Beltane Garlic Moon
Why all the attention to the transit of Venus? People lined up in the Tate Astronomy Lab to view through 4 scopes and the line Kate and I were in took at least ten minutes to inch us forward for our few seconds of viewing time.
This was an event. A celebration of the heavens, rather than a celebration aimed at getting into heaven. Heaven knows we were already there. Hubble looked on these proceedings, too.
This had a definite secular feel to me, a coming together around the scientist, their domain, but in so doing reclaiming science as our mutual endeavor, not the province of cloistered brainiacs, but a common work joyfully embraced by all.
We are, as someone put it, the universe seeing itself. That was what this felt like.
It also revealed to me a public hunger, the science literate want to lay hands on the tools and observations that make science what it is. We want to see the transit of Venus just as, I’m sure, we want to see DNA sequenced, hydrology experiments, atom smashing and whatever can make the wonder, the deep miracle of our universe visible.
In my mind this might be the first of many such encounters between the thoughtful, systematic observer/hypothesizers and the just folks who also want to see, feel, touch.