At night, usually when the news gives me the dreads, I head outside to breathe deeply and look skyward. There’s comfort skyward.
Spring brings the Big Dipper, its cup overturned. Beneath it, the Little Dipper, its handle lit by Polaris, the North Star.
Summer has the Great Triangle — Deneb, Altair and Vega, forming a “V” (for “vacation.”). Crisp autumn reveals Pegasus, the winged horse, eternally galloping westward. Rising in winter is Orion the Hunter. Behind it, the Milky Way.
Unlike so much in this shifting culture of shifty people, the glorious constellations, planets and galaxies are untouchable, diamonds on black velvet, silent, awesome, eternal.