Posted by Ed Kiser on March 12, 2015 at 07:19:57 user Kisered.
In Winter Holiday, Dick enjoyed going to the barn
(observatory) and there to look at the stars, both with and
without his telescope. Being in the Winter time, the nights
were long, so the night sky was available to him long before
bedtime. He had a book with him that aided in spotting the
various configurations of stars in the sky - skipping over
the poetic quotes, of course. It was his interest in the
sky that suggested that any signals from Holly Howe were
imagined to be from Mars.
In Swallowdale, as they prepared for the long walk across
country the next day to meet the Amazons, John decided to
practice sleeping outside his tent. There is a line in the
book that caught my attention:
[The stars were clear in the sky before they went to bed.]
This line grabbed me because it made me realize that in this
modern time, with civilisation being so near by, especally
with all the outdoor lighting blazing away, actually getting
to see the sky as a display of countless stars is a rare if
not impossible view to ever really get to see. One must
make some real effort to travel no small distance to get to
where one can look up and see the heavenly panarama.
Perhaps it is with a twinge of envy that I imagined John
lying there, in his sleeping bag, out of his tent, and
looking up into the night sky, viewing that which I cannot
get to see because of "light pollution."
Ed Kiser, Kentucky, USA (with a street light in front
of my house.)
( kisered@aol.com )
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