Check it out
UC Davis has its problems, but I guess space exploration isn’t one of them. I mean, check it out — is that an observatory up there? I mean, woah.
Remember pepper-spray? That observatory doesn’t. It’s an observatory — it doesn’t have eyes! In fact, I don’t even think it’s alive. Unless you consider the lens an eye, which could be a metaphor for the need of students to closely examine their university and demand transparency and accountability from an increasingly opaque administration. Or nah! It’s an observatory!
The sky is big. Observatory’s “observe.” The sky. Sometimes I cry. Woah…
I asked my professor why we have an observatory on campus. He asked what I was doing at his house so late at night. I guess science raises more questions than it answers. Huh.
Here’s another problem UC Davis students face: long lines at the Silo. Hmm.
Obviously the observatory made me reconsider my place in an infinite universe. So let’s just try to get through with that part of the conversation, okay? It wasn’t good. I felt small.
I’m a passionate man. I’m so passionate. Take the heat energy of an atomic bomb, multiply that by one billion, add seven and that’s a few short of how passionate I am. I’m grunting just thinking about it. Now, you might be asking: what does this have to do with an observatory?
I was born into a poor family.
My father always said: “Son, we are a poor family — very poor.”
I gazed up at him from his lap. I sat on his lap because we were so poor that his lap was the only chair we could afford. Sad.
“Son, you need to be tough to get on in this world. You need to be hard, like the hard metallic shell of a university observatory. Yes, that’s exactly the simile I meant to use.”
I never forgot that.
In conclusion, you now know why I am crying when you see me looking at the observatory on top of Kerr Hall. I am thinking about all the chairs I never got to sit in.
Written by: Eli Flesch – ekflesch@ucdavis.edu
