By Larry Berz
Hark! The setting Sun doth sing — Glory to the illuminating ring. Clouds of orange, skies of green, Sunday skies the best we’ve seen! Joyful all observers cry, join the triumph of Aroostook skies. With celestial sights we claim, glory visits us in northern Maine!
At the risk of offending Christmas sensibilities, I borrowed this familiar refrain to draw attention to a quality of sky on Feb. 6, which purely encapsulates my purpose and mission as a periodic night sky columnist. Yestersun’s recent early evening sky put on a show of shows without charge. While exciting, World Cup biathletic exertions demanded a ticket of admission, the sky once again proves ‘tis a gift to be simple, ‘tis a gift to be free. The variables gelling into Sunday’s Capricornian sky were unpredictable, yet unforgettable. The results kindled a thousand and one memories for the pedestrian.
Do you recall what was to be that daybreak? Let me give you one point of view from the rooftops of Caribou. Why the rooftops? Because I dangled 20 feet in the air gingerly crawling down an aluminum-like ladder. I felt like Neil Armstrong descending the lunar module for some desperate toehold upon the surface of a new world. In my right hand, I held a scientific instrument of polished alloy — commonly known to terrestrials as a roof rake. But give me a break, to my high mind, perhaps I really held a micro-particle detector prepared for spectroscopically sifting through precious particles from an unknown world. Undeterred by a landslide of snowdust somersaulting into my face and the pockets of my space/snow suit, I gazed into the firmament — the sky, overcast all day, now showed slivers of bluebreak. A gentle gap of purest blue opened puffily in the southwest, revealing the sublime — a stroke of crescent moon tipped upward like a silver girl sailing unperturbed among the billows.
Dodging another snowslide, I ended my roof rake analysis and noticed the end of the afternoon. The sun rather quickly burst through the roil and painted the town with rays and radiance. Had we already forgotten a land where sunlight lent a hand to late afternoon chores? My musculature moaned as I collapsed along with the ladder clamps. But what a reward awaited mine eyes. The setting sun now painted the entire scene in orangeade. In every direction, light banished the darkness of the solstice season. The Capricornian Sun mastered the skywork with sureness and creative command.
Amazingly, the eastern skies by the Holy Rosary Church praised forever, with sky shades of baby blue to a heart-rendering greenish, turquoise set with openings for the pure in heart. I drank greedily and turned westward where a none too common sight of a thin solar pillar stretched pencil-like directly above the now setting sun. Millions of invisible jewels of crystallized icewater bend the late light into the distinct pillar-like formation, often part of the Capricornian twilight, but rarely appreciated. Sunlight saturating nearby clouds outlined the billows, circumscribed in bright orange outline while the cloud interiors were blackened. Time recreates itself; the crescent moon now paired with a bright star — none other than the planet Jupiter shining some 1.6 billion times farther away than our nearer neighbor. The sky manifesting its true dimensions — a scale to boggle our brainiacal barometers.
February has announced the clear, unmistakable return of sunlight to our lives and land!
It is a time for friendship, not animosity to bloom amongst neighbors on earth as well. The recent invitation of 700 Europeans, including 200 overseas athletes to our remoteness ought to serve as a cry of celebration. The influx of this cultural creativity ought to stir our hearts and minds to organize the best of that within us. Every coordinator and committee of the recent World Cup Biathlon in Presque Isle deserves high huzzahs and recognition of merit for time well spent. Their unsung heroics enriched us all.
So banish the political enemies of the past 75 years — the German Nazi, the Italian Fascist, the Japanese Imperialist, the Soviet, Chinese, North Korean, South American, Cuban and Vietnamese Communist Totalitarian, domestic and Asian Muslim fundamentalist/nationalist terrorists, dictators of every stripe. And banish the true enemies of mortal existence — hunger, disease, fear, greed and cruelty of any form.
In the words of the late President Kennedy: “Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradiate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.” Banish them all under the Capricornian banner where race and ethnicity as moral indices of superiority vanish under the reality of the sun’s light — a day of humanity where in the awful reality of today — either non-violent cooperation or mutual self-annihilation — we finally make the right choice and live as one world, under God, with liberty and justice for all.
Larry Berz is planetarium director at Malcolm Science Center in Easton. The Science Centerwill host an open house, Saturday, April 30. For more information, call Berz at 488-545.
