Good morning, Starshine

As I look up into the night sky I get the shivers, literally. All that black with those little points of light makes me cold. I try not to look up at night.

Sometimes I can’t help myself, especially if I think I have just spotted the Little Dipper. For some reason that is always the one I think I see. Then I start looking for the Big Dipper. This is when I start finding more Little Dippers. A lot of stars seem to make Little Dippers.

OK, so if I can’t be sure of those I can surely find the Red Planet, Mars. It is like a star, only red, it says here in my Star Gazing for Dummies book. There it is! Oh, wait. Maybe not. Well, that star is red-ish. There is another one over there. I never can remember, is it supposed to be really bright?

Hey, that one is moving. A UFO! A UFO! Oh, it’s a plane. Now I see the green and red lights on the wings. There is a really bright, white star over there. Is that the morning star? Shouldn’t it be sleeping now? I swear it is getting closer, like that star in the beginning of Pinocchio that the Blue Fairy rides in on.

Don’t get me started on those stars that are supposed to look like a bull and an archer and all of that stuff. Somebody in the old days had a really vivid imagination. Personally, I think it was a put on, like the Emperor’s New Clothes.

You remember that one about the dishonest tailor who sold the emperor on a set of clothes that would be invisible to anyone who was stupid or disloyal, and it turns out that there really was nothing there and the ones that said they could see them were the dumb ones.

Well I just don’t see that giant crab in the sky. Take that, Ptolemy!

I don’t find the moon quite so disconcerting. Maybe the reason the stars make me cold is that they seem to be involved in a futile attempt to light up the dark. The dark is winning. The moon, on the other hand is clearly in charge of his sector. A good, full moon gives enough light to harvest crops. It seems benign and friendly, what with that face and all. Oh? You can’t see the face? Then see the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes in the last paragraph.

There is just one thing that bothers me about the moon. Sometimes it is here during the day. This is clearly wrong.  The idea that the moon goes off the tracks every so often is somewhat upsetting.

Bill Abrams resides in Pine Plains, unlike the man on the moon.