Welcome

I have always admired the sky. As a child, my mom, in an effort to occupy us, would challenge my siblings and me to find shapes in the clouds. Occasionally she would wake us up from our slumber, bundle us up and take us outside to view the Northern Lights dance across the sky on a cold Alaskan winter’s night. During my Peace Corps service in Senegal, West Africa, I remember looking up into the sky and quickly finding Orion’s Belt and other familiar constellations. This always made me feel closer to home, even though I was thousands of miles away from everything familiar to me. While living on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon I was constantly mesmerized by the clarity of the Milky Way.

I could stare at the dramatic colors of the sunset forever and always feel entranced by the magic of the sunrise. The sky is forever changing and beautiful, yet the stars are more reliable and steady. As I’ve moved around the U.S. and the world, I have always counted on the stars to make me feel at home. It brings a sense of comfort to see something familiar when nothing else is. And I have realized that is one thing we all have in common; regardless of where one is born, what language they speak, religion they practice, color of their skin, or background they come from, we all live under the same stars.