Yellowstone

I just spent the weekend in Yellowstone, where I gave two talks, and spent all day Saturday driving 'the loop', and stopping to see all the things. We saw a wolf! And so many bison. And a bunch of elk. And cranes and pelicans and too many wildflowers to count. We had a wonderful time. But here's what I learned about the talks...

First talk: science talk about the lives of stars. more or less a week of intro astronomy lecture compressed into an hour. I committed my usual nonsense, of making them 'Class, repeat after me.' and also participate in more meaningful ways, designed to help them remember that there are multiple ways for a star to die, and one of them is fast and 'loud' and one is slow and 'quiet', and a third is nothing really happening at all, just a fading away. This was very well received, and our friend Melanie, who has the ___fortune to be married to a dedicated amateur astronomer, claims she will even invite all her friends to come if I come back next year. Given that she is a potter, who has no interest whatsoever in astronomy, and hates to go to star parties, this seems like success. And that was all fine, and many people thought it was great. But I knew something different was coming. I could feel it percolating along under my conscious thoughts. Many people came back the second day, for:

Second talk: constellation stories. Ok. This is performance art, and not really science. I was really, really nervous about this. I've never done it without stars, so if it was cloudy, I didn't know what I was going to do. I've never done it in front of ~400 people, and I'd never done it in this type of venue, with mostly members of the general public, only a few of whom knew me and most of whom would be tired from a long day in the sun. But it went great. Better than great. It was inspired. I know, because I was there, being inspired by the venue, and the lighting, and the kids I kept dragging up on stage to help me act out the parts.

Before it was really dark, I started with a part about the tides, and had the kids up there 'dancing' the solar system, and figuring out why 'neap' comes from 'neafte' which is Saxon for scarcity. And some poor teenager was bored being the sun, and the moon and the earth had lots to do. Well, it's not always best to be the biggest and the brightest. Sometimes that means you have to just stand there and hold the solar system together.

Then I told the story of the Seven Wives Who Ate Onions. But I had no stars, because it was cloudy. I asked, and there were many fans of the Pleiades and the Hyades, but most people didn't know what I was talking about. So I brought three kids up, to be Orion, Taurus and the Pleiades, all in their line in the night sky. Orion struck his hunter pose, and Taurus used his fingers as horns, and the girl did her best to be multiple personality-ed. And so. It was hysterical, and everyone laughed and applauded and the kids were great, and then I told the story in my usual way, with all the waddling around hugely pregnant, and the men all confused, and all the drama of terrible winters waiting oh so impatiently for the miracle of a green shoot coming out of the ground. And there was lots of laughter and applause.

And then I told the story of Ursa Major, and the long tail on the bear (during which it occured to me to wonder if we ask the question wrong-way-round, and should be wondering why modern bears have short tails). And I wound up with two kids up there, one of whom was Callisto, and one was Zeus. In the middle, I just about panicked, because I realized that these two little kids were supposed to fall in love and have a child, but the boy saved it all, and was a trooper, and it worked out great. Because when I said that 'Zeus had a secret, he ALREADY HAD A WIFE!' the little kid said 'This is getting better for me all the time', which was a laugh line I couldn't have made up myself. And there was more laughter and nuttiness. And Zeus, despite the fact that he winds up looking like a nimrod, was really happy to play the part, and will probably talk about it all the rest of his days.

And then I closed with the Clash of the Titans, which is my favorite story to tell, but I added in this new thing, where half the audience was the sea monster, saying 'roar', and the other half was Andromeda, saying 'Help me, help me, help me' in this tiny little voice. And it was probably the best performance of this story in 1,000 years. Because you don't get a better setting than right in front of National Park Mountain, and you don't get a better audience than people on vacation, and you don't get better lighting than a campfire off to one side, and you don't get a better background set of noises than those made by elk settling down for the night next to the river. And it was magical and wonderful, and I was on fire, and I hope I get to do it again, because if there's one thing in life that I really love, it's telling stories that have been told for thousands and thousands of years; since even before we knew how to write them down. And it's better than television, and different than a play, because it's different when it's live, and when it's a single person's take on a single story and what it has to tell you about who we are. Every day, I'm a different person, and so I tell the story a different way, and it means something different to the people who take the time to listen. We make something brand new out of the past, and fold it into our common experience, and carry it, like a child, held inside us, close under our hearts.