A STRANGE COSMOPOETRY CELEBRATION
Astropoetic essay with selfies by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
In October 2018, after the astropoetry/cosmopoetry show I directed during the Targoviste International Astro-Fest (organized by SARM with the participation of an elite team of Astronomers Without Borders, led by founder-president Mike Simmons) I decided to retire from my exhausting job of a financial analyst in a multinational company and to dedicate the rest of my life to astropoetry and cosmopoetry.
I could do it in June 2019, a year in which I made shows or presentations of this kind in a few national astronomical events, in three planetariums, in an astronomical summer school for young students, in an international professional astronomy conference, in the national meeting of astronomical associations and even in the Bucharest Municipal Observatory (for the first time after the glorious period 2000-2010).
For Global Astronomy Month 2020 I planned a great celebration of 25 years of SARM cosmopoetry at the same observatory, but the unexpected pandemic broke my wings.
However, in March 2020, right before the first national quarantine, I recited alone a short astropoem in front of the (inaccessible at that time) observatory.
Then I have vainly hoped in an improvement of the general situation: on the contrary, the pandemic has unleashed, the public events have been forbidden and the protection mask has become obligatory.
My revenge against the pandemic has been this project, “For Global Astronomy Month 2020”, for which I have assumed to become part of Astronomers Without Borders as a simple try (among many others) to demonstrate that astropoetry, cosmopoetry and amateur astronomy never give up, and I have to thank:
-Andee Sherwood (AWB Astropoetry Blog editor) and Frances Azaren (AWB publisher), two wonderful ladies who have permanently sustained astropoetry and my work with grace;
-the IT expert Florin Alexandru Stancu for his excellent solidarity;
-Valentin Grigore (founder president of SARM), who has joined the project through his amazing astrophotography and exemplary astro-photo-poetry.
Certainly, anything can be celebrated on-line, but it is not the same with a physical celebration in a suitable environment.
So in December 2020 (the month of hope, with the first anti-pandemic vaccines), wishing all sky lovers to live Beautiful Holidays and better times in 2021, I celebrated alone 25 tears of SARM cosmopoetry… on the terrace of the Bucharest Municipal Observatory!
Never give up, dear sky lovers!
Sometimes a single gesture is decisive.
