he title 'astronomer' must, I fear, be prefaced with the word 'amateur'. I have learned much of the night sky, at least in the northern hemisphere and more recently in the southern, and have spotted many of the Messier objects in my scope. I am stunned every time by the beauty of double stars such as Cor Caroli and by the spectacular scattering of suns in the Pleiades. I have caught and sang Jupiter's bands and Galilean moons, the mare of the moon, and the phases of Venus. I have seen a meteor break into two pieces in flight and had two satellites cross paths in my binoculars. I have walked the perimeter of Meteor Crater in Arizona and scrabbled through the Henley craters in Australia, and come away from all these experiences with a sense of how full and busy space is, and how lucky we are each day not to have our lives disrupted by some impossibly energetic object.

     My equipment, when I had it, was basic: a 4-inch Newtonian reflector. Powerful enough to resolve the Trapezium and to see mountain shadows on the moon, and just powerful enough to convince me that I wanted something bigger. To do justice to the practice of astronomy one must devote much time to it. Entire evenings can be spent watching the Perseids or searching for objects and like computers, skywatching can gobble up time at an alarming rate. These two factors, limited equipment and lack of necessary time, plus my now-wandering lifestyle, conspire to rob me of further opportunities to learn from the sky, at least by telescope.

     So I get out when I can under the graceful span of Cygnus, or more recently, the Southern Cross, and poke about in my little corner of the galaxy, all the while lamenting my short lifetime and feeling defeated by the overwhelming size of what I am contemplating ...and by the sheer quantity of what there is to know. It is impossible, ever, to be bored.

     P.S. Is anyone else out there disappointed with comets? A fuzzy patch in the sky is just a larger fuzzy patch in the eyepiece!

his life of mine hasn't exactly panned out as I expected. I did the academic thing, got degrees, got a job, a family, a house, investments, the whole enchilada - but I never believed in it, never really accepted the 'security in old age' story I was hearing, and sure enough it all fell away. Maybe this was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but even as a small child I "knew", in some mysterious way, that I would be poor when I got older. I further "knew" that the new millennium would be a huge turning point. It used to frighten me.

     What the "knowing" didn't tell me was that I would come to see my poverty for the liberation that it represented, and be joyful in it. But how did it all happen? Let's see, there was a business failure followed by the using of investment money to live; I and my wife of the time purchased a condominium which proved to be leaky, one of thousands that were criminally built by government and building contractors in British Columbia to a faulty building standard (follow this link to learn more); my marriage did not survive this twin onslaught and so divorce followed; so did a heart attack. Yes, that's about it, and I suppose it should be enough for anyone.

     In hospital, knowing the heart condition was caused by the stress of worry over my upcoming bankruptcy, I still "knew", too, that I would not die. It was a bad time, but rather than commit suicide (it occurred to me), I sold and gave away most everything and went with my new partner to China to teach English and start over. I loved it. Later, Ruth and I hiked through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, China again, Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia, stopping and teaching from time to time, living from a backpack, and feeling lightened beyond belief for having shed the Western acquisitive living style. I am writing this paragraph in Guatemala.

     So now I have no home, no car, no credit cards (I refuse to carry them or ever again to own the first two), no credit rating, no cellphone (I've seen how they govern the lives of those who own them, especially in China), NO DEBTS and no stress. I wander the world with Ruth, living cheaply (our income is my pension: about $1200 Canadian dollars per month plus what we can earn on the road), and not wishing ever again to live in a Western country. We never book ahead, use local, sometimes horrendous transport, and stay in little hotels and homestays for, well, we think $10 a night is high. I am free as possible of our society's stress-inducing corporate nonsense, and you can be too, but hopefully not in the extreme way in which I came to it.

     My wealth was torn from me otherwise I might still be discontentedly wallowing in my possessions, but I think yours might well disappear too unless you start questioning the morality of the makers of the endless things you purchase, come to know of the unfair ways in which they are produced, and refuse then to buy most of them. More important though, MUCH more important, is to tell those producers why you are not buying. As long as they think you don't care they will continue to cheat, disenfranchise, even murder, the world's poor. You hold the power, only you the consumer can reign in the rampant greed of international business. Our 3^rd world wanderings have proved most enlightening.

     I close with a photo Ruth took in Laos - a big Pepsi ad (PepsiCo appears to own Laos) in a cemetery. I think it nicely illustrates the corporate insensitivity we seek to avoid.