Just an Observation

It's funny how when you see something often enough, you stop noticing it. Whatever it is becomes like air - it's just there. You don't think about it until it's not there, or until something goes wrong.

Well, I've just returned home from this year's Stellafane, and I do think it was (for me, at least) the best one I've so far attended. Three nights of absolutely perfect conditions, two giant planets and a million Perseid meteors (although I saw only four), a terrific keynote speaker (Dr. Alan Stern, New Horizons Principal Investigator), and at least half a dozen fascinating conversations with people at the food tent.

The food tent at Stellafane, with the observing fields behind it

And for once, I want to concentrate, not on the unbelievable list of Messier objects I took in, nor on the spectacular views of Jupiter I enjoyed, but on those conversations. In our everyday life, as we walk about grocery stores, sit at a coffee shop, or frankly wherever we go, we're surrounded by people staring at their smartphones or surfing the web on their laptops. The sight is ubiquitous, and therefore invisible. While I was living in Fells Point, there was a coffee shop about a hundred yards from my building's front door at which I was pretty much a regular. Being something of a people watcher, I did notice that practically no one ever spoke to anyone else while there. Even couples coming in together would, once they were seated, retreat to their devices and ignore their companion for the duration. Thumbs were busily twitching away whichever way I looked, people texting to invisible, distant interlocutors rather than speaking with their very visible tablemates.

Pitango Cafe in Fells Point

But not so at Stellafane. There is no cell phone reception at its location, except for at the very top of the hill in the first photo above, or atop Breezy Hill, where the clubhouse is. And there is no wi-fi anywhere. A major consequence of this absence is that, when people are between events, they actually talk to each other - even amongst strangers. You see very few individuals sitting silently, and if you do, it's likely because they're reading a (physical) book. But for the most part, conversational knots seem to spring up organically. People will turn around to take part in the conversation behind them if it interests them, or start one up based on asking about the artwork on another's t-shirt or the wording on their hat.

This year, I (silently) listened in on a lengthy debate about UFOs, talked for more than an hour with a couple my age about dogs, advised a pair of first timers on how to avoid the mistakes I made when buying one's first telescope, bemoaned the rapidly increasing extinction of dark skies with more than one person, shared with several others the results of our previous night's observing, and discussed telescopes and associated equipment, clubs, and other star parties. I listened to one guy describe mirror grinding to me, with me half the time unable to understand anything he was saying. (I kept that fact to myself.) On the last day there, I hit the jackpot, talking with someone named Steve about the history of New England stone walls for what must have been over two hours. Fascinating!

And I did not know any of these people!

So it's rather odd that, there in a gathering of folks engaged in the most technical of hobbies, all of them future oriented, they can soak in the benefits of "turning back the clock", can enjoy being "deprived" of gadgetry, and rediscovering the people around them. Refreshing.

The Stellafane Clubhouse on Breezy Hill