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FLYOVER

Thank you all for coming to the Great Lakes Planetarium Association (GLPA) 46th Annual Conference.  For major events like home football games, University of Notre Dame often schedules a thunderous flyover by US Air Force jets.  I know our host Keith Davis had lobbied for such a welcome of GLPA members, but, alas, our national resources are deployed elsewhere.   Many thanks go to our service men and women around the globe.

In lieu of the real thing, I propose we do what educators do well—namely, adapt other people’s material, with credit, to serve the needs of our particular audience.  So, from the Academy of Model Aeronautics I am borrowing the design of an FPG-9 for a simulated flyover.  If you have looked at the What’s New page of the Paper Plate Education website, and God knows I’m likely the only one here who has in the past few years, then you’d know the FPG-9 is this—a foam plate glider made from a 9-inch foam plate.  Not paper, but close.  Cut out from a single foam plate.  You bend the elevons on the wings a little bit there; adjust the rudder on the vertical fin; cue the sound effects.  GLPA friends, this is your welcoming flyover…  

EARLY INFLUENCES

Traditionally, the Spitz lecturer has been a senior statesperson, certainly much older than I, who is intimately familiar with the daily responsibilities and practices of operating a planetarium; someone with keen insight and pedagogical skills from having spent years under the dome.  I’d like to thank the GLPA Executive Committee for departing from that past.

For those of you who do not know me, no, I am not a planetarium director. On the GLPA membership form, I have no organization, no title, no work phone.  My Planetarium category is “none.”

No, I am not an astronomer or even a student of astronomy.  Rather, I used to drive tugboats out of Cleveland, and charter boats out of Chicago.  For the past many years I’ve been blessed to live the scam of being an at-home dad.

I can’t even say I’ve been looking up at the stars since I was a kid, or that I’ve longed to be a planetarian. Museums and the like were never a career consideration for me—they seemed untouchable, more of a destination than a work place.

No, I don’t have the pedigree of so many of my predecessors at this lectern. Standing before you is a humbling experience.

Somewhere along life’s timeline, a few converging forces move us into particular career paths.  Do you remember who it was or what it was that inspired you to pursue astronomy?  I like to ask people, “What dark-sky, blow-you-away experience truly moved you”?”  Most adults are eager to share some nocturnal highlight, usually had while on vacation.  Unfortunately, with incessant sky glow, most kids no longer know what the sky ought to look like.  They have no framework—no personal experience—on which to conceive a Genesis night.  

Among the earlier influences in my life, three stand out that I’d like to share.  I didn’t take a genuine interest in astronomy until I was a student of the Great Lakes Maritime Academy in Traverse City, Michigan.  After one 90-day stint on a freighter, I got together with a fellow cadet who told me he could show me a star named Zubenelgenubi.  No way!  Sure enough, he pulled out a chart with these labeled dots—and there was Zubenelgenubi.  

Another time, there was the captain’s daughter. Oh, the captain’s daughter.  This wonderful young woman, my age, took a week-long trip under the watchful eye of her father.  By day, she drew—from memory—a star chart of the constellations.  By night, hunkered down in the darkness of the stack deck, we witnessed the very scene she had depicted.

And then there were the stars themselves—the scenes not witnessed by modern youth.  I remember one time, northbound on upper Lake Huron, when the water was completely still—not even a ripple.  I stood on the bow of that boat as it steamed ahead into a dark abyss with stars everywhere—in the sky, reflected off the water like a mirror, in my peripheral vision.  The sky and water were indistinguishable.   It’s the closest I’ve ever been to afloat in space.  

From then on, I felt like I got more out of my 24 hours per day, for I had the whole realm of deep space attracting my attention skyward.  The day no longer ended with night.  

My first foray into the planetarium business occurred when I was driving boats in Chicago.  Every winter I would be out of work, so I took college classes and visited the Adler Planetarium.  Eventually I applied for a job opening as a guard. I figured, when the paying customers emptied the halls to attend the planetarium show, in the quiet I’d be able to read the fine print of the Adler exhibits or check out the craftsmanship of their astrolabe collection.

Interviewing me for the guard’s job was a GLPA member—April Whitt.   After showing me around the building, April ushered me into the empty theater that housed the mighty Zeiss Mark VI projector.  What an instrument.  But then, April allowed me to stand behind the plexiglass barrier at the console.  This was like sitting in the chair of Captain James T. Kirk—at the helm of Starship Adler.

I soon realized April was interviewing me for the sky show operator.  “But Ms. Whitt, I only want to be a guard.”

There’s a story of another unemployed young man who transitioned from an entry-level sailor into the realm of astronomy enthusiast.  In an article posted at the International Planetarium Society (IPS) website, Brent P. Abbatantuono writes:

“Without money or a job, Armand [Spitz] voyaged to France intending to work as a correspondent or writer. Unable to pay for the trip, Spitz took a dishwashing job on a freighter.  According to an interview from 1957, this voyage generated Armand's first deep interest in observational astronomy… A ship's officer who befriended Armand taught him celestial navigation.”

Eventually, eleven winters after my high school graduation, I finally received a Bachelor degree, but in fine arts, not science. Math had tripped me up, among other woes.  I worked piecemeal under the dome for Adler, but without a science degree, that’s as far as I could go.  

I again find comfort in the career of my kindred spirit, Armand Spitz.  Quoting again from Brent’s IPS article:

“Armand Spitz worked about eight years at Haverford College in Pennsylvania as an assistant astronomer and astronomy lecturer, even though he lacked a college degree.   Spitz said, ‘I am not a mathematical astronomer. I don't get along with mathematical equations. I am not very much of a scientist. You can call me an interpreter of science if you want to.’"