[{"id":309878,"date":"2026-08-24T06:00:35","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T10:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309878"},"modified":"2026-08-24T01:19:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T05:19:00","slug":"with-a-heart-for-any-fate-early-notes-from-the-oregon-trail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/with-a-heart-for-any-fate-early-notes-from-the-oregon-trail.html","title":{"rendered":"With a Heart for Any Fate: Early Notes from the Oregon Trail"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Mark Harvey<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Amelia Knight<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Time gets compressed as you get older. When you\u2019re a kid, a month waiting for summer break can seem like an eternity, whereas later in life, you marvel that just yesterday our forebears were crossing the mountains and steppes of the interior West in horse-drawn wagons. I long to know what it was really like trying to make it from, say, Ohio to California, or Iowa to Oregon in the 19th<\/sup> century. Most of the lore in fiction and the movies flattens the experience into hard men and bonneted women snarling at each other, fighting Indians, and eating grub around the campfire.<\/p>\n

But there are a few surviving accounts from men and women who made the crossing and, despite long, long days on the trail, setting up camp, and tending to children and livestock, managed to jot down some of their thoughts and impressions along the way.<\/p>\n

One of those women was Amelia Stewart Knight, who set off with her husband and seven children from Monroe County, Iowa, on April 9, 1853, for Oregon Territory. Her journal entries are terse and thus compress her interiority. But the hardships and disasters of the trip itself speak in themselves. And because they are so few, the entries when Amelia expresses hurt or despair are touching.<\/p>\n

She begins her diary, \u201cStarted from home about 11 o\u2019clock and traveled 8 miles and camped in an old house; night cold and frosty.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know why Amelia, her husband, and her brood left Iowa, but Monroe County in 1853 had to have been almost impossible. Whites had barely settled it; malaria (known then as \u201cthe shakes\u201d) and cholera were rampant, and massive storms and floods in 1851 had wiped out grain and lumber mills along the riverbanks. The floods and disease would have aggravated an already marginal existence.<\/p>\n

And Oregon Fever was calling: thousands of people were on the move to realize the promise of free land and a temperate climate in the Pacific Northwest.<\/p>\n

The first week into the journey, the skies let loose and poured rain on Amelia and her family. Their clothes and bedding got soaked, three horses ran away, and Amelia is already feeling homesick. She writes,<\/p>\n

Bed clothes nearly spoiled. Cold and cloudy this morning, and every body out of humour. Seneca is half sick. Plutarch has broke his saddle girth. Husband is scolding and hurrying all hands (and the cook) and Almira says she wished she was home, and I say ditto. \u201cHome, Sweet Home.\u201d . . .<\/em><\/p>\n

Amelia suffers headaches throughout the journey. The cause is unknown, but it could be related to carrying what would become her eighth child, as she is in the third trimester of another pregnancy.<\/p>\n

Caring for their livestock and horses while traveling through rough country is costly and at times nearly impossible. With few towns or supplies along the trail, some days they feed their livestock flour and cornmeal. Amelia\u2019s itemized lists of things bought during the trip: corn, river crossings, etc.\u2014suggest tight finances.<\/p>\n

About a month into the trip, after dealing with heavy rains and mud at the campsites, the family must have been near what is today Omaha, Nebraska. On May 6th<\/sup>, they encounter a family returning east after a tragedy on the Elkhorn River located about two days\u2019 travel west. Amelia writes,<\/p>\n

\u00a0Here we passed a train of wagons on their way back, the head man had been drowned a few days before, in a river called Elkhorn, while getting some cattle across and his wife was lying in the wagon quite sick, and children were mourning for the father gone. With sadness and pity I passed those who perhaps a few days before had been well and happy as ourselves.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Map of the Oregon Trail<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The sight of the returning family and the news of the drowning must have been scary for Amelia and her brood. They would have recently crossed the Missouri River, at the time considered the boundary between American civilization and the vast Western wilderness. The United States mail system in 1853 pretty much ended at the Missouri River, and any communication for the next several hundred miles would depend on handing a letter to strangers heading east, sometimes called East-Bounders. They could be mountain men, returning emigrants, or freight wagons. Many of the letters handed to strangers would somehow reach the recipient, but pioneers often wrote nearly duplicate letters days later to double their chances.<\/p>\n

For many pioneers, the Missouri was a physical and psychological threshold between their old life and the unknown ahead. Luzena Walter, a woman traveling to California four years before Amelia wrote,<\/p>\n

The day\u2019s slow journey brought us to the Missouri River, over which we were ferried in the twilight, and our first campfire was lit in Indian territory.\u00a0 This spread in one unbroken, unnamed waste from the Missouri River to the borderline of California.\u00a0 This was the start of my terror.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Snake River Plain in southern Idaho was particularly hard on the pioneers and their livestock. To some overlanders, it was considered the most dangerous and difficult section of the Oregon Trail. The crossing was roughly 300 miles and began in what is now Pocatello, Idaho, and ended near today\u2019s Huntington, Oregon, on the states\u2019 border. Thousands of cattle died in that stretch and some said that you didn\u2019t even need a map to follow the Snake River, you just followed the stench.<\/p>\n

Cattle deaths were attributed to dehydration, starvation, toxic plants, and alkali water. The many emigrants with their herds had stripped the plains bare. The ecology of the Snake River Plain was primarily composed of bunch grass and sagebrush. The bluebunch wheatgrass, basin wildrye, Idaho Fescue, and other grasses of the region were much more delicate than the rhizomatous grasses of the Great Plains. It was difficult for the livestock to get enough nutrition, so they turned to eating toxic plants they normally would have avoided.<\/p>\n

Amelia\u2019s family lost three precious animals within a week on the Snake Plain: On July 24th<\/sup> a calf, on July 27th<\/sup> a \u201cfine cow,\u201d on August 1st<\/sup> one of their best milk cows. I have to assume losing a good milk cow would be a severe blow to a mother of seven children and one on the way. The milk and cream must have been a good source of fat on a lean diet. Milk cows were also routinely used to tow wagons if oxen died or failed. Finally, all the cattle were meant to be foundational capital once in Oregon.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Snake River Plains, Idaho<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Given the harsh conditions, the months of travel, and the constant loss of livestock, I would assume Amelia would be hardened to losing cattle along the way and would consider the losses only in terms of nutrition and economics. But she repeatedly remarks on the plight of her cattle and oxen, demonstrating a tenderness to the animals one might not expect. On August 12th<\/sup>, just a few days after losing that milk cow, one of her oxen dies. She writes,<\/p>\n

Lost some of our oxen. We were traveling along slowly, when he dropped dead in the yoke. We unyoked and turned out the odd ox, and drove around the dead one, and so it is all along the road, we are continually driving around the dead cattle, and shame on the man who has no pity for the poor dumb brutes that have to travel and toil month after month on this desolate road. (I could hardly help shedding tears, when we drove round this poor ox who had helped us along thus far, and has given us his very last step.<\/em><\/p>\n

I had always assumed that most overlanders on the Oregon Trail traveled by horse or in a wagon. Reading Amelia\u2019s diary, it is evident that she walked a great deal of the 2,300-mile journey. The whole trip took about 160 days, which means they averaged close to 15 miles per day. Not only was she heavily pregnant, but when walking she had to carry her youngest child, Chadwick, in her arms.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a term that was batted around in the mid 20th<\/sup> century among sociologists and historians that has been badly skewed: American exceptionalism. It was first used to describe the founding of our country as being truly different, and then bastardized to imply Americans as individuals were exceptional in character. Reading Amelia\u2019s account, there\u2019s one thing that is almost entirely missing: complaining. There are days when she records fatigue or headaches or sorrow at dead livestock. But next to the travails of going without water some days, getting soaked by rain, and the endless days of travel, her endurance is simply heroic. How she bore the 2,300 mile journey with seven children and carrying an eighth boggles the mind. The strength and stoicism of those pioneers is not just humbling but can give a person a sense of how absurdly easy most of us have it by comparison. Being American doesn\u2019t make a person exceptional. But Amelia Knight was an exceptional American.<\/p>\n

On September 1st<\/sup>, five months after leaving Iowa, the Knights are camped near the Deschutes River, in the final leg of the trip. Their suppers are occasionally made up from fish from the Pacific Ocean as they buy salmon from the local Indians. In that month at that place, it would likely have been Chinook or Coho. She also buys a few potatoes from the Indians and both the salmon and the potatoes are a \u201ctreat\u201d for the family. Given the matter-of-fact diary, calling them \u201ctreats\u201d means they must have been delicious. I believe it\u2019s the only time Amelia describes a meal with any epicurean flourish.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Painting of the Oregon Trail near its end, by William Henry Jackson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As they approach the mountains near Mount Hood and Laurel Hill, considered by some to be the most treacherous section of the Oregon Trail, Amelia begins jettisoning anything that is not absolutely necessary to lighten the load. The road approaching Laurel Hill was said to be strewn with wood stoves, family heirlooms, farm machinery, books, and anything else that could take weight off the emigrants\u2019 wagons. Amelia\u2019s entry describing Laurel Hill is the longest in her entire journal. In part, she writes,<\/p>\n

It would be useless for me with my pencil to describe the awful road we have just passed over\u2026.It is something more than a half mile long very rocky all the way, quite steep, winding, sideling, deep down, slippery and muddy\u2026.and this road is cut down so deep that at times the cattle and wagons are almost out of sight\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n

A week later, Amelia gives birth to her eighth child and their long journey across the continent comes to an end. She writes,<\/p>\n

Here husband traded two yoke of oxen for a half section of land with one half acre planted to potatoes and a small log cabin and lean-to with no windows. This is the journey\u2019s end.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Knights ultimately settled across the Columbia River near what is today Vancouver, Washington. Dr. Knight, always referred to as \u201cHusband\u201d throughout the journal, became a member of Washington Territory\u2019s legislature. \u00a0Amelia lived to be 81.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Mark Harvey Time gets compressed as you get older. When you\u2019re a kid, a month waiting for summer break can seem like an eternity, whereas later in life, you marvel that just yesterday our forebears were crossing the mountains and steppes of the interior West in horse-drawn wagons. I long to know what it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1247,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[7241,7242,103,7239,7240,7243],"class_list":["post-309878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mondaymagazine","tag-amelia-knight","tag-americans","tag-democracy","tag-oregon-trail","tag-pioneers","tag-the-west","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1247"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309878"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310149,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309878\/revisions\/310149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309898,"date":"2026-08-24T05:00:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T09:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309898"},"modified":"2026-08-24T01:07:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T05:07:44","slug":"burnhams-celestial-handbook-a-retrospective-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/burnhams-celestial-handbook-a-retrospective-review.html","title":{"rendered":"Burnham’s Celestial Handbook: A Retrospective Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Mary Hrovat<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"PhotographBurnham\u2019s Celestial Handbook<\/em>, by Robert Burnham, Jr., is a classic text. Its third and final volume was published in 1978. Written as a set of guidebooks for amateur astronomers, it\u2019s a product of its time and circumstances. The abundant illustrations are in black-and-white, and the pages may look very plain to anyone accustomed to glossy large-format books about the universe, replete with color photographs. But to me it\u2019s still immensely valuable, for the sheer amount of information it presents, for its attention to the history of astronomy, and for its astonishing breadth.<\/p>\n

The full title of the set is Burnham\u2019s Celestial Handbook: An Observer\u2019s Guide to the Universe Beyond the Solar System<\/em>. The books were written over a period of approximately 25 years. Burnham was an amateur astronomer when he decided he\u2019d like to write a guidebook that describes the interesting astronomical objects accessible to amateur telescopes. His aim was to update existing guides to these objects, which were old enough to be out of date astronomically. In addition, the older guides covered the objects visible in the small amateur telescopes of their day, not the larger telescopes available to amateurs in the 1950s and 1960s. In his handbook, Burnham discusses around 7000 of these objects.<\/p>\n

The first volume contains an introduction to amateur astronomical observing, including an overview of the types of objects outside of the solar system that you can see with binoculars or a telescope, their various naming conventions, and information about the coordinates used to describe their positions in the sky. He explains the abbreviations he uses to describe variable stars, double and multiple stars, and star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies. Throughout the book, he uses these abbreviations to present compact tables of information about these objects.<\/p>\n

Then, for each of the 88 constellation, he presents a set of these tables, followed by textual information on the constellation as a whole and on individual stars and other astronomical objects to be found in it. The length of the chapters varies. Those for some of the smaller constellations are quite short, and in several cases, only the tables are presented, without any text. The constellations with more lore or history associated with them are much longer.<\/p>\n

\u221e<\/p>\n

As he provides data on the various objects of interest in a constellation, Burnham often uses a particular object as a springboard from which to launch into a discussion on some topic in astronomy. In addition, he presents poems and quotations from observers and historians ancient and modern. He includes many drawings, such as finder charts for various objects, illustrations of the orbits of double stars, and comparisons of the sizes of stars.<\/p>\n

Some of the topical essays Burnham presents involve particular stars. In the chapter on Cepheus, he discusses Cepheid variables, which are interesting to astronomers because their periods are related to their absolute luminosities, making them useful for measuring celestial distances. They\u2019re named for their prototype star, delta Cephei. Burnham explains what was known at the time about why these stars vary in brightness. He then presents the history of their discovery by Henrietta Leavitt<\/a> and their later use by Edwin Hubble<\/a> to settle a debate about the nature of what were then called spiral nebulae, which Hubble demonstrated are remote galaxies and not a part of the Milky Way.<\/p>\n

Other essays involve particular star clusters or galaxies. In the chapter on the constellation Hercules, which has not one but two magnificent globular clusters, Burnham not only describes these clusters but goes into the evolution of clusters of this type, which lie outside the disk of the Milky Way. He also gives a vivid description of how the sky would look from a planet orbiting a star in a globular cluster.<\/p>\n

Some of the scientific information is mildly surprising to find in a book for amateurs. Burnham not only explains what a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is but also presents H-R diagrams in various places throughout the text to illustrate how astronomers use them\u2014for example, to determine the ages of star clusters. In an H-R diagram, stars are plotted according to their mass and luminosity; during most of their lives, stars fall on the Main Sequence, where they may have type O, B, A, F, G, K, or M. As they age and use up their fuel(s), they leave the Main Sequence and become various types of giants. I learned about the use of H-R diagrams in the study of star clusters in an undergrad astronomy class; none of the guidebooks I had at the time went into that much detail about how they’re used. I\u2019m happy that Burnham thought the information was suitable for sharing with amateur astronomers.<\/p>\n

He also presents at least one story about an astronomical study that disproved a hypothesis. Harlow Shapley (who had essentially mapped the shape of the Milky Way<\/a> by measuring the distances to 69 globular clusters) studied the globular cluster M5 to see whether the speed of light might vary according to its wavelength. He found no sign of variation, and these days it seems surprising that anyone asked the question. But again, I like that this information was included in a handbook for amateurs, because null results are part of how science proceeds.<\/p>\n

\u221e<\/p>\n

I find this type of historical context to be one of the most valuable things about these books. I was introduced to the handbook when I was an undergrad studying astrophysics. I always enjoyed it when a class in physics or mathematics or astronomy presented bits of this kind of history, and it was a great pleasure to find a celestial guidebook that\u2019s steeped in this context.<\/p>\n

Burnham also provides a broad human context for our knowledge of the night sky. He discusses a fairly wide range of cultures and their myths, including some Native American cultures. For example, a discussion of Polaris, the North Star, shifts from the presentation of physical information about the star to a consideration of beliefs about the axis around which the world turns. In the space of 15 pages, Burnham mentions South Asia, the ancient Near East, Siberia, Glastonbury, and ancient China. He quotes Christopher Marlow (The History of Dr. Faustus<\/em>), William Cullen Bryant (\u201cHymn to the North Star\u201d), Christina Rosetti, Dante, Wordsworth, Confucius, Keats, Shakespeare, Aeschylus, the 48th Psalm and the Book of Isaiah, and the Dhammapada<\/em>. These historical and literary explorations are accompanied by photographs, including images of temples and shrines that symbolize the celestial axis.<\/p>\n

The discussions of myths, poetry, and stories about the Milky Way are similarly wide-ranging. And, oh, the discussion of the Pleiades in the chapter on Taurus! And the discussion of the Praesepe (the Beehive Cluster) in Cancer! Because so many of us live under skies brightened by artificial lights that obscure the stars, it’s easy to forget that the dark night sky was once a shared space of wonder and inspiration.<\/p>\n

This interweaving of scientific data and human history and culture makes the Celestial Handbook<\/em> superb for browsing. You may begin reading about a quasar in the constellation Virgo and be whisked into a brief meditation on the incompleteness of human understanding of nature. On a single page, Burnham places a quote by scientist Arthur Eddington next to a couple of lines of Lewis Carroll’s poetry, follows up with a few bars of the opening passage of Wagner\u2019s Das Rheingold<\/em>, and then considers pertinent thoughts from Loren Eiseley, H. L. Mencken, William Dean Howells, J. B. S. Haldane, and Mark Twain. Then he returns to the topic of quasars. The words he quotes are cultural references held in common; the thread that binds them into something like an imagined conversation is his wide-ranging and focused mind.<\/p>\n

Burnham describes the books as a compilation, and he does draw on many sources (listed in a section at the end of the third volume, along with other reference material). Part of the work of writing the book was to compare the original sources and try to resolve any inconsistencies among them. But he did more than compile information; he performed a creative synthesis that\u2019s rich and deep, encompassing data, a growing body of scientific knowledge, the history of science and general history, and the works of the human imagination when faced with the night sky. The books strike me as a work of love and devotion.<\/p>\n

\u221e<\/p>\n

The original purpose of the handbook, to provide descriptions of deep-sky objects for amateur observers, is now served by other guides that are perhaps more suitable for use in the field. Full-color photographs of deep-sky objects taken by more advanced instruments than those available 50 years ago are now easily available. And of course, some of the astronomical information in the handbook is no longer up-to-date, and some of the terminology is no longer in common use. For example, Burnham uses the term galactic cluster<\/em> to refer to what we\u2019d call an open cluster.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if Burnham planned to update the books. He asked readers to notify him if they found errors so that incorrect information could be fixed in future editions, but he also wrote of the impossibility of completion or perfection. At any rate, in some important ways, these books are no longer the optimal guide.<\/p>\n

However, they remain irreplaceable as a unique and heady blend of science, history, and culture. When I began to study astrophysics, in my early 20s, people who knew me were surprised that a former history major who loved poetry would want to study so technical a subject. (\u201cBut that\u2019s so scientific,\u201d someone said to me in puzzlement.) When I first encountered these books, I was dazzled by the abundant references to poetry, history, and even philosophy, alongside the tables and text so rich with scientific information. I was also comforted to see that at least one other person viewed these seemingly disparate interests as being inextricably interwoven. Burnham\u2019s work still dazzles and comforts me, forty years on.<\/p>\n

\u221e<\/p>\n

Until very recently, I knew little of Burnham\u2019s life. What I\u2019ve learned of it while writing this piece haunts me. He was born in Chicago and moved with his family to Prescott, Arizona as a child. He served in the Air Force during the Korean War and then worked as a shipping clerk. He pursued various intense interests, including astronomy, rocks and gemstones, and ancient history (all of which are reflected in the handbook).<\/p>\n

When he was one of three people to independently discover a new comet in 1957, he attracted the attention of the director of Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, who offered him a job working on a survey of the proper motion of stars. Proper motion is the motion of a celestial object across the sky, which is generally not the same as its actual motion in space. The proper motion of the nearest stars can be measured by comparing images taken at different times. Burnham and a co-worker compared contemporary images with images taken during Clyde Tombaugh’s search for a ninth planet 30 years earlier. They identified not only 9000 stars with high proper motion, but also asteroids, possible white dwarfs, variable stars, and a few comets,<\/p>\n

Burnham had already begun thinking about his Celestial Handbook before he got that job, and his time at Lowell made it easier for him to pursue this project (although it was always his own private project). He initially published his work in loose-leaf folders; later a revised version was published in book form by Dover. All three volumes are still listed on the Dover web site as being available in paperback and ebook versions.<\/p>\n

In 1979, however, the proper motion survey was completed, and the observatory was no longer able to employ Burnham in astronomical work. He apparently found it impossible to establish himself in a new livelihood, despite his deep knowledge and the skills he had used in researching and writing the handbook. After various travails, he moved to San Diego, where he lived in poverty, painting pictures of cats to sell in Balboa Park. In 1993, at the age of 61, he died of congestive heart failure. His brief final illness was compounded by several other health problems.<\/p>\n

A blog post<\/a> on the Lowell Observatory web site suggests that the loss of the stability and regularity of his job contributed to Burnham\u2019s inability to build a new life. In an article<\/a> about Burnham, Tony Ortega noted the contradictions of Burnham\u2019s life: \u201cHe devoted years of labor to extraordinary, disciplined work, and yet he was incapable of staving off poverty. He was a brilliant writer who had an uncommon memory, yet words failed him in social situations.\u201d Other people thought that Burnham had potential that he himself couldn\u2019t see.<\/p>\n

It crossed my mind to wonder whether Burnham might have been neurodivergent. A strong need for stability, difficulty communicating with others, a capacity for prolonged deep focus on chosen tasks accompanied by a tendency to struggle in other contexts: I\u2019m autistic, and these things are familiar to me. In addition, when a neurodivergent person shows great capacity in one area, their family and friends may see their skill and their potential, but not recognize the sometimes overwhelming difficulties that may make it impossible to fully realize that potential.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know whether neurodivergence had anything to do with how Burnham\u2019s life ended, and obviously I can\u2019t diagnose anyone else, especially someone I\u2019ve never met. But I do feel a deep sympathy for his plight. I\u2019m glad he had those 21 years at Lowell, and I wish I could thank him for sharing all that he could learn about the deep-sky objects he wrote about. I also wish he\u2019d had much more time and opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u221e<\/p>\n

The hardbound edition of the books contains 2138 pages. The last object that Burnham describes is the Dumbbell Nebula in the constellation Vulpecula. Burnham writes that strong ultraviolet radiation from the white dwarf at the center of this nebula excites the extremely low-density gases making up the nebulosity, causing doubly ionized oxygen atoms to emit blue light. This process is possible on Earth only under highly controlled conditions. Burnham\u2019s final words in these books are an invitation to reverie: \u201cThe observer who spends a few moments in quiet contemplation of this nebula will be made aware of direct contact with cosmic things; even the radiation reaching us from the celestial depths is of a type unknown on Earth\u2026” He adds a small poem that he credits to a female poet of the first century BC who was known as Avvaiyar<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have learnt
\nIs like a handful of earth;
\nWhat we have yet to learn
\nIs like the whole world\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u221e<\/p>\n

You can see more of my work at MaryHrovat.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Mary Hrovat Burnham\u2019s Celestial Handbook, by Robert Burnham, Jr., is a classic text. Its third and final volume was published in 1978. Written as a set of guidebooks for amateur astronomers, it\u2019s a product of its time and circumstances. The abundant illustrations are in black-and-white, and the pages may look very plain to anyone…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mondaymagazine","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309898"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310147,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309898\/revisions\/310147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":310102,"date":"2026-08-24T04:00:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T08:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=310102"},"modified":"2026-08-24T01:02:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T05:02:30","slug":"poem-by-jim-culleny-93","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/poem-by-jim-culleny-93.html","title":{"rendered":"Poem by Jim Culleny"},"content":{"rendered":"

Be Alert Among\u00a0Words<\/h2>\n

Be alert among words, they\u2019re shifty illusions
\nlike 2-d boxes of joined walls on a flat page,
\nstraight-forward and innocent as tots but,
\nthey can turn inside-out in a blink,
\nspontaneously, now, as you listen.<\/p>\n

Though once closed cells with steel wills
\nthey may transform in instants, shape-shift,
\nmorph like a high-speed chrysalis,
\nwhile you, gaslit, feel insane.<\/p>\n

(Be careful among words warned<\/em>
\nLao Tzu)<\/em><\/p>\n

or have you been, not\u00a0in<\/em>,
\nbut\u00a0out-of-sane<\/em>\u00a0all along,
\ndistant from sanity, disconnected,
\nas removed from the Big Bang
\nas the Milky Way,
\nas far from sane as
\nout can be from in, but
\nnow, by fate\u2019s twist,
\nafter a long life, despite
\ndigging your heels in,
\nnow, by fate\u2019s mercy, you are
\nnot\u00a0out-of<\/em>\u00a0sane<\/em> at all, but
\nfinally, in \u2014<\/em>yes,\u00a0into sane<\/em> \u2014all in,<\/p>\n

Into sanity without the lonesome lunacy of
\notherness that you once knew as<\/p>\n

Me.<\/p>\n

Jim Culleny<\/em>
\n4\/3\/19<\/em><\/p>\n

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Be Alert Among\u00a0Words Be alert among words, they\u2019re shifty illusions like 2-d boxes of joined walls on a flat page, straight-forward and innocent as tots but, they can turn inside-out in a blink, spontaneously, now, as you listen. Though once closed cells with steel wills they may transform in instants, shape-shift, morph like a high-speed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mondaymagazine","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310102"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310144,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310102\/revisions\/310144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":310010,"date":"2026-08-23T11:24:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T15:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=310010"},"modified":"2026-08-23T11:24:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T15:24:15","slug":"city-of-sweat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/city-of-sweat.html","title":{"rendered":"City of Sweat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aruna Chandrasekhar in Equator<\/em>:<\/p>\n

For anyone maintaining an extreme weather checklist, Mumbai\u2019s got it all. We have catastrophic urban flooding, with every monsoon bringing old and new horrors: landslides killing dozens, people wading miles in waist-deep water in the dark with only phone torches to guide them home. In winter, Mumbai now clocks bad air days to\u00a0rival Delhi\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 even though, unlike the capital, we have no farmers burning their crop stubble next door to conveniently blame. As oceans warm, intensifying Arabian Sea cyclones inch closer to the city.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the heat.<\/p>\n

To be clear: Mumbai was not on\u00a0the list<\/a>\u00a0of the world\u2019s hottest 50 cities in April \u2013 all of which, cataclysmically, lay in India. Mumbai\u2019s is not the kind of heat that lodges itself in the foreign correspondent\u2019s imagination, or recalls Kim Stanley Robinson\u2019s novel\u00a0The Ministry for the Future,\u00a0<\/em>in which more than 20 million people die in the furnace of a north Indian heatwave.<\/p>\n

But the Mumbai heat can be more insidious than the 40C+ weeks that have now been baked into the summers of the Indo-Gangetic plain. Daytime air temperatures are in the high 30s, while wet-bulb temperatures, which measure humidity as well as air temperature, hover around an oppressive 28C. (A WBT of 35C is considered the limit of human survival.) It\u2019s the humidity that gets you. In summer, Mumbai\u2019s air holds up to 90% of all the water it can possibly contain, leaving almost no room for sweat to evaporate \u2013 which in turn leads to rapid dehydration, exhaustion and fatal heatstrokes. On a 38C day in April 2023, 14 people died in an outdoor rally attended by India\u2019s home minister. What has come to be expected of millions upon millions of Mumbaikars, no matter how bad it gets, is resilience. But that resilience is coming up against hard limits of survivability.<\/p>\n

More here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aruna Chandrasekhar in Equator: For anyone maintaining an extreme weather checklist, Mumbai\u2019s got it all. We have catastrophic urban flooding, with every monsoon bringing old and new horrors: landslides killing dozens, people wading miles in waist-deep water in the dark with only phone torches to guide them home. In winter, Mumbai now clocks bad air…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310010"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310016,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310010\/revisions\/310016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":310007,"date":"2026-08-23T11:21:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T15:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=310007"},"modified":"2026-08-23T11:21:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T15:21:15","slug":"the-thesis-of-political-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/the-thesis-of-political-capitalism.html","title":{"rendered":"The Thesis of Political Capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dylan Riley in The Ideas Letter<\/em>:<\/p>\n

It is as if the open theft, the corruption, the orgiastic excesses of the elite were so brazen that it would seem superficial, non-scientific, pre-theoretical to take them seriously. Surely, this line of thinking says, the real action lies elsewhere, behind the Technicolored phantasmagoria of the political scene, with its low-life boobies and con-men. But it is precisely this\u2014the theoretical elucidation of the chaotic obscenity of our current moment\u2014that is most required. What follows is the roughest and most telescopic of attempts to do just that.<\/p>\n

There are, to begin with, three striking features of the post-2008 political economy: low growth rates, high levels of inequality, and a scrambled political landscape. A considerable proportion of workers\u2014especially those who lack educational credentials\u2014has shifted to the far right, while a corresponding share of the educated has shifted to the left. Any adequate critical social theory needs to begin from these basic realities. But how to explain them?<\/p>\n

There are two main responses. One is to suggest that the new, post-2008 period is what \u201cnormal\u201d capitalism looks like. The anomaly, from this perspective, was the high-growth, low-inequality period of the thirty glorious years. Now we\u2019re returning to a low-growth system\u2014which is how capitalism has operated for most of its history. So, as the work of Thomas Piketty has indicated, the new political economy is an old political economy: it\u2019s just that our vision has been distorted by the experience of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n

The second response is to ascribe these changes to technology\u2014particularly to the ability of the owners of technology companies to extract rents from their users.<\/p>\n

More here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dylan Riley in The Ideas Letter: It is as if the open theft, the corruption, the orgiastic excesses of the elite were so brazen that it would seem superficial, non-scientific, pre-theoretical to take them seriously. Surely, this line of thinking says, the real action lies elsewhere, behind the Technicolored phantasmagoria of the political scene, with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310007"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310009,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310007\/revisions\/310009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":310001,"date":"2026-08-23T11:18:01","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T15:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=310001"},"modified":"2026-08-23T11:18:01","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T15:18:01","slug":"laura-kipnis-reviews-against-affect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/laura-kipnis-reviews-against-affect.html","title":{"rendered":"Laura Kipnis reviews Against Affect"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laura Kipnis in Critical Inquiry<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Lisa Downing\u2019s program in her equable polemic\u00a0Against Affect<\/em>\u00a0is to rescue and redistribute reason, if not necessarily to the masses then to those in the academic humanities who made the affective turn in the mid-1990s and haven\u2019t found their way back.<\/p>\n

Focusing on emotions, the body, and experience, affect theory has become, Downing says, the dominant episteme of our time, which is not to the collective good. The distinction between feeling and reason is obviously long-standing; Downing believes they don\u2019t need to be opposed even if an enemies list of foundational thinkers from Plato on thought otherwise. Though she doesn\u2019t mention the Romantics, they\u2019d disagree too, but from the opposite corner.<\/p>\n

More recent anti-Enlightenment critics want reason demoted because its exclusions (women, the unpropertied) fatally colluded in structures of gendered and racial privilege. As reason\u2019s defender, Downing thinks this is a faulty analysis: nothing intrinsically connects forms of oppression like heteronormativity or colonialism with reason. It\u2019s the proponents of feeling who are the covert authoritarians.<\/p>\n

Besides which, if reason weren\u2019t better and more powerful, eighteenth-century patriarchs wouldn\u2019t have hogged it for themselves. Now the rest of us need to recuperate and democratize it, but a more mongrel version: a feminist Neo-Enlightenment. Women and people of color authored important Enlightenment projects, Dowing reminds us: these need to be reclaimed.<\/p>\n

More here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laura Kipnis in Critical Inquiry: Lisa Downing\u2019s program in her equable polemic\u00a0Against Affect\u00a0is to rescue and redistribute reason, if not necessarily to the masses then to those in the academic humanities who made the affective turn in the mid-1990s and haven\u2019t found their way back. Focusing on emotions, the body, and experience, affect theory has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310001"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310006,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310001\/revisions\/310006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309913,"date":"2026-08-23T09:35:59","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T13:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309913"},"modified":"2026-08-22T16:36:53","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T20:36:53","slug":"frank-beard-1949-2026-zz-top-drummer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/frank-beard-1949-2026-zz-top-drummer.html","title":{"rendered":"Frank Beard (1949 – 2026) ZZ Top Drummer"},"content":{"rendered":"