Do you see what I see?

Long before “I Love Lucy” changed Americans’ idle hours, folks watched the splendors of the night sky. That’s how we got those imaginary, connect-the-dots images called constellations that look nothing like what they are supposed to represent, which leads me to believe there were Dalis and Picassos among us even back in ancient days.

We don’t star gaze anymore like we used to. For one, the collective ground light from our cities, towns and commercial farms have all but washed out the brightest celestial objects that are visible on Earth without the aid of telescopes. For another, we no longer wind down the day by sitting on the front porch as the world turns through dusk into darkness.

From time to time, however, along comes a heavenly spectacle that’s all but impossible not to notice. Such a display is on tap for Monday evening just after sunset.

I’m sure many readers have seen the two bright “stars” hanging low in the southwestern sky the past several nights. Those “stars” are, in fact, our neighboring planets Venus and Jupiter. On the first of December this pair of sparkling jewels will be joined by a thin sliver of silvery moon.

When that tiny crescent of moon appears, take a closer look. Go ahead. Look long and hard and see if you can’t make out the faint bluish face of the rest of the moon’s surface that is not bathed in sunlight. See it?

That wan, bluish glow is called Earth shine. As we all should have learned in 3rd-grade science, objects like planets and their moons emit no light of their own but rather reflect light from the sun. Earth shine can be quite spectacular, depending on the degree of cloud cover at any given time, as photographs taken by astronauts from the surface of our moon attest. So what you are seeing on the fainter side of a crescent moon is sunlight reflected off Earth reflecting back to us from the moon.

And did you know that moon phases and Earth phases are in sync in what astronomers call complementary phases? We just had a new moon Thursday evening with the dark side of the moon was turned fully toward us. At the same time Moon Critters would have been marveling at a brilliant full Earth.

Of course, our trio of heavenly hosts will not be anywhere near one another Monday night or any other night. They only appear to be approaching one another as seen from Earth. The moon will be roughly a quarter-million miles out. Venus, meanwhile, lies some 93.2 million miles distant, and giant Jupiter is a mind-boggling 540.3 million miles away and approaching the far side of the sun.

Such facts are for textbooks, though. One of my favorite pilgrimages, if you will, is to Brewster County, Texas, down in the Big Bend Country. Lie on your back after dark without a campfire or lantern, and open your eyes to the heaven above. It's not so much what you see as it is what you feel. For me it's a realization of being incredibly small and indescribably insignificant.

That was a year that was!

Beetle Bailey and Peanuts are the new comics in town, premiering in American newspapers two months apart, and the game show Truth or Consequences debuts on that newfangled television which some folks already are calling TV. Of course, radios outnumber television sets in American homes by something like eight or nine to one. Still, there are some 100 television broadcast stations in 38 of these 48 states, and the federal census this year put the number of sets in American households at five million. TV sales, however, indicate that number to be nearer eight million.

Folks still go to the movies, though. A full-length animated film from Walt Disney, Cinderella, generates a lot of buzz at its release, and tough-guy personified actor Broderick Crawford takes Best Actor honors at the 22nd Academy Awards for his performance in All the King’s Men. The film takes Best Picture.

There are uneasy feelings at home and abroad when North Korea blatantly invades South Korea and Russia announces it has developed its own atomic bomb. Dark headlines and ominous newsreels do not dampen America’s post-war rally, however. A new concept in consumerism, something called a shopping center, designed by architect John Graham Jr. opens on the outskirts of Seattle, Washington. Decent houses are going for around $8,500, and a new set of wheels can be had for about $1,500. Fueling the new car runs around 18 cents a gallon. Wages? Oh, the average American worker brings home around $3,200 a year.

In New York everyone is raving about that new show that opened at the 46th Street Theater, Guys and Dolls. The cast includes Robert Alda, Vivian Blaine, Sam Levene, Isabel Bigley, Peter Gennaro and a local comedian calling himself Stubby Kaye who, they say, steals the show as Nicely-Nicely. Tune in a radio and you’ll likely hear Nat King Cole singing Mona Lisa or that new kid Teresa Brewer with Music, Music, Music. Ruth Brown tops the R&B charts with Teardrops from My Eyes, but perhaps no one is making the tears flow like Miss Patti Page singing Tennessee Waltz.

The world said a final farewell to some pretty good folks this year. Novelists George Orwell and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Restaurateur Sid Grauman and American automobile pioneer Ransom Olds. We lost the Jazz Singer, Al Jolson, and Irish-born writer George Bernard Shaw.

At the same time we welcomed several new ones into a brave new world. Names from the nursery this year to watch include Debbie Allen, Billy Ocean, Natalie Cole (yes, Nat is her proud papa), Cybill Shepherd, Julius Erving, Karen Carpenter, Bill Macy and William Hurt, Jane Pauley and Tom Petty.
But the most important new arrival, as far as this writer is concerned, came along on November 7 of this year, 1950, at St. Mary’s over on Stanyon Street in San Francisco. I did not know little Ann Elizabeth at the time, but I found here just as soon as I could.

Happy Birthday, Mrs. Miller!