I should add that this is a photo by the same photographer who has been shooting in the South Bronx for a few years now, and there was a mefi fpp about him last year.

This shot in isolation, I like. I have somewhat mixed feelings about his Faces of Addiction project.

That's awesome! I love that he'll be setting up the telescope regularly.

He's so right about how powerful it is. I used to work with an astronomer who dragged out a high power telescope on special nights and set it up in the downtown for people to just stumble across. People were completely enchanted. I can remember when he first showed me Saturn. Dumbly, I said "It really has rings!" It's one thing to know it has rings, another to see them yourself.

He's so right about how powerful it is. I used to work with an astronomer who dragged out a high power telescope on special nights and set it up in the downtown for people to just stumble across. People were completely enchanted. I can remember when he first showed me Saturn. Dumbly, I said "It really has rings!" It's one thing to know it has rings, another to see them yourself.

Thank goodness he didn't show them Uranus.

Deja viewed.

It really is a whole different experience to see Saturn "live" like that, as opposed to the beautiful photos we see so often. It's a visceral thing. A "this thing is real" moment.

Takeesha would shout at them, 'Hey, you want your dick sucked or you want to look at Saturn?'

Why not both?

Everybody stop and look at Saturn sounds like a great name for a cover band.

Oi, I had a student named Deja that resembles the shorter of the two girls (it's hard to tell from the side). She was a smart girl (took my AP Literature class) who liked to write poetry, but had a negative attitude sometimes and some rough friends (got suspended for two weeks for going through security with a razor in her bag she'd "forgotten about"). I hope that's not her.

I can't imagine what it's like teaching kids who are in danger of ending up in that kind of situation.

A constant worry, jouke, a constant worry. I've had the full range, from full scholarships to Stanford and NYU to jail and the morgue and everything in between. I talk myself blue sometimes and just can't always get through. But life is long, and you hope they find their way. I'm just their English teacher for a year or two, small in the larger scope of all that matters in their lives, and I've learned my limitations, but I do what I can. I suppose you detach a bit, too, over the years, just seeing, realistically, what you can and can't do.

My hat's off to you Pips