I had just turned eighteen that month, but I had lived as an adult since I was twelve and got my first adult job, serving ice cream at the local Sweet Shop. World War Two had just ended after four long years when we all took as many jobs as we could handle to make up for our boys and men who had gone to fight that War. Now they were returning and looking to take back some of those jobs. Even though we girls had been more than busy working at whatever was needed to support the War effort, we had become very reliable doing grown-up things, while at the same time we remained very juvenile and slow about the rest of life. We lived at home and had little experience with the opposite sex partly because our long working hours and lack of young men in our age group, for being either in the Service or working at a War job also. So when Mary, my best Girl Friend at the Telephone Company announced the arrival of her brother Bob, a pilot from the Air Force. She was hoping to help his return by getting him some dates among her telephone friends. I declined to put my phone number on the list she held on a clip board. The girls listed were far more experienced than I and I was sure I could not compete. We both worked split sixes, which meant we arrived in the morning at six A.M. when the telephone was very busy and worked for four hours until things slowed. Then we had four hours off for lunch and reading… sometimes shopping if we had any money. We had to be available for the next four hours of...

GOODBYE 2014… by the way what is next? In spite of a few more aches and pains 2014 has been a very good year.  Living in it together with my husband of 68 years, has been fun and brought us many surprises.  How can 2015 compete I wonder? Perhaps it doesn’t really have to,  for just living it is worth the effort.  The Pacific Ocean is still full of beautiful, rolling waves of water and the sky above it is unpredictably, variable as always.  A fifteenth Great-grand child joined the family party.  Will 2015 compete with that?  Probably. But that is Real Life and this is Fiction.  Fiction does whatever it does.  It is not bound by rules in the same way as Reality.  Fiction travels beyond everything and finds things that Reality hasn’t even dared to dream about yet.  All inventions that make it into Reality lived in Fiction first. Today I will go into the Fictional World just to see if I can trip over and accidently discover something the Real World here has yet to meet. Maybe it isn’t due to be here in 2015.  Maybe it is far beyond in a number no one knows.  Does that matter? Not to me.  Let me see it and judge it’s eventual usefulness. I learned early that what man can predict is almost here.  I have to go back to Kindergarten for the first time I heard that: “Someday a man will walk on the moon.”  When I was five that sounded like an impossibility, but as the grown-up who said it was our School Teacher, I could only believe it and wait as the years went by until it came true. Then the surprise! When our man walked on that distant moon,...

How we became the red white and blue I listen to the music of the young men in Celtic Thunder and feel the songs they sing of their Ireland and Scotland homes oh so wistfully. I feel the places they recall just as blissfully, as my Mother’s own Parents came from there.                                                                                                                                                          Also from a place called Denmark across that dangerous sea traveled my Father’s Parental pair.                                                                                                                                             They came to America to carry on their lives and make use of their ability to work on a land they knew was free. To build their own farms on which they grew both wheat and meat to feed the growing family.                                                                              ...

Bev’s Hot Tub Astronomy stories we originally written for friends and family. Many made their way to publications like Astronomy and Sky and Telescope. Several years ago we published them to various locations on the internet in order to freely share them with more of the world and they’ve subsequently been republished across several amateur astronomy sites. Today, we’ve finally moved them into her permanent portfolio, along side her many great works of art & literature. To the inspirations for her art and to the readers, editors, and critics, thank you. Hot Tub Astronomy Hot Tub Astronomy: A Guide for the “Wet Astronomer” Hot Tub Astronomy: Halley’s Comet Hot Tub Astronomy: A Star for Everybody Hot Tub Astronomy: What is Your Sign Hot Tub Astronomy: Mystery of the Red and Green Flashing Lights Hot Tub Astronomy: Navigating the Celestial Hot Tub Hot Tub Astronomy: Meteorites: My Sky Diamonds Hot Tub Astronomy: Day Star Day (not yet available) Downloads & Links The Original Hot Tub Astronomy BlogSpot Uploads Download Hot Tub Astronomy for you Kindle – Download Hot Tub Astronomy ePub...

A NON-FICTION STORY ABOUT THE JOYS AND TRIUBULATIONS OF LIVING ON A CLIFF EDGE OVER-LOOKING THE PACIFIC OCEAN   

BEFORE MY TIME For me, my actual life that is, everything began as the result of a 1920’s popular novel finding its way across the more populated world to Cardston, a tiny farm town in Alberta Canada.  Beverly of Graustark was then and still is a romantic adventure about a young girl who left her home in Washington D.C. and traveled far from home to a quaint country called Graustark where she met and fell in love with the handsome, young, Prince.   Ahh, so very romantic!   Like most romance tales of the time, there was the expected beautiful heroine, Beverly, and of course a charming hero, the Prince of Graustark.  But what was so different in this fantasy, what made this story so amazing to all of the young women who passed the already five year old book eagerly around between them and caused them to swoon at the outrageous adventure was not the Prince, you might find one of those in any story, however In Mr. McCutcheon’s book it was the girl and the traveling that made it so different.   A single girl traveling off alone, quite gaily, to a foreign country was nothing short of unbelievable, even outrageous!  Girls simply did not ever just take off and do anything so… daring and modern, men and boys, certainly, all the time.  But girls or women, not in the 1920’s they didn’t.  The few that may have discarded public mores were either vilified or worshipped depending upon the public mood.    Yet the 1920’s girls everywhere, cities and farms alike wanted to think of themselves as “mod”, like those in the moving pictures and novels.  They bobbed their hair, painted their lips, shortened their skirts, and even rouged their exposed knees...

                    (It’s not just for hotdogs anymore) Hot Dogs! Remember your first one?  Probably not.  You may have been finishing a few loose Cheerio O’s on your high chair tray when the first bit of a Hot dog appeared.  At a much later date you discovered that the big people ate theirs loaded down with juicy stuff that made it taste even better. I know I liked mine on a bun slightly smaller than the tasty frankfurter inside and dripping with yellow mustard and green relish.  Of course I tried all of the other stuff, but I always came back to those favorites… all the bun could hold and a little more.  A couple of those and I felt great for hours. Well, it turns out that that was not just an accident.  If I had known then what I’ve learned recently, at age 81, I could have saved years of personal discomfort and often down-right agony.  I would have written this at age eight, if only I had known… and if computers had been invented.   I have always been annoyed with leg discomfort.  Sometimes it was just a little ache that made sitting still or sleeping through the night impossible.  More and more often one of those painful cramps, sometimes called a “Charlie Horse” woke me from a sound sleep, forcing me from my bed to try to stretch it out.  I was interrupted from sleep so often, that my husband, Bob, mentioned it to our doctor, trying to get me some help and himself some peaceful nights.   By now I had a husband, Bob, four grown children, Nancy, Pamela, J.R., and Bonnie, plus fourteen adult grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.  Yes I...

After one carries on a hobby for many years, it is often difficult to remember the when, how and why it had all started. But I am often asked that and how many meteorites do you have? Obviously my collection is minor compared to those meteor hunters like O. Richard Norton, who scour the Earth the world over. But it is our collection and people we show are usually impressed. They want to handle them one after the other, touch the magnet to them and look at the pictures I show them in my books. Because of the intense interest of children, I have begun to keep a small pile of the tiny chips my favorite rock store, Kristalle’s of Laguna Beach, often carries. I was told that they get them from an Australian fellow, who finds them when cleaning a storm drain. Most of the little rocks that seemed to clog it up were bitty meteorites washed in from the small muddy river on his ranch. When he had enough to bother with, he put them on the Web at the per ounce price, where Kristalle’s became his steady customer… and we theirs! With some small plastic boxes, I could say to a child who was reluctant to leave my assortment when it was time to leave, “Would you like to have a small one to keep?” I then showed them the small dish that contained the chips. And let them choose just one to put in the box and take home. This always reminded me of how I actually got started collecting with a chip also that small.. The find was tied to our 1986 road trip to hunt for Halley’s Comet. One of our stops was at an Arizona museum where...

Printed in Astronomy Magazine, March 1992 After much careful thought, we enrolled in our local college’s class on celestial navigation. But why? We soon noticed that our fellow students either already owned yachets capable of sailing at least to Hawaii, or had been building a boat for years and now, about finished, were eager to embark on long dreamed cruises to the unknown. A couple of hearty young men had obtaineed good paying jobs on fishing boats. Most all had perfectly logical reasons to be in this class.They were preparing themselves for possible life and death struggles with the open sea. On the other hand our two very small boats, lying on the sand below our deck (one a row boat for fishing, the other a catamaran, sort of a beat up trampoline with pontoons) were clearly meant for staying fairly close to shore. If we should find ourselves in need of navigation for either, we would definately require the services of the Coast Guard. So why were we spending two nights a week studying celestial navigation? I think it was the word Celestial. It has such a nice ring to it. So Bob and I decided to enroll. I reasoned: You never knew when we might be tempted to take a Love Boat Cruise. Remember the Titanic! The first thing I noticed after paying the tuition and investing in the books and equipment, was that the three very large textbooks seemed to contain more letters than numbers. Oh, oh… this is going to be a long semester! I’m not a number person. The best thing was that celestial navigation lent itself very well to hot tub study. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all. Luckily we found ourselves in the hands of...

Watching the sky from the hot tub is an educational and relaxing game. Just remember that what you see and reality, may not be the same. It was a dark and stormy night, as this tale begins. Well, thats nearly true. Anyway, dark and cold, but with the heat of the Jacuzzi, we enjoyed the cold breeze, too. When suddenly in a clearing, out over the sea, a crescent moon came into view. “Look at that moon!” my spouse said to me.”I see a fire! Do you?” A fire on the MOON? We know that can’t be. We didn’t believe i t. Would you? The top most point of the crescent moon had the tiniest little flame. We stared at that fire in total awe. Wondering what to blame? A fire on the moon never has been and seeing is NOT believing. Go get the binoculars? No! No! Its Impossible to think of leaving. The flame dropped from the moon, just a little below, not too far away. There it stayed bright and white, like the planet venus on an impromptu stay. Time stood still. But the seconds ticked on, as the flame glowed yellow and the moon was gone. It wasn’t the moon! Couldn’t have been the moon! The moon had been up in the day. White to yellow it changed. Yellow to orange, brighter or closer, we couldn’t say. If it’s coming closer, perhaps, we should go! Shouldn’t we get out of the way? Move from this spot? No! Not I! I’ll watch it now, come what may. For thirty long seconds, in very slow motion, we watched it fall quietly toward the black ocean. Then it was gone! How quiet and dark!The silence was extreme! No one spoke. We stared at the...

The “Mystery of the Red and Green Flashing Lights” was published in Astronomy Magazine in about 1989. I have misplaced my copy and am not certain of the issue. The night was very clear, so we climbed into the hot tub fully equipt with binoculars, star charts and both hot and cold drinks. We cruised the skies confortably aboard our tub of bubbling hot water, looking at the sky above the cold water of the Pacific ocean. I looked from the sky above the waves and back at the chart puzzeled. “I have never noticed a star so low in the sky before.” I told Bob. He turned his binoculars on the star in question. “Funny thing about your star.” My husband said. “It has red and green lights flashing on it.” “Then what is it? An airplane, helicopter,what? It’s too high to be a ship mast. If it were a plane it would be moving faster. I took the binoculars and there they were, the red and green lights, twinkling on both sides of the white light. My new star was just two fingers above the horizon, an area often obscured by a peach colored finger of smog, floating down in the distance from Los Angeles. “Maybe it’s a weather balloon.” Bob suggested. “Probably it’s on a tether to keep it from drifting away.” I was losing interest and began casting about in search of a high traveling satellite. Bob spotted one once, I was still looking. I glanced back at my low star and measured it with my two fingers. I looked up at the Gemini twins, Pollux and Castor always just four fingers apart. With that confirmation of my accurate measure, I turned back to the “star”. Now a tiny bit...

This article was published in SKY AND TELESCOPE magazine in the May 1988 issue. At the same time TIME magazine had a cover story May 16,1988 featuring First Lady, Nancy Reagan, called “Astrology in the White House.” As both magazines were on the stands together, I took a double interest in this story from White House chief of staff, Donald Regan because of my own “What is Your Sign?” and because I had just completed my Nancy Reagan Doll for the collection of 19 inch china dolls. I had been working for years and years on First Lady dolls, each dressed in a tiny copy of the dresses featured in the “First Lady” collection in the Smithsonian Institution. So I tucked an issue of “Time” in with my First Lady reference books, used to write about each lady as I worked on her porcelain replica. And I added another with my Astronomy stuff. This story will explain why. YOU’RE AN ASTRONOMER? WHAT’S YOUR SIGN? I’ll bet there’s not an astronomer alive who wouldn’t like to have a clear night for every time he or she has heard that one. Astrology! how could anyone be idiot enough to mix that up with Astronomy? Yet it happens again and again. I remember the first time I heard the two confused. My husband Bob and I were sitting in a steaming hot tub at a ski lodge high in the Sierra Nevadas. We were treating ourselves to a vacation planned to consist of glorious sunny days of sking followed by crisp clear nights of star gazing. At first the strangers sharing the huge tub with us spoke only of the days skiing. Then slowly they settled back to relax sore muscles and get to know one another....

This story appeared in Astronomy Magazine, December, 1987. I’ll edit it down a bit and add some up-to-date comments regarding the children mentioned. We eventually acquired 14 grandchildren. A Star for Everybody Grandchildren give you a chance to do the things you didn’t have time for or didn’t think of when you were busy raising your own family. When the children of two of our daughters and our son were going to be spending the night with us … all at the same time while their parents were away, their grandfather wanted to plan a special treat for them. He decided that if the youngest children took good naps, he was going to let them stay up late, have their first “Hot Tub Astronomy” lesson, and even pick a star for their very own. Fortunately it was dark and clear that night as Grandpa, the five excited boys and two wide eyed girls marched to the hot tub. I cleverly stayed out to man the towels. It didn’t take long for the youngest girl to spot the star she wanted. She went for the brightest one, and almost before we were started six year old Libby was the owner of Sirius. Her younger brother, Scott,wasn’t happy with anything second to his sister’s, but with Sirius spoken for he would have to choose something else. “What’s second brightest?” he inquired with resignation. “Canopus can’t be seen tonight, too smoggy, and you can’t see it from your house anyway, because the star is too far south.” Grandpa explained. Scott sat back and stared at the heavens to think about it. Meanwhile three of his cousins had been led to choose the belt stars in Orion. It was a natural for the three brothers, but posed one...

Pulling the Plug and Hitting the Road in Search of Halley’s Comet The year was 1986. We watched the last of the hot water gurgle out of the Hot Tub and spill out under the surprised rose bushes. We snapped on the cover then threw our star charts and magazines into the camper with our warm clothes, and about a weeks supply of camping stuff and a couple days worth of food and drinks. Everything else we’d buy as needed. We would head for the mountains and hopefully open skies away from city lights. This was brought on by a business trip we had recently experienced in Palm Springs. Out on the high California desert we expected to find dark, open skies that would give us a good view of the expected Persied meteor shower. That night we bundled up warm and went outside. Not another soul was in sight. Obviously the rest of the guests hadn’t heard about it. The air was dry and sharply cold. Straight above we could see stars were up there, but only straight up. The rest of the sky was obliterated by the lights around the pool, tennis courts, parking lot and bright neons blinking yellow red and blue atop the Hotel. So much for the dark desert sky! This time we would go where there were no hotels, tennis courts or lights. We pulled the plug on the comforts of home and headed up to the mountains. We didn’t expect too much competition for an R.V. site as it was October. Our main goal was to find Halley’s Comet. At our first camp in many years we found a lovely spot at the edge of the giant redwood trees, a short stroll to an open field. We...

This first entry was published in Astronomy Magazine October 1985. Why I wrote it is explained in the article. Unlike styles, politics,and many other things in 1985 the sky and the home view of it is the same now in 2010. The fascination has lasted us a life time. Astronomy Magazine published my stories as I submitted them, and I thank them… perhaps just a tad late. A Guide for the “Wet Astronomer” Here we are! Your new astronomers. A group that grows larger every night. To the world of fantastic amateurs and brilliant professionals comes the new breed…the Wet Ones! we consist mainly of people, who if you say “east” automatically look right. It used to be we only looked up to see if it was going to rain. Now wet and warm in our outdoor hot tubs we have discovered the sky.It’s a discovery that is absolutely inevitable. I wish I had known about it before installing the hot tub. Hot tubs are extremely difficult to relocate. Perhaps we can get a warning printed by, oh NASA or somebody, and have it attached to newly manufactured tubs. “WARNING! SITTING IN A HOT TUB AT NIGHT MAY LEAD TO AN ADDICTION TO SKY WATCHING. USE EXTREME CAUTION IN PLACING THIS TUB SO OBSTRUCTIONS TO THE SKY WILL NOT FRUSTRATE YOU.” In any case the hot tub astronomer will become a specialist, concentrating only on that part of the sky yhat passes through his own view from the hot tub. The rest of the heavens will remain in Siberia as far as he is concerned. People jump into hot tubs for a variety of reasons therapeutic and social. A survey at the local spa shop revealed a host of replies. Question: “Why are you...