ABSTRACT
It was a good sky-no moon, only a few wisps of cloud, and
the light pollution from Charlottesville. He knew the stars only
seemed permanent and unchanging because of humanity’s brief
time horizon and because we were in the Appalachia of the galaxy,
far away from the lights and black holes of the center. He turned
his binocular mount toward Sagittarius, which marked the center
of the Milky Way, and fiddled with the focus. Lights of the big city, and here we are out in the boondocks of the galaxy. Wonder if there are civilizations growing up under a sky full of stars, with neighbors? Wonder when I will laugh again.
