One year ago, I was a few days into my first trip to Berlin; it was what I expected and more, a great way to face another Big Oh while checking the “Berlin Before Sixty” box with a day to spare. It was a welcome distraction from politics back home–mostly. The Stazi Museum seemed as much warning as history then. It feels more like prophecy now.
In a few days, I will be in Montevideo, Uruguay, on a spur-of-the-moment trip that is less about escaping seasonal winter and more about escaping the winter of American democracy. One possible future has me moving there next year after filing my early retirement with Social Security. Lisbon was Plan A, but the new year brought new barriers to moving there, so it’s time to find out if Plan U is the new Plan A.
Today, however, I am in Pottsville–the Pottsville Library to be precise. No single location from my childhood holds more significance. I still remember the first book I ever checked out, a children’s book about the Bohr model of the atom. Physics and I were fast friends from that day forward thanks to some simplistic explanations of the invisible particles and forces all around and within me.
The library has changed. It’s expanded into the adjacent building, and now there are computers mixed in among the tables and desks. The stacks that towered over ten-year-old me seem quaint compared to wandering the chambers of the Philadelphia Free Library’s main branch, but they still feel like home after all these years. And a new invisible force permeates the library—free Wi-Fi. One thing’s missing–the copy of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos that I donated to the library after watching the original miniseries and reading the original book. It was a full-circle moment, High School Me giving back to the source of my inspiration, hoping others would be inspired too.
Then, as I parked my car, a man leaned out of a second-story window and shouted “nice plate!” I have the Original Series engineering chevon on the front of the runabout. We chatted briefly, about how Trek (TNG, him being a tad big younger than me) inspired him to study astronomy and how he fixes telescopes. Geordi for him, Spock for me.
(left) The original entrance is now a reading nook with greenery.
(center) The new entrance preserves the style of the original.
(right) More Scotty than Spock but Trek still inspires me.