Hey Venus, Oh Venus...
It's after work and just before sunset last Monday on March 2, 2015 and I'm driving up the hill into my condo campus at Sunset Ridge in Renton, Washington. It's been another beautiful early Spring day and the moon, just 3 days shy of full, is very big and bright in the eastern sky.
Then I turn right down my row. This day's been a long one (a Monday) and I'm so happy to be home. As I get settled the sun is dipping behind the hills and the Olympic Mountain Range in the western sky. I open my bedroom window in the back and then my deck door out front to catch the last few minutes of a fresh (almost warm) gentle late afternoon breeze to air out my unit.
When I look up I see this very bright light in the darkening sky. My thoughts run a list. It has to be a helicopter spotlight monitoring the last few minutes of the afternoon commute on Interstate 5, 167, or 405. I witness this often. Or maybe it's the International Space Station? I mean it's really really bright and seems to be hovering not too far above!
As one who loves SciFi, my mind goes there... As one who loves astronomy, my thoughts go there too. So I jump online and finally figure out it is indeed, Venus. Not that that is amazing in itself. I'm just saying I don't see a whole lot of stars and planets in the sky anymore (compared to when I was growing up) because I live in the Pacific Northwest Megalopolus. We're so lit up at night we rarely actually see outerspace these days, let alone the fact that many days and nights are grey cloudy and overcast...
The funny thing is the first place my mind jumped to (once I had this little data set puzzle figured out) was being a kid in Earlington, Renton WA, in 1959. I should have been sleeping but being a 9 year old I was listening to my crystal set radio...
Frankie Avalon, singing "Hey Venus, Oh Venus..."
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