Category: Life

As I return to this small town, I am excited. Did I miss its small and limited shopping options? No, I did not. Did I miss the lack of diverse restaurant choices? No, I did not. Did I miss the over abundance of stop lights and slow speed zones? No, I did not. Did I miss the barren and desolate landscape? No, I did not. I did, however, miss your small town charm. I did miss your moody weather changes. I missed all your loving. But now I’m back.

The saying “Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars?” has been floating around as of late. To this question I give a big, adamant response “No!”

“Why not?” you may ask. I have two reasons why not.

First, there is a vast difference between the celestial event of a piece of space rock plummeting into Earth’s atmosphere and the mechanical dull drum of an airplane flying overhead. To catch an airplane flying in the night is simply a matter of time and location. All airplanes fly at a scheduled time along a designated route and as such any person who is: near or along a place that people want to fly to and standing outside at a time when people want to get there, will inevitably see an airplane in the sky. To see an airplane in the night sky, one would simply and an additional criterion to be looking only at night.

Contrarily, watching a shooting star requires being in the right place, at the right time and a large degree of luck. Shooting stars appear when a piece of rock that had been floating calmly in outer space, is suddenly whisked into Earth’s gravitational pull then burnt as it enters our atmosphere. Because the rarity of space rocks along Earth’s path around the sun, this doesn’t happen nearly as often as an airplane flying. Further, the quick flashy natural of shooting star, they usually last less than a second, means that your ability to see one is largely dependent on luck, chance or divine intervention.

If you are willing to replace a miraculous celestial event with a scheduled man-made event, why limit to the night sky? Why not pretend that airplanes in the day sky are like shooting stars? Would that be too cheap of an experience? What about birds flying? Are we concerned that it will be too common place? Consider that airplanes in the night sky are already too common place and that making the events more common place should be considered an acceptable payoff for the ability to place wishes all the time.

Second, there is a vast difference in the circumstances in which one can see an airplane in the night sky and the circumstances in which one can see a shooting star. In order to catch a glimpse of an airplane in the night sky, usually, you only need to look up at the sky. Except, you get a whole lot more than a glimpse, you can watch airplanes as they traverses much of the sky. If your eyes were good enough, you can often watch them from horizon to horizon, minus any trees that hang overhead. This coupled with their frequency robs the viewer of any awe. You can catch them all the time and watch them forever.

Shooting stars on the other hand can only be viewed in one of two circumstances: after long preparation or purely based on chance. Further, shooting stars are fleeting. You can only ever catch glimpses of them with your eyes. The glimpses can be so short you wonder if you even really saw one or they can be long enough to actually register what you’re seeing but even then they are gone quickly so you can’t really enjoy them.

There are four major meteor showers a year: the Quadrantids in January, the Perseids in August, the Leonids in November and the Geminids in December. Each of these is the result of Earth passing through the debris trails of various comets. Earth passes through these spots once each year on our annual trip around the sun. The meteor shower’s predictability allows for people to prepare excursions to observe and even photograph the showers.

There are of course other, smaller meteor showers throughout the year, but they are more random. You can only see these when the circumstances are right. These circumstances are set up as thus: Something bad happens, something really bad happens; the event itself isn’t necessarily such a bad thing, rather it is a bad thing in a long list of bad things that were added one on top of another until their combined pressing weight causes your calm to finally be shattered.

Once shattered you look around, scared out of your mind because you had everything planned out so well but none of it has worked out and now you are all out of plans. So, you run. You run out of your house to your car. In your car you drive. Anywhere with people is too close, so you drive far into the country, as far away as you can. Suddenly you’ve arrived to nowhere in particular and you pull over to the side of the road and get out of the car. You find yourself in a field and you start talking to the stars. It is only by chance that the moment after you spilled your soul out to God that you catch a glimpse of a shooting star. At that moment, it is as if God is quietly telling you “it will all be okay.”

In both situations, catching a glimpse of a shooting star is far superior to the casualness with which one can catch sight of airplanes. For that matter, little can compare to the awe and marvel of watching the beauty of the night sky.

Anything less than a celestial event should not be considered an acceptable replacement for an actual celestial event.

After reviewing this blog and many of Google’s recent improvements of the Blogger service, I found it necessary to polish up the site a little bit. I cleaned up the tags (getting rid of some that were basically useless), updating other tags, fixing some broken picture links and changing the blog theme. All in all I think the changes bring much improvement.

Have you felt the difference between 20 pound (normal copier paper in the blue packaging) and 24 pound (better printing paper in the red packaging) paper? It may sound like a tiny difference, and it is. But when I turn a page of 20 pound paper it feels cheap and nearly worthless; when I turn the page of 24 pound paper it feels like turning the page of a heaven sent, blessed work approved by God himself and thus not only worthy but demanding of my time and attention. It’s like watching Michael Jackson’s feet do the moon walk, listening to Enya’s “The Memory of Trees”, smelling fresh rain all while eating a cookie monster and drinking raspberry sorbet dissolving in tonic water, plus 1.

I love it.

You should try it.

It’s wonderful.