Speaking of all and/or any things retro, I think a website that first started publishing in 1995 definitely qualifies as “retro” if not downright antique. So imagine my bemusement this morning when I clicked on an Apple news story only to realize I had been directed to Boing Boing. Home of many links and wonderful thinks; blog I’ve been reading since blogs crawled out of the ocean and grew legs. I guess that would be circa 2000? The year we didn’t all die from our computer programming glitch…

Anyway. The article that caught my eye was about the demolition of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. Since 1963, it has been part of the famed search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) most popularly recounted in the movie Contact starring Jodie Foster (from the book Contact by esteemed writer Carl Sagan).

In 1997, when Contact came out, I was in grad school at the University of Arizona (UofA), a partner in making the first Mars lander & rover— the Pathfinder and Sojourner. You could wander the science buildings, peering through fences at the landscapes where they tested the rover’s abilities to drive over Mars-like terrain. Red desert rocks strewn into perfect random patterns, surrounded by state of the art ceiling-to-floor glass windows and fancy conference tables & chairs.

I went to physics lectures, just looking to poach the language of science for its poetry. And I remember seeing the movie Contact, being more romanced by the isolation and struggle for success of Jodie Foster’s character Ellie than any of the actual science. But I was obsessed with observatories at the time, living out in the desert– a perfect place to watch the skies.

I remember seeing the Very Large Array (VLA) at the beginning of Contact–all those radio telescopes like giant satellite dishes turning toward the sound of what would (in the movie) turn out to be a message from an alien civilization. I did want to visit the VLA, and the Arecibo Observatory with its magnificently huge dish broadcasting and listening for messages to & from space.

But let’s be honest. I won’t be visiting either of those places. Arecibo is being torn down, and what would take me to New Mexico now? I’ve already been to White Sands National Monument, Chaco Culture National Historic Park, Carlsbad Caverns, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Alamogordo, World Heritage Site Taos Pueblo, El Malpais National Monument, and the Rio Grande. I’m probably forgetting some places I’ve been, since I lived in the Southwest for years–and spent quite a bit of time camping & driving through later when I was unemployed. Hell, I loved that state. Maybe I should move there???

Okay, that was a very deep hole I just fell down, into the abyss of my memories and the internet. Luckily you were there with a flashlight above water so I could eventually make my way back to the surface.

What I wanted to say, I guess, is that in the end– here I am 20 years after starting this blog, reading the same websites, loving the same movies, just feeling the synchronicity of life right now. There’s really nothing better than that is there.

UPDATE 12/1/2020: a piece of the Arecibo telescope has fallen through the dish, confirming the National Science Foundation’s decision to decommission and demolish the telescope. A sad day in the history of space exploration and science.