Look to the sky

David Reneke discusses this year's Perseid meteor shower, which is due next week.

I've seen it in the past but in the midst of monsoon season, we might have cloudy skies. And of course, since we live downtown, the lights make the stars hard to see.. the best view is when we have a nighttime brownout.

No, I am not complaining about lights, which make us safe.

The alternative name for this is "St Lawrence's tears"And yes, as his feast day (and our barangay fiesta) is next week...

and yes, there is a famous Italian movieThe Night of the Shooting Stars (1982) La notte di San Lorenzo (original title) that refers to the meteor shower: referting to the Italian belief that your wishes would come true if you wished on a falling star on St Lawrence day. I once made the mistake of watching it, but was horrified. The theme was that the war was ending so everyone was busy trying to kill their enemies before the war stopped them. Yuck.

this article in a Richman paper describes one of the more vivid episodes of a meteor shower about 200 years ago.

as for St Lawrence, the original one, was a Roman deacon who took care of the poor and ended up martyred by roasting him on a grid (trying to get him to tell them where the lovely money he gave out to the poor was hidden). That makes him the patron saint of BBQ... Smithsonian article here.