{"id":274,"date":"2006-09-27T21:21:03","date_gmt":"2006-09-28T01:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/?p=274"},"modified":"2006-09-28T09:55:07","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T13:55:07","slug":"shooting-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/?p=274","title":{"rendered":"Shooting Stars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I spent some time tonight stargazing, an activity aided by a wonderful moonless night but slightly hindered by the shining lights of my lawn mower.  I might not want to mow in the darkness but the light of the ancients were interesting company.<\/p>\n<p>Those same stars weren&#8217;t as comforting for my oldest son. Our little chat on the front step of our home met with some apprehension as I turned off the porch lights.  I wanted to point out the Milky Way.  He wanted to express his sudden fear of shooting stars.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently, they are huge.  And they make lots of noise.  And go, &#8220;shroom across the sky.&#8221;  The wide eyed child that told me this story, complete with a wide wave with his hand, surely wanted no parts of these world ending objects.<\/p>\n<p>I explained to him what little I know.   I spoke of <a href=\"http:\/\/curious.astro.cornell.edu\/question.php?number=249\">little rocks<\/a>.  I told him that shooting stars are silent and beautiful.  I attempted to relate them to one of the things he dearly loves, rollercoasters.<\/p>\n<p>My little man considered these facts but didn&#8217;t seem to believe me.  My explanation did, however, seem to have an one effect.  It created a story.<\/p>\n<p>I learned that &#8220;when he was little&#8221; a shooting star once fell in front at his feet.  He picked up this star and had a little conversation.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Why are you here little star?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I was told of its bouncing.  I was told it returned to the sky.  I learned that his story seemed to both comfort and delight him.<\/p>\n<p>We both enjoyed the sky this evening.  He used his imagination to help things along.  I used some help from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deere.com\/en_US\/deerecom\/usa_canada.html\">John Deere<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spent some time tonight stargazing, an activity aided by a wonderful moonless night but slightly hindered by the shining lights of my lawn mower. I might not want to mow in the darkness but the light of the ancients were interesting company. Those same stars weren&#8217;t as comforting for my oldest son. Our little [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}