Encounters with Venus

Today, June 5, 2012, Venus will orbit between the Earth and the Sun.  This event takes place once every 105 years; the last time it occurred was 1907, the next time will be in 2117.  These events, and many others, tend to make me think about history – both personal and world history.  I do tend to look backward as much as I do forward and wonder about how things were before my time, and what will occur in my lifetime and after. 

In 1912, my oldest grandfather would be born – today he would be about to turn 100 years old.  When the Venus event occurred in 1907, his father, Irwin Miller; was 22 years old.  He was living in Chicago, ready to make his mark on the world.  I doubt that Irwin knew the Venus event even occurred; maybe there was a small write up in the Chicago Tribune but he was more than likely working or just not paying attention to such things as astronomy.  My family comes from working-class stock so I’m sure being a practical, meticulous young man, the son of German immigrants; that he was busy, head down, trying to make it through each day as he aspired to achieving the American Dream.

This celestial event has given me pause to think about Irwin Miller, my Great-Grandfather whom I had the pleasure of knowing, appreciating and loving for my first eleven years of life. I, of course, knew him as a 95 year old man, but here I am pondering his life at age 22.  What must his life have been when Venus last made her appearance?  I assume that he didn’t know about the Venus orbit between the Earth and the Sun but did he note the turn of the century that he witnessed at 15 years of age?  

Being born in 1885, he was surely aware of that event; he witnessed the birth of the 20^th century.  When I was a child and I thought about my great-Grandfather being born in 1885 I was amazed that someone could watch the world pass from one century to another.  What he must have seen and felt as the Great War was breaking out and he had two small sons at home!  He moved his family to where our family came to be ‘from’ sometime in the 1920’s; by then adding a daughter.  Irwin saw many things:  Moving from Chicago to St. Joseph, Michigan; World War 1, the Great Depression, the New Deal, World War II, the birth of grandchildren, the death of a grand-daughter after a long battle with leukemia, the Korean War, the death of his wife, my great-Grandmother, and so on and on.  Happy times, sad times alike - he saw the passing of one century to another.

I think about my great-Grandfather because it strikes me that not only do we have this once-every-105-years planetary event that makes me ponder what was happening in my roots 105 years ago but very nostalgically, I reminisce about the fact that I, too, have seen the turn of a century.  I saw a new century AND a new millennium dawn.  I laugh sometimes at the Y2K scare and I struggle sometimes to help my children understand the years that started in “19” instead of “20”.  I was married in the year of the new Millennium – Y2K itself.   

           My great-Grandfather lived through historic events; and so have I.  I was in 5^th grade when President Ronald Reagan was shot, I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, I was watching live TV when the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded mid-air, I attended protests for Apartheid in college, wrote letters to the President about Desert Storm, watched as our soldiers went from peace to war in the early 1990’s, saw the dot-com bubble, I have a friend that was in the Twin Towers the day the planes crashed into them and I saw the turbulent years that followed.  We straddlers of these centuries, my great-grandfather and I , have much in common.

          All these thoughts – comparing what is happening today to what happened in the past – the parallels between the two are entertainment for my brain.  I put like against like as I think back in my family history and try to figure out what was going on 100 years ahead of my time.   

          I wonder what stories my children and their children will tell of their old grandmother that lived in the 20^th century and the 21^st century.  Surely they will be amazed of all the events that happen in my life, like I revel at what my great-grandfather must have seen.  It shows us, we small humans, how big our universe is when one minor event for Venus can envelope 105 years of our history at a time.  How much will happen before the next encounter with our friend Venus?