When I was a child many years ago we had a lesson in the 4th Grade about space and light and the distance it took to travel from here to the moon. My teacher tried to illustrate light years by using a flashlight and pointing it into the heavens at night (anyway this is what my memory is telling me today).  If a person were to turn the flashlight on and point it toward the heavens (at night) then turn the light off…the light from the flashlight would still keep going and going and going until it would hit a solid object.  Then it would disperse.

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Every evening Daddy would bring home the Daily paper, my brother and I were NOT to touch the paper until he was through reading it.  Mother wasn’t very interested in the paper, but Dad was…he read everything, including the ads.  The second he was done one of us got the comic section —if it were Christmas time–the other of us started with the serial Christmas story until the comics were available.

About the same time as the lesson on the flashlight and the thought that light traveled until it hit an dense object I started reading a serial space comic about an all white woman who came down to earth to do great harm.

From that point on I was terrified of the darkness and space and being outside alone IN THE DARK!!! (shudder)

When all that changed I really don’t know.  But the fear is gone, and has been for many, many years.  I love walking at night, even late, late at night. To walk in the silver moonlight seems to fill my soul with it’s shimmery light.  To walk without the moon, just a canopy of brilliant stars on a crisp and cold mid-night is … refreshing.

Today I wonder if the people of the world are pulling away from the call of land, sinking into technology and losing contact with the earth.  It’s a fleeting wonder, for it’s not something I can do anything about.

As for me…I enjoy the internet and it’s gifts of friendships flung from here all the way around the world.  But the land and the sky call to  me the most and the longest and loudest—I hear the music it sings.

Your friend,

Linda