Month: October 2021

I sit on the Southeast porch where my grandfather sat long ago after the day’s work was done and night began to fall. Through the silhouetted treetops I see Jupiter rising in the southeast sky. I know it is Jupiter because I looked on a sky map last night. My grandfather would have known. He knew a fair amount about astronomy and the planets. He sat where I now sit many nights close to seventy years ago. He was a farmer. My Aunt once told me that he wanted to grow corn on Venus. In 1950 we didn’t know much about Venus other than it was about the same size as the earth and closer to the sun. It was easy to imagine a world much like our own, with oceans, jungles, rivers, wildly growing foliage and who knows what animals and other creatures all hidden by the clouds that set free our imaginations. How disappointed he would have been to learn that Venus is closer to our visions of hell than a beautiful, fertile world ripe for farming.