Meeting and Passing
by Robert Frost

As I went down the hill along the wall
There was a gate I had leaned at for the view
And had just turned from when I first saw you
As you came up the hill. We met. But all
We did that day was mingle great and small
Footprints in summer dust as if we drew
The figure of our being less than two
But more than one as yet. Your parasol
Pointed the decimal off with one deep thrust.
And all the time we talked you seemed to see
Something down there to smile at in the dust.
(Oh, it was without prejudice to me!)
Afterward I went past what you had passed
Before we met and you what I had passed.


"Meeting and Passing" by Robert Frost. Public domain. (buy now)

On this date in the year 534 B.C.E., Thespis reportedly became the first Western actor to portray a character onstage. Details are sketchy, but Aristotle wrote that Thespis, a Greek poet from Icaria, donned a mask and took on the persona of Dionysus, god of fertility, wine, and the theater. Up to this point, Greek theater mostly consisted of choruses singing songs about Greek myths. Thespis was the first one to actually pretend to be someone else, speaking dialogue from the point of view of that character.

It was in 1924, that astronomer Edwin Hubble announced his discovery of the first galaxy outside our Milky Way.

After the serving in the First World War, Hubble to joined the staff of the Mount Wilson observatory in California; there he would work with their new 100-inch Hooker Telescope, the largest telescope in the world at that time.

Hubble was studying the Andromeda and Triangulum nebulae, which he thought at first were star clusters in our galaxy, the Milky Way. At that time, most astronomers believed that the Milky Way galaxy was the only galaxy in the universe. As Hubble looked closely at Andromeda, he discovered that one of its stars was what's known as a Cepheid variable: a kind of star that was very bright and pulsed at regular intervals. Cepheid variables can serve as a "yardstick" to mathematically calculate distances in the universe. Hubble calculated the Cepheid to be almost a million light years away, which would place it well outside the farthest stars in the Milky Way. He speculated that Andromeda was not a nebula at all, but another entire galaxy separate from our own. Further discoveries of dozens of additional Cepheids reinforced his findings that ours was just one of many galaxies in the universe.

Hubble was only 35 when he made the discovery that expanded the known boundaries of the universe. He opened the door for the discovery of many galaxies outside of our own — and discovered 23 of them himself. He was also the first to suggest that the universe is expanding, and his work set the stage for the future development of the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.

It's the birthday of pop philosopher, historian, and poet Jennifer Michael Hecht (books by this author), born in Long Island in 1965. Hecht holds a Ph.D. in the history of science, but ultimately pledges allegiance to poetry. "If you look at a testimony of love from 2,000 years ago it can still exactly speak to you, whereas medical advice from only 100 years ago is ridiculous," she said in an interview with the Center for Inquiry. "And so as a historian, I write poetry. I'm profoundly committed to art as the answer. Indeed, I don't put science really as the way I get to any of my answers; it's just helpful. It's poetry that I look to. It's the clatter of recognition. Everybody has different ways, but I attest that poetry works pretty well."

Her nonfiction books include Doubt: A History (2003), The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology in France (2003), The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong (2007), Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It (2013).

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

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