Dreams

Ever since this COVID-19 thing has been front and center, my friend Marv K2VHW has been running what has been come to be known as the "Middlesex County Chat Group Net" each evening at 8:00 PM on the Middlesex County OEM repeater.

It's a Health and Welfare Net with local Hams keeping in touch with each other. If anyone needs something, it's our chance to help out. But beyond that, it's also a general discussion net, where any and all topics can come up. It's also been kind of an Elmer net. We've discussed radios, antennas, how to route feedlines, etc. 

Over the past few weeks, our discussions have been drifting towards the International Space Station, tracking satellites, the stars, planets and astronomy.  Tonight's session seemed to linger particularly on astronomy.

When I was a mere youngster, that was my dream - to be an astronomer. As a product of the "Space Age" I was thrilled by all things connected to space and space flight. I built a 6" Newtonian reflecting telescope when I was about 13 -14 years old. I wanted to spend my life unraveling the mysteries of space.

That was when math hit, and my dream died. My Mom often told me how my great grandfather (or was it my great, great grandfather?) was a professor of mathematics at the University of Kiev. That gene missed me completely. Mathematics might as well have been Greek to me, as I comprehended neither. Mathematics, however, IS the language of astronomy. Without the proper affinity for mathematics I was reduced to never becoming anything more than an avid stargazer.

Such are the things of life, but I guess I'll always wonder "how it could have been."

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!