I enjoy listening to “Science Friday” on NPR when I have a chance. Today I heard an interview with a scientist from the Stewart Observatory at the University of Arizona about a giant telescope mirror that he was in charge of polishing – a process that requires several years to complete. I listened with special interest because as an undergraduate at the University of Arizona in 1975 and 1976 I had a work/study job with the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Department at the University of Arizona processing photographs of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn taken from the Mt. Lemmon Observatory in the Catalina Mountains outside of Tucson. At first I listened for the name of the man being interviewed, wondering if he might be someone I had encountered while there. The lab where I worked was in the same building where they polished telescope mirrors back then, and on rare occasions I was able to observe the process. I remember an operator sitting in an elevated chair looking much like someone managing a carnival ride while huge rotating buffers circulated around a giant concave piece of glass. It didn’t take me long to realize that, being retired myself, there had probably been a complete turnover in faculty and staff in the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Department and the Steward Observatory since I had been there. Still, the story started me to reflect on my tenure there.
I enjoyed that work as much as any I have ever done, and was disappointed when I graduated and had to give it up in search of real employment. At the time, just before satellites began to fly into the solar system to photograph the planets, some of the best Earth-based photos of Jupiter were coming from Mt. Lemmon (at least this is what I was led to believe). Because the pictures were both magnified and photographically enlarged single images were grainy. But the telescope was able to get multiple exposers of the same orientation of the planet. My job was to take multiple color exposures and enlarge them onto a single piece of photographic print paper, thereby eliminating the graininess of the final product. At the time I believed that the different exposures were taken on different nights, when the rotation and revolution of the Earth, in conjunction with the rotation and revolution of Jupiter allowed for a nearly identical photograph of the planet. The Mt. Lemmon telescope, being fixed on top of a mountain, meant it could be pointed to different locations in the sky, but the pictures always had to be taken from the same place. I don’t know if I ever asked for clarification of my assumption, but it seems more likely to me now that the different exposures I was working with were taken within very short moments of each other. However poetic it is to think that I was aligning photos of Jupiter taken months or years apart when there was an exact alignment, I don’t think I can tie that in as a metaphor for my following ideas.
I did learn a related fact about meteor showers while working there. Meteors are space debris that enters the Earth’s atmosphere and catches fire from the friction as it heats up against air particles. The debris is often in clusters in the path of the Earth’s revolution around the sun, left as a remnant of the tail of a comet. Each year as we pass through the same cluster of debris we enjoy a predictable, annual meteor shower. This got me thinking about anniversaries. Some we make a point of celebrating as happy occasions, such as birthdays and weddings, while others we mark as sad days of remembrance. Sometimes they pull us down from behind like a stealth predator. Over the past six years I have experienced rare days of melancholy for no apparent reason. On one of these occasions I happened to reminded late in the day that it was the date Leslie received here diagnosis of Glioblastoma. On another I finally realized it was the anniversary of the day I had to admit her to a hospice facility. It is easy to think metaphorically of bad memories sitting in space like comet dust, fixed, waiting for our planet to pass through them on the same date each year, allowing them to take over our perspective for that brief period.
If T. S. Eliot were to write “The Waste Land” today he might have to malign March instead of April, due to climate change’s shortening effects on winter. I can’t avoid remembering March of 2015 anymore. Leslie and I were sure up until late February of that year that she was going to be the rare individual who lived successfully with Glioblastoma for five or more years. Then one clear, warm day as we were walking around Sloan’s Lake she remarked on how she had never noticed how many times the front range was repeatedly reflected in the lake waters, and likewise the lake waters were reflected above the front range. It was clear to me, but not to her, that she was experiencing visual disturbances. In the following days her balance and strength failed rapidly. She died on March 31st, after eight days in a hospice facility.
So maybe the planet is just passing through that cluster of memories I left out in space six years ago. It seems as though March is the month that I keep adding to that cluster. A year ago this week I stopped seeing a woman that I had become quite fond of, and even though we had different approaches to our relationship and probably both knew our logical fate, our breakup left me sadder than I really want to admit. Although we continued a phone relationship for a few weeks after we went into quarantine, the romance had essentially ended. And, of course, A year ago COVID-19 overwhelmed our country. Now, just this week, a very good friend told me he will be ending his treatment for lung cancer and entering hospice care.
That cluster also contains the memory of the love of Leslie’s friends and family as they spent precious time with her, and not only her joy of time with them, but also what a pleasure each day with her was. And I am happy for the platonic friendship that I continue to have with my romantic partner from a year ago, and the value that mature adults like us continue to place on bonds that have been made. It is difficult to write about seeing the “positive” side of things without sounding trite, so I will just say that COVID-19 and the declining health of myself and those around me have shown me the deeper meaning of phrases that I would have otherwise dismissed as cliched and trite.
As I remember my days in the photo lab at the University of Arizona I recall placing my forehead against the viewfinder of the photographic enlarger and adjusting the knob to align a new image of Jupiter over an existing one, and watching the grainy image be transformed in a smooth one. And I think about the multi-year process of polishing a telescope mirror to perfection so that upon completion it could be aimed at San Francisco from Washington D. C. and distinguish an apple from the arm that was holding it. So let March’s memories be deposited in space for me to pass through along with the revolving Earth so that the graininess can be smoothed out and life’s tiny, remote offerings can be seen for what they really are.