I thought, seriously, of blowing my paycheck on a reflecting telescope.<\/p>\n
A couple of us had gone to Sam’s Club on our lunch break. One of the writers in the department needed to pick up some bulk food for a Christmas party. We wandered the cavernous building, and I felt somewhat exposed and endangered; I was pushing no cart, and surrounded by people who were, I thought I would be run over at any moment. We passed a section of Christmas toys and gifts near the front, and there I saw a telescope.<\/p>\n
A reflecting telescope!<\/p>\n
Oh, how I wanted it. I could set it up at home, on cold clear nights such as these, and peer into infinity.<\/p>\n
Why, just the other night, Monday it must’ve been, as I left the office I saw the waxing moon and a bright point of light — Jupiter, I would think — hanging together in the western sky. The sight reminded me of the Carbon Leaf song “Blue Ridge Laughing” with its line, “Space brings back boyish wonder.” I love that song. Makes me think of lots of things. Makes me nostalgic.<\/p>\n
I resisted the impulse. No telescope was bought.<\/p>\n
But we’d have had fun, me and the telescope. Oh, yes. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I thought, seriously, of blowing my paycheck on a reflecting telescope. A couple of us had gone to Sam’s Club on our lunch break. One of the writers in the department needed to pick up some bulk food for a Christmas party. We wandered the cavernous building, and I felt somewhat exposed and endangered; IContinue reading “On Telescopes and Temptation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[4111,4093],"class_list":["post-2379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","tag-astronomy","tag-life","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}