The Nature of the Dot

I just came back inside from a satisfying viewing of the International Space Station.

It was a good apparition. Since the trajectory for this night's sighting was basically a line across the northern horizon, all I had to do was step out my front door and look up above the row of shops across the street. There was the initial panic and uncertainty in me, the crowd of questions: did I really get the time right? Is it going to be bright enough to see? Is there some haziness or clouds in the NW, where it is supposed to appear? Where is the damn thing?

Moments pass, and more long moments stretching out, and still nothing.

And then, a minute or maybe more after the predicted time, there it is! THERE IT IS! says my whole being. I might even point up at it, just in case anyone strolling by oblivious to this joyous, amazing sight would like to know. Hey, I'll tell them.

And what does it look like? Essentially a dot. A dot, at first murky and ruddyish, then shedding any color and burning brighter and brighter white as it calmy slides across the uncomplaining sky.

It does not look like any plane up there. No plane could possibly follow the speedy but steady trajectory of this high-flyer. And of course, it is just one bright dot, no blinking sidecar accompaniment. A bright white dot moving in a confident but not smug or strident line across a corner of the sky.

I use the verb "moving" in that previous sentence because other verbs don't seem to fit. I riffled through mental verb cards for quite a while before neutralizing it down to just plain "moving." That's because others seem inappropriate: it is certainly not "flying," as this describes what an airplane does. An airplane's action is energetic and motor-driven. Nothing is driving the International Space Station. And though I used "sliding" in the previous paragraph, it is not "sliding" across the sky, either, because something that slides might be in danger of slipping. The ISS's action is completely steady and continuous. It does not slip nor slide. I thought of "trailing," but that suggests that it is following or being pulled by something. No. "Soaring"? Heavens no. "Sailing"? Maybe. Close. But this also suggests that some cosmic wind is pushing it.

I realized during this mental verb hunt that part of the sighting's interest and fascination and strange joy is in its uniqueness.

Why do I like to go out and view this thing? What makes me cajole my workmates into coming out to the parking lot and seeing it fly over? What makes me call my stepmother and my brother, Bill, to make sure they get out to see it? Why do I share the secret joy of sightings with my brother, Roger, in Germany? What is so special, really, about a dot going across the sky?

Our night skies are full of moving dots. It would be unique and preternatural, as it was in the days following 9/11, if NO dots were to be seen up there at any one moment.

Is it the fact that, as I like to remark to people I share this experience with, "there are people in that dot"? It can't be that, as most of the dots we see whizzing across our day and night skies are full of many more people than this singular white one is.

Well, OK. Then what is it? Why is this, for me at least, a consistently exciting thing to see?

It is because it is, in its very nature and true essence, unique.

It is not a plane. It is not flying. It is not in our atmosphere. It is a spaceship!

It is something new in the world. There is only one of them up there, and you can't see it all the time. Sometimes you can see it twice in one evening, and when you do, you get a sense of how damn fast it is truly traveling: it comes around again a mere hour and a half after its first sighting! Around the entire world in an hour and a half!

And all of this, somehow, is captured in the unique look and feel of its motion. It needs a verb of its own. It somethings across the sky. It whatevers across the sky.

It moves in silent steady line across the accomodating sky.

It ISSes across the sky.

Nixon in China: A Footnote.

First, let me say that I absolutely loved the production of Nixon in China.

It was a terrific production of a truly great American opera. The singers were all right on the money, and they really looked like their characters. The set design was beautifully-utilized minimalist.

The opera was really exciting and moving. Thoroughly great.

Except. . .

Oh, there was just this one little thing I noticed. Hardly worth mentioning. It didn't wreck the opera for me or anything like that. Just something that struck me.

OK, but it did bug me for the minute or so it lasted. More than that, it made me think again about how disconnected we are with some pretty important facts.

Here it is:

At the beginning of the opera, Nixon's plane lands on the tarmac in Peking and he comes down stairs to meet with Chou En-lai and other dignitaries.

Some pleasantries are exchanged, and then Nixon muses:

News has a kind of mystery:
When I shook hands with Chou En-lai
On this bare field outside Peking
Just now, the world was listening.

He continues musing on the theme of this point in history.

Part of the set design of this production had two rows of huge rectangular television sets fly in from above, lowering down slowly until they reach the stage floor. These TVs, made to evoke the gargantuan console sets of the 1970s, are used variously as platforms and so forth. But often the tv screens are showing bits of footage of the actual historic Nixon visit to China.

As Nixon muses at his place in history, one of the television screens begins to show an animation of a spinning earth. Then another tv picks it up. And soon all or most of the televisions in one row show this earth, spinning, spinning, spinning.

Nixon is visiting China and it is a very special place in history and all the world is watching and the earth is spinning, spinning, spinning. . .

. . .and the earth is spinning the wrong way!!

I looked again. Could it be true?

I looked and thought about it. And the earth. . .nay, the earths. . .were all spinning in the wrong direction! They were going clockwise!

That would make the sun rise in the west and set in the east.

The words came back to me from my college astronomy teacher. She had nailed this phrase into our heads at every opportunity. It described the direction of spin of the earth and of the solar system, and of most planets in the solar system: "counter-clockwise when viewed from above."

And these 8 or so earths on stage while Nixon was singing were clearly turning clockwise. Wrong!

It just reminds me how there is a real ignorance about even the simplest astronomical facts, especially in movies. I am thinking right now of one in particular that stuck in my craw, a movie whose very plot depended on the phases of the moon, and whose makers got the progression of those phases WRONG! (more on that in a future post.)

I mean, this is something we learned in elementary school, isn't it? Or junior high at the latest? Why the sun rises in the east and sets in the west??

And here was this expensively-designed opera on stage of a major new opera house. How many people viewed and approved the video that appeared on those tv screens? And how many people viewed it in rehearsals and so forth?

And no one noticed that the earth was turning the wrong way??

When I have talked to people about this, some have thought that maybe it was done on purpose, to say something ironic about this point in history. But nothing about the lyrics or the set design otherwise hinted as such a use of irony.

I believe I'll write a letter to the opera company.

Details forthcoming. . .