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Journal Entry
Night Magic
By C.G. Wolfe
T
TRACYPOLLOCK.COM
here9s still magic in the night. Telescopes are reaching back into the starlight searching for signs of life on exoplanets with names like the recent newsmaker, K2-18b,
which orbits a red dwarf 124 lightyears away from earth. But Howard Menger, the topic
of this issue9s first feature story, didn9t have to reach that far. When Howard looked at
the night sky over High Bridge, NJ, in the 1950s, he saw flying saucers piloted by Venusians and Martians, who brought a galactic message of love and hope for humankind.
200 years earlier, in 1769, the subject of our second feature, William Alexander, an
American patriot who called himself Lord Stirling, gazed into the June sky to track the
transit of Venus over his estate in Basking Ridge, NJ. His Lordship had a passion for astronomy, as well as good wine, and perhaps like Woody Guthrie once wrote, he saw the
stars
