING home planetariums, yet I hadn't actually BUILT one since that cakebox in Chicago ..   I started as Emmons did with Earth globes - two of my prototypes were sold and never heard from again, one to Seattle and one to Texas - these perfected the main problem of pinhole projection, the fact that starholes in globes tend to close back up, by substituting star plates made of vinyl or thin metal.  I had built a couple school projectors though to this day I haven't followed them up .. yet.   But I wanted something more, something I could use in my own dome ..  something of mine - I couldn't take credit for the Emmons or the Smith or the Spitz.  I needed my own.  But how?

And then a plastic construction barrel turned up.  I don't know where it came from, it was just there and the Likert Star Cylinder was created, shamelessly lifting the star patterns off the Smith.  Yet here was something new, I put the lenses INSIDE, retaining that smooth outer cylinder surface - indeed the projector resembled a large wedding cake.  I was able to finally live up to my name as a builder, finding a cheap solution to lenses and really building the heavens out of nothing but miscellaneously parts.  It was done and now my collection seemed complete.

 All four projectors, the Smith, the Likert, the A2 and the A3 (along with the Cosmorama) are here now, and the Emmons is enshrined.  While I cannot rule out further additions, this seems to be the starting lineup for spreading the news about the heavens beauty in my remaining years on the planet.

Dome Purgatory

OK I've made changes. And changes. And CHANGES. But I've got ALOT of exercise. Run up several enormous Lowes balances. Bought enough black vinyl to cover Chicago. Hauled so many strange loads to the county landfill the guy who works there runs over and laughs at my trailerloads... WHAT have I been looking for? You know how something looks effortless? Just RIGHT. Like something you whipped up in 10 minutes. Like an iphone maybe - Wrigley Field... something thats the end result of countless moving around designs etc that finally just CLICKED. Thats what I've been trying to do. Maybe.

So after I had a little 10 foot dome in a lean to addition on the back of my huge old barn - well actually briefly there were several OTHER domes in that same barn .. thats another story .. I decided to build 'the big one' out back of the barn. I already had another leanto building and a building further out. So there was a space in the middle that would hold THE BIG ONE. So I built this round building with a flat metal roof. Inside went a curved cheap thin paneled dome, because thats what I had used for the 10 foot. The projector pointed west in real directions. Light got in the door though, so I built onto the front of this a 'light trap' tunnel. This lasted a year, I only had one visitor during this time, a guy from the local astronomy club, who was never heard from again. This theater bugged me though, the roof was too flat, it was too clausterphobic. So I blew out the southern wall and built an addition. This was cheaply done, using a canvas roof and fence sections as walls. Now I had half a dome (the better half of the paneling), which began a neverending debate about which was better in a small place, half or full. In a full small dome you have stars right over your shoulder etc. I started putting the dome all the way to the floor by adding large commercial white posters I got from my job. I had a couple shows in there.

It leaked bad. The paneling started warping. I added a little office with a computer, the first of several. This is where, famously, a large snake was seen crawling down a 2 by 4. I then began another neverending debate was to whether my theater should be pitch black or not. Pitch black theaters are great for day shows, but not so great to hang out in, as a hobby person tends to do tweaking things. So I made this second configuration pitch black a while. Thats when I found a snake under the carpet - same snake probably. No matter - my old theater featured a bat hanging from the summit occasionally. Country living. I had elaborate things in here - I hung windows with candles in them - I hung large speakers .. this was my theater! I even slept in it a couple times. I had a couch. I began loading music on the computer in the little office - I built a little roof over the computer so it would be safe. I shot some music videos in there. Looking back, it was my favorite interim theater. But it didnt last.

It leaked so bad, right where the additions met the original round building - and the flat roof bugged me. So I ripped the roof off and made it taller and more rounded - no easy task with flat roofing sheets. Except inexplicably I left a sagging section. For over a year I had no faith this roof would stay up by itself so I had a single support 2 by 4 'just in case'. I also had put a support beam up above the 'dome', which sagged quite a bit over the years. No matter. Now I had a taller roof dome, but the paneling was rotten so it got ripped out. I now changed the orientation from north looking (in real directions) to east looking, to take advantage of the tallest section of the roof in that direction, and the sloping down of the land in that direction. I bought dozens of foam craft board now and used them as the dome surface, stapled to some lattice I nailed up on the underside. I tore down the old office and the old light trap entrance. Large messes just kept coming - walls, roofs, tunnels, offices, domes .. all had now come and gone .. laboriously. But I strove on! I built a NEW office and entrance - the addition now had become an entrance way, with the office at the rear.

I gave a couple shows in this one, but it seemed tight so I added a little alcove at the rear. But it still leaked - the foam boards began warping. The alcove was too small. I never used the office, even after I opened up a window in it looking into the theater. But the foam paneling wasn't working, and there was that flat spot in the roof. I tried to hide this with a lantern at one point - it didn't work. That part of the roof had to go. Off it came, another mess. Out came the foam paneling - another mess. Now I found plastic insulation panels and put them on the walls and ceiling, hand spraying them white. And I went back to a full dome - I was tired of half domes. I moved in a church pew to join the couch. I vacillated between full chairs and short 'gare' chairs. Couldnt decide. The support beam disappeared and the new better shaped ceiling looked good. I put a new door over in the north side and converted the front part of the entrance addition to an office, putting in the music computer - briefly this had a wrought iron door looking into the theater. This is where things stood when I did the 'lighthearted tour' video. But I wasnt done.

The dome surface itself bugged me because of the indentations in the insulation panels .. plus I couldn't get it white enough . By this time it was fall 2014, and my 2 week fix the ceiling project was taking all year. I pulled the ceiling out creating another large mess and put up black plastic. My dome material you see had to be water AND light leak resistant, since I'd decided finally I needed a pitch black theater. Night only shows just weren't making it, I'd had 2 school bus loads come out the summer before and couldn't even get them IN the star theater because it was day (I gave other presentations in the barn instead). So I had a planetarium where I wasn't showing stars. So I connected the new door with the lean to behind the barn and built a tunnel between the two .. now people could sit in the large barn area and then walk into the theater. I got a paint sprayer and turned the black plastic now overhead white. The rest of the former addition, where a couch had sat, now was screened off and some LED dippers added to provide a focal point. A small lighted village (the second, I had one in the original round theater) was added, the pew was removed, the couch moved to the west wall, the orientation of the projector now pointed south in real directions - it has now pointed in all of the 4 directions. I'll have to do another full post on projector mounting. It changed just as much as the theater.

So now I have a pitch dark theater, a focal point screen area, a couch for parents and short chairs for kids, an entrance tunnel - an office round back with music .. a back room behind the panels .. I still have the large barn area (the Sumner Star theater, the subject of yet ANOTHER post, since its gone through dozens of changes). .the barn area is now however more of a 'making planetarium' workshop. More on that.

So I think I'm stopping now. Its new, it incorporates most of what I've been striving for. Is it perfect? No. It doesn't leak anymore, I put reams of black vinyl overhead. I like it.

I think I'll keep it. Maybe.

The Sumner Star Theater

About the first one discovers when they bring a group out to the home planetarium is this - what if all the people dont FIT in your little star theater?  So as I contemplated this dilemma (which led to endless debates on how to fit them in, on the floor, on short little chairs, on couches, benches, a church pew (yes I have one, dont ask), tall chairs ..  eventually I realized I needed a 'holding area' so I could potentially split up big groups into pieces.   Since the planetarium was immediately behind a large old barn filled with couches and easy chairs from 30 years of remodeling the main house, it wasn't long before a plan emerged!   The Sumner Star Theater was born.  Because - if you have people sitting in a place, what ELSE can you do besides have them wait to go into the star theater.

It turned out, I could have them do alot.  So much in fact, the tail began wagging the dog, and I spent several years indulging in fantasies, I mean long held dreams, about other things RELATED to the stars at the expense of star shows.  But it was all good.  A bit unfocused, but some hobbies are tightly focused and some aren't. Home planetariums can be incredibly diverse.  So here I brought in every related interest that had occurred. to me. Why not.  There was nothing to stop me.  I had a large area, a captive audience ..

Stars and history.   That I think was the main attraction.  The stars as the only thing we can see today that is exactly (well almost) as the ancients saw them.   So what is the FIRST thing, well the second thing after Stonehenge, I had that covered in my music The Salisbury Trilogy, one thinks of with the ancients and the stars.  Why the pyramids of course. So I built some.

Updated July 2015:    The Sumner Star theater as a concept has survived and moved over to a side venue - this has preserved some of that historical flavor thats been so fun.  Currently its set up with the Egyptian theme, which coincided with the production of my last 'obscure rock opera', Under Ancient Eygptian Skies (see Obscure Rock Operas blog).  The results of this mayhem may be seen here   Under Ancient Egyptian Skies.   Yes, there was a Khufu Dance.  Don't ask.  These were the last original songs I've written, in the first 15 foot dome theater in one creative outburst.  It is anticipated that this could be part of my live shows, keeping that Jake Jones spirit alive (Jake Jones being the band I remember playing in the Abrahms planetarium in the mid 70s)

So the Sumner Star theater has been and will continue to be a secondary outlet for historical and musical star related creativity!  What could be better.

A Tale of Three Umbrellas

This came about because I'm trying to use some umbrellas in the barn as portable domes for building small planetariums, I've got three up at present and I imagined what I'll say to childrens groups when using them to demonstrate various homemade devices - it came out something like this!
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Once there were three umbrella brothers  - all young, and going out into the world to seek their fortunes.

But what did life mean for an umbrella?  The very name itself was funny - um sounded tentative .. ummm  - umbra meant shadow, or darkness.  Not very promising to a young umbrella. Elle - french, meant small.   Small shadow was the meaning of 'umbrella', and the brothers weren't sure they liked it.  But the smallest of the three decided that's what an umbrella was for, to be a small shadow, and he said 'I'll spend my life sheltering folks from the rain'.  Surely THAT'S what an umbrella's destiny must be.   Nobody could disagree - most umbrellas only came out on rainy days.   But the next biggest brother wasn't so sure.  Being somewhat of a linguist (umbrellas went to school), he knew that another name for umbrella was 'parasol'.  THAT'S what I'll do in my life he boasted - no rain for ME - 'para' means shielding against', and 'sol' means sun - I'll only come out on SUNNY days, and keep folks cool in hot weather!   And everyone thought that was a worthy goal - the only thing better than coming out on rainy days was to be useful on sunny ones!   But then the two brothers looked up at the biggest and asked him... well, what about you?

The biggest brother patted his two smaller siblings on the back (umbrellas have backs), and encouraged them in their worthy if somewhat traditional umbrella pursuits.  'I think I'll do something a little different', he said thoughtfully.   I want to be something more than a small shadow in my life.  I want to hold up something for others, all others, to share - to gaze in wonder at.  I want to hold up the stars!   His two smaller companions laughed at first, but then gasped when he slowly and majestically spread his arms and rose into the sky.  The sun went down and the rain stopped and slowly, one by one, the stars came out and reflected their glory on his shining outspread white face.   Like his brothers, the biggest umbrella had found his destiny - he would be a reflector of the glory and wonder shining above in the stars!

And so, throughout their long and useful lives, the three umbrella brothers were happy in their callings.  I hope everyone listening to this tale of three umbrellas can do the same!