Keep looking up
“The true harvest of my life is intangible—a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.” – Henry David Thoreau
I taught a Junior Achievement class for nine weeks at a local high school last fall—the focus was jobs and careers after high school, that ubiquitous school-to-work transition we all adore, that move into responsible adulthood we so longed for as a kid, only now realizing the error of our ways.
They were underwowed. And even that is an understatement.
I’ve spent the last 20 years as a speaker and trainer; nothing prepared me for the challenges of those 26 human beings. Even more than the way the kids hit the floor when a car backfired outside and even more than the difficulty I had in even getting them to stop talking or wake up long enough to hear my glorious outpourings of irrelevant wisdom—what most impressed itself on my little noggin during that experience was the smallness of the dreams those young adults had for their lives—they didn’t see a big future ahead of them. The one young woman with some serious spunk and a spark in her eye missed the last four sessions; she had been expelled for fighting.
Some of those young adults, in fact, saw no future at all for themselves—they didn’t have an expansive view of what could be. I found that sad; no, it was more than sad. It was disheartening and terrible and avoidable and awful and more. I organized a career fair there this spring to provide them with some options. I wanted them to dream big; at the very least, I wanted to dream big around them, in their general proximity, in hopes that some of that optimism and hope and just plain caring would rub off.
For years, my older daughter Emma has said she wants to be an astronomer. Even when she veers to veterinarian, meteorologist, equestrian athlete, Manga illustrator, or professional tuba player, she always comes back to the skies. It is fitting, that choice. After all, it was the sale of John’s antique Brashear telescope that funded her birth, insurance not being what it used to be. When she was little, she pronounced that the stars were “very messy.”
The summers bring out my best Googling skills as I hunt for interesting activities for me and Emma to do. Two weeks ago was sewing class (she designs her own character dolls from Anime films) and last week, I discovered that several distinguished astronomers were going to be guest lecturers at a high school summer camp held at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute about an hour-and-a-half drive from where we live. It was too late to register Emma for the two-week camp, but after describing her astronomical obsession interests, the director graciously invited us to attend any of the guest lectures we’d like, from 1-2pm each day. Emma perused the choices, selecting two: “Observational Astronomy Challenges in Detecting Low Mass Stellar Companions” (huh?) and “Extrasolar Planets: A First Reconnaissance” (huh?). “These look fantastic!” she squealed. “Indeed!” I said, wondering if she had been switched at birth.
The first lecture was given by Dr. Mercedes Lopez-Morales, a small woman with a big mind. We were treated royally by the organizers, each taking great care in introducing Emma to the guest speakers and staff. In the midst of all that was happening, Dr. Lopez-Morales sat and talked quietly with Emma, asking about her interests in astronomy and telling about her own education to give Emma a picture of how it happened for her. In her quiet way, I could tell that Emma was excited, nervous, awed. Another man joined in the conversation, a big man in a Hawaiian print shirt and khaki shorts who had an easy laugh. He not only encouraged Emma to continue pursuing her love of astronomy, but talked with her about playing the tuba. “As a tuba player, you’d be a fantastic didjeridou player!” he exclaimed with the excitement of a child. The didjeridou, it appears, is his instrument of choice. We just happen to have a didjeridou laying about the house from a trip I took to Australia, so she was excited to try out his theory. “He was really nice,” she said on the way home.
We drove back there on Thursday to hear one of the most famous astronomers living today—Dr. Paul Butler. Dr. Butler has been on the front pages of major newspapers the world over, has discovered gazillions of new extra-solar planets (or perhaps it was fewer than a gazillion, I’m not sure), and was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people for the 21st century. He is, as we say in the vernacular, a Very Big Deal. We were excited to meet him.
When he finished his talk, we went to the front to thank him. Emma was too shy to ask for his autograph, but John asked for her as she stood shyly back. “I’d be delighted to,” he answered. “Emma, how do you spell your name?” he asked, making a special effort to bring her into the conversation. She stepped forward and talked with him. On a small poster of his extrasolar planet research, Dr. Butler wrote something that will come to mean more and more to Emma as she grows: “To Emma, Keep looking up! R. Paul Butler.”
Oprah once did a series of shows in which she granted the “wildest dreams” of women from her audience. At the end of the series, she quietly said that what impressed her most about the whole process was how small those wildest dreams were—we need to dream bigger for ourselves, she said.
