Barn's Burnt Down...

This title/first line of a famous haiku by Masahide, a late 17th-century samurai, was introduced to me by my traveling companion and perpetual star of my Single Girl's Guide to the Impending Apocalypse Blog, Miss Gokey. The full text of the haiku is:

"Barn's burnt down
now
I can see the moon."

It is particularly fitting that I use the poem in this post because my friend Oren (buy it!) participated in Indianaplolis' Encyclopedia reading last night after publishing a haiku on facebook in the early afternoon.

In my perpetually optimistic and lighthearted childlike naivete, I began this blog about the potential impending apocalypse. Well, kids, it's all fun and games until you start reading James Wesley Rawles, creator of SurvivalBlog. The first 25 pages of the first of his books that I'm planning to read convince me that the barn is indeed going to burn down. We are going to see the moon. We may as well know what we're looking at.

In that spirit, Miss Gokey and I made a triumphant return to the Lake Mead National Recreation Area to attend a little stargazing seminar and participate in the Globe at Night Campaign. Globe at Night is collecting data once a month in January, February, March and April to raise awareness of light pollution. You look at Orion, then submit your data via the web app. The website has family activity packs and detailed instructions. I encourage people to do this. Personally, I'm totally following Globe at Night on Twitter and I plan to do my own personal entry tomorrow night.

In fact, I found this video on Twitter, entitled, "Does Las Vegas Care About Their Light Pollution?" I would argue that we do. But this blog is not a forum for my ranting about how I'm tired of people not realizing that there are actual people with actual social consciences living here. So, back on task. The evening was fabulous. We:

- ate sour gummies
- took an alternate route to Lake Mead
- got (only slightly) lost twice even though we know that we're supposed to do research and recon before we head into the wilderness
- saw two jackrabbits
- saw a coyote (my first!)
- learned how to read the star chart (kinda)
- got free January star maps
- learned about open-source stargazing software at Stellarium
- learned how to use our fingers to figure out our latitude (at least in the Northern Hemisphere)
and finally...

...the piece de resistance (drum roll):

we viewed the Orion Nebula through a telescope.
Yeah, it's under his skirt. It's okay. These things happen.

So, when James Wesley Rawles convinces me that no matter how much I scramble, I can never, ever be prepared for "the end of the world as we know it," I can revert back to the words of the heroic samurai. When the barn burns down around us, we will be able to pay more attention to the stars.

Have fun submitting your data to the project! Let me know how it goes.