I am a professional night landscape photographer with over 50 years of experience. My portfolio has all the major Cascade peaks framed by comets, planets, constellations, and star clusters, which I have dubbed 'Cometscapes' or 'Stellarscapes'. I was represented by Freighthouse Art Gallery of Tacoma, Washington from 2000 to 2007. Here are some members with my spotlights in front of Tacoma's Museum of Glass.

www.flickr.com/photos/starmanmike/3609921774/in/album-721...

 

My images were used by the Washington State Arts Commission from 1996 to 2000 for their program, 'Art In Public Places'. I sold a total of six images, one for the 1996 to 1998 biennial and five, the limit, for the 1998 to 2000 biennial. Here is the link:

www.flickr.com/photos/starmanmike/albums/7205759408787809...

 

I search out back-road viewpoints that, to my knowledge, have not been professionally photographed except one, Mt. Beljica, southwest of Mt. Rainier just outside of the national park, by renowned professional photographer Art Wolfe. All of my locations are available to the public. Here is the link to a photo of Mt. Rainier from Mt. Beljica, featuring the Pleiades, a bright star cluster visible even in Seattle:

www.flickr.com/photos/starmanmike/7575042620/in/photolist...

Here is a link to a photo of the Pleiades at my property in Seattle:

www.flickr.com/photos/starmanmike/2968517068/in/album-721...

 

The best photographic journey I had was in August 2017, in Madras, Oregon. I went to observe a solar eclipse with my wife, Jean, and our dog, a female bull mastiff named Macy. We were joined by my sister Mary, who is an education specialist at Lane Community College, and her husband Dr. James Brau, a particle physicist at the University of Oregon, Eugene campus. During the meal I mentioned a science joke. I was reading a technical manual concerning integrated circuits (IC). Discussing the speed of IC's one of the IC's was label 'FAST', another of the IC's was 'FASTER', and the third IC's was 'DAMN FAST'. We all had a laugh. Then Jim had his own science joke. It concerns the recently discovered mu meson, also known as the 'God particle'. Jim was acquainted with the man who discovered the mu meson. Because the particle was so small and elusive, he proposed it be named the 'God damn particle', but he was promoting his new book and his publisher convinced him to change the name to the 'God particle'. We all laughed even harder!!! Here is the link:

www.flickr.com/photos/starmanmike/albums/72157662663547193

 

I also have used artificial light to spotlight mountains. In 2002, I noticed auto parts stores were offering large, 2-million-candlepower battery-operated spotlights for cheap, about $15 bucks. So, I bought two and went to conduct experiments. I went to Dry Falls State Park in Eastern Washington, near the Grand Coulee Dam. Using high-speed film, I could illuminate the landscape at least a mile away!!! I bought some more spotlights and recruited some volunteers. I conducted preliminary tests at Dale Chihuly's Museum of Glass in Tacoma with members of the Freighthouse Art Gallery, tests in Seattle near Seward Park with Esther Ervin, the arts coordinator of the Seattle Community College of Capital Hill, more tests on the middle fork of the Snoqualmie River with the help of my nephew, Joseph Ruth. Then I was ready to re-locate to the mountains. I planned an almost full-scale test, with 30 spotlights, on the south side of Mt. St. Helens. I got the photograph, but the mountain had clouds covering the top. So, my photo only showed the bottom portion of St. Helens. My son David helped with that project. He carted the spotlights in a Dodge Colt Vista van. On July 30, 2005, with the help of about 30 volunteers, the Northwest Light Brigade, I lit up Mt. Rainier from 5 miles away, illuminated by sixty 2-million-candlepower spotlights and one monster 15-million-candlepower spotlight, with four cameras - two Olympus OM-1 35mm SLR cameras with a 50 mm, f/1.4 lens and a 55mm, f/1.2 lens, and two Yashica Lynx 14E 35mm rangefinders with a 45 mm, f/1.4 fixed lens. I had the help of Thomas Powers, who provided 30 spotlights. The total cost of this art project was $1500 for the lights plus $500 for other expenses such as fixtures to hold the lights and FRS (Family Radio Service) walky-talkies for communications, as there was no cell-phone service on Mt. Rainier at the time. Other volunteers contributed gas to drive to Mt. Rainier, but the total cost of this art project was less than $5000 bucks, cheap by art project standards. KING-5 TV of Seattle broadcasted the lead segment on their local show, 'Evening Magazine', in October 2005. John Curly was the host of the show, and Jim Dever was the journalist, along with his two daughters. And Jim had a videographer along. Plus, I had two radio interviews to get more volunteers, one on KUOW-FM, an NPR station, and one on KIRO-FM. The NPR interview was by phone; the KIRO interview was at their station. Jim Dever is still at 'Evening Magazine' and John Curley is a host on the KIRO-FM broadcast, 'The Tom and John Show'. This story is the result of my sci-fi photo-journalism book, 'Mt. St. Helens: The REAL Story'. It is about the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens. The original is 33 pages in two chapters of 20"x16" black matte frames. The 8" x 12" photos have descriptions underneath with hand-printed silver script. I originally displayed the first chapter at the Kent City Hall. Later, I completed the second chapter and displayed the art at the Museum of the Mysteries on Capitol Hill in Seattle owned by Phillip Lipson and Charlette LeFevre. It was my first and only museum I have ever displayed my art. A copy of my book is on flickr. Here is the link:

www.flickr.com/photos/starmanmike/albums/7215761941134147...

 

My Family History: While the Williams line dates back King William of Britain, my mother's line includes royalty. In the mid-18th century, an ancestor named Burk fought against the Irish and won, so he became a baron and was awarded a land grant and castle in Ireland. He had three sons. The oldest son inherited the land and castle, so the younger sons became officers in the British Navy. They were sent to the American colonies to quell the rebellion but ended up joining the rebels. My mother was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. I remember my Grandpa Burk loved to have me sit on his lap, because I was his first-born grandson. He had a full head of white hair when he died in his 90's when I was 4 years old. Maybe I inherited his hair, because I have not lost a single strand yet. And at 73 years old I still have light brown hair with only a moderate amount of gray.

 

I was born in 1950 in Tacoma, WA, at a Burlington Northern Railroad hospital on the northern edge of McKinley Hill, about a mile northwest from our house. I didn't walk until I was 15 months of age, because I had two sisters, aged 4 and 2 years. From my highchair I could point to an item I wanted, and my sisters would fetch it for me. I was the 'Boss Baby', from the adult cartoon movie of the same name. One of my first memories was when I was barely two years old. My mother looked up from her kitchen window and saw me returning BACK on the sidewalk from my journey. She didn't notice that I was gone!!! Whenever she went shopping with me along, she kept me on a leash (I kid you not) so I wouldn't run off. I have adventure in my blood. Here is a link of me at 16 months old mowing the lawn:

www.flickr.com/photos/starmanmike/9719208426/in/album-721...

 

My father, Paul, was an auto mechanic (college-educated, no less, although from a religious college) from a small town in Iowa. His father, Joseph Williams, was a minister and an author of religious tracts. Since his salary as a minister was small, his sons ran a truck farm business, selling fruits and vegetables. My mother, Hazel, was an alterations seamstress from Tacoma, Washington, working for Nordstrom's and Sears. She was represented by a union, but it was the Garment Workers union, and the union concentrated on factory workers producing new garments, giving the alterations workers little attention. So, she filed papers to withdraw from the union and set up her own company union!!! She supervised about a half-dozen workers, and for the next contract, she got a pay increase larger than the Garment Workers union. She graduated from the same college as my father. My mother's father owned a small grocery store and a laundry business (he made big bucks when Navy ships arrived in town, and the sailors needed their clothes washed). He gave her a car when she graduated from high school and drove across the Mid-West for college. That is where my father met her. He told her he could take care of her car, and eventually he took care of her!!! My father also taught auto mechanics at Bates Vocational-Technical College in Tacoma, since he had a college degree. Here is the link to my dad's carburetor diploma:

www.flickr.com/photos/starmanmike/11179022976/in/album-72...

I have five siblings, four sisters and one brother. My father died in 1999. My mother passed away in 2004. My brother Brian passed away in 2011.

 

I am a hillbilly from the wrong side of the tracks (literally)!!! My mother's father hired a steam shovel and dug our property out of the side of a hill (hence the hillbilly). He dug down to hard pan, which has a lot of clay. That hard surface was ideal for building a house. The Bible says, 'Build your house not on sand, but on rock.' Landslides are a great risk, especially when we get a lot of rain, as happened when the Oso, Washington, landslide disaster occurred on March 22, 2014. We had one neighbor across the street and two neighbors on the hill above us, so we were pretty isolated. A railroad, the Burlington Northern, ran through the gulch on the western side of our property. The Caucasian neighborhoods are west of the railroad; the African-American and Native-American neighborhood are to the east (hence 'the wrong side of the tracks'). Nevertheless, my family and friends played in that gulch. We reach the gulch through a narrow animal trail in the back of our property climbing over tree roots. The trail went over the top of a grotto and then down to a clearing, where someone had set up a rope swing. Down at the bottom of the clearing, next to the railroad tracks, was a small stream. My sisters used to collect watercress for salads. Farther down the stream was a small swamp. My friends and I spent many hours in that stream and swamp. My cousin Scott Williams was the younger brother to Dave Williams. Dave played football for the University of Washington. After he graduated, he rookied by joining the St. Louis football team as a half-back. Dave went on to become one of the founding members of the Seattle Seahawks when they started up in 1976. One time, when Scotty and my friends and relatives were on the shores of the swamp, Scotty climbed into the swamp through box crates fallen from railroad boxcars. He was relishing his success when I suddenly called out to him, 'Scotty, you're falling'!!! And then, of course, he fell into the swamp. We laughed and ran up the gulch because we knew he would be hot in pursuit. Sometimes, when my brother Brian and I were in a hurry, we went down to the gulch directly by leaping over the rocks and boulders downhill from my house that were debris from my grandfather's steam shoveling. It was like skiing, but instead of snow it was rocks. I made sure my mom didn't see what we were doing, otherwise we'd get a good spanking!!! My mother perhaps was worried about the rocks undermining the property. We also owned a rental house near the grade school. My dad would make any repairs to the house, and my brother Brian and I mowed the lawn. I was introduced to what I call 'inter-active television' at the age of five years. My favorite TV cartoon show was 'Popeye the Sailor Man', hosted by Brakeman Bill (my first job interest was to be a railroad brakeman.) It was in April, the month of my birthday. During the break, Brakeman Bill would read letters from fans of the show. One Saturday, he read a letter which said, "Mike, there is a birthday surprise in the dryer." I rushed to the dryer and found a big can of spinach!!! It is cartoons like this that made kids willing to eat vegetables.

 

My grade school was Hawthorne Elementary. My mother, Hazel, was the president of the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA), and my father, Paul, purchased a movie camera with antler-ears spotlights, and filmed a number of school events such a Mayday dance. I must admit to being a 7-year-old juvenile delinquent. My favorite teacher, Mrs. Weeks, taught 2nd grade, but she was out of school that morning, so the principal, Mrs. Holgerson, send in a substitute, a girl from her 6th grade class, because she was not only a principal but also taught 5th and 6th grade. When the girl arrived, I ran up to her and bit her on her finger!!! She promptly complained to Mrs. Holgerson, and I was called to the 6th grade class to apologize to the girl, which I did. My embarrassment was that my older sisters were in that class!!! Instant justice!!! Later in my elementary years, I and my two neighborhood friends, Keith Ripley and Donald Campbell, built a lean-to out of cardboard in a corner of the concrete stairwell leading to the two houses above my house. We sat in it to smoke a cigarette one of us had found, something like a peace pipe (Donald had a father with Scottish ancestry but his mother was Native-American. They had an inter-racial marriage in the 1950's, which was rare). Someone ratted us out, because the next thing I know, the fire department was on the scene!!! My status as a juvenile delinquent hillbilly AND a firebug was now confirmed. Donny was perhaps my first neighborhood friend; I met him when I was three or four years old. We would play 'Cowboys and Indians' with real costumes and an actual Indian!!! Here is the link of me as a cowboy:

www.flickr.com/photos/starmanmike/9938079326/in/album-721...

(I later learned when I was attending higher education that Donny bought the farm in Vietnam.)

 

I wasn't always a bad boy. I had three African-American friends from school, Tom Brown, Willy Jones, and Levi Mack. A few times a week, we would gather at someone's house and do homework.

 

In 1960 the government 'improved' our neighborhood by destroying it. Hawthorne School was torn down in 1961 for the construction of Interstate 5, as was my first home. So, my original home is now many feet above I-5, next to the downtown Tacoma exit.

 

My family bought another house a few miles south of the original home, in the McKinley Hill neighborhood. Here is the link to my house, 3614 East G Street.

www.flickr.com/photos/starmanmike/11933941115/in/album-72...

Here is the car my dad provided me when I started work at the Tacoma Public Library, Main Branch:

www.flickr.com/photos/starmanmike/11178994505/in/album-72...

I attended Gault Junior High School, for which I earned my journalism credits (I was a contributing editor for the 'Gault Gazette'). The journalism teacher was Mrs. Jeanne Baird. Whenever she needed an editorial quickly, she would give me a subject and I would complete the editorial in an hour. Mrs. Baird had a daughter, Genevieve, who was also a contributing editor. William Eng was the third contributing editor. Together, we were the 'Power Trio'!!! The three of us were together through high school. One of the students, Brad Owen, later became the Lieutenant Governor of Washington. He had a rock band about 'Say No To Drugs'.

 

During that time, my brother and I set up the basement for a chemistry lab, but we also experimented with weapons, blowguns in particular. Brian went for heavy darts. He would take the largest and longest nail and wrap a paper cone around it. That dart could kill a small animal or bird!!! I preferred light and faster darts made out of wooden matchsticks. I would cut off the phosphorus head and put a needle in the matchstick and a paper cone. I should have left the phosphorus head on. Then I would have a flaming dart!!! And why make a weapon if you don't intend to use it? So, I went hunting and found a small bird, a robin. I shot in the neck but didn't kill it. The robin hopped around the yard for a few days with my dart still in its neck. I was afraid that my mother would spot the bird, but fortunately she didn't. My father noticed that we were making blowguns, so he bought a toy dart pistol. I looked at that toy, and from the look on my face, my father realized I wasn't impressed. I will never forget the crest-fallen look on his face. I also made a crude rocket. I took a cardboard tube from a toilet paper roll, made a nozzle with clay, and filled it with potassium nitrate and sugar. Then I put the rocket on a string across the backyard and ignited it. And it worked!!! I like the mixture because it is cheap and safe to eat, though it doesn't taste very good.

 

I attended Lincoln High School and joined both the Advanced Placement and High Achievement programs. I was also a chemistry lab assistant. The neat thing about being a chem lab assistant was that I could 'borrow' small amounts of chemicals to use for experiments in my basement laboratory. I was especially interested in incendiary chemicals such as potassium nitrate and potassium per-chlorate, and gunpowder ingredients, charcoal and sulfur. Once I tried to manufacture 'super gunpowder' (potassium per-chlorate, sulfur, and charcoal). I mixed them in water and left the mixture to dry on top of the furnace. Later that night I smelled smoke. I ran downstairs to discover that my mixture had caught fire!!! The Almighty One spared me, as the furnace had no combustible items nearby. Just a helluva smoke!!! It was my first, and last, experience with spontaneous combustion. I had an experience with telepathy while I was at Lincoln. One evening I was sitting at a desk doing homework and dozing off, when I suddenly awakened and thought, "What if Nick (my best friend, Nikolai Kristensen) had a motorcycle collision?" Well, he did have a motorcycle collision within a half-hour of my thought!!! It was either telepathy, telekinetics, or pre-cognition. Nick's mother, Lubov, came from the Ukraine. She left the Ukraine when the WWII German army retreated from the Soviet Union because she hated the communists. I graduated from Lincoln with a GPA of 3.57. I would have had a higher GPA, as I was doing very well in math (a Greek philosopher, I think Pythagoras, once said 'The music of the spheres is mathematics), science, and English where I scored A's, but I couldn't care less about history, so I scored a B in History. During the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) I scored 800, the highest, on math and 740 on English. The average was 500. I was a marching band participant in both Gault and Lincoln, so my favorite musical is 'The Music Man', starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones. My favorite video is 'Tusk' by Fleetwood Mac with the USC marching band. Hearing 'Tusk' makes my blood boil and feel like dancing!!!

 

I got a part-time job at 15 years old at the Tacoma Public Library (my older sisters who also worked at the library in the branch near our house recommended me). This is the only government job I have ever had!!! I was a page in the Business, Science, and Technology division. My assignment was sorting the books and placing them in the right spot on the shelves. In the basement of the library was older books and magazines (which I bound the magazines 6 months to a year into a book). I also was available when a customer wanted older books and bound magazines, then I would bring them to the customer. Pagers from the Humanities division also were in the basement. I noticed one girl pager that I thought was very cute. She was Melissa Patillo, and she was from Stadium High School, the oldest high school in Tacoma. Melissa's father was Italian, and her mother was French. She had the best of both worlds. She was almost as tall as I am, had brunette wavy hair and a swimmer's build because she worked on the swim team. Stadium was located on a hill looking at Puget Sound, and it has an actual stadium!!! Also, the high school building looked like a castle and the location has been used in movies, one of which is 'Kindergarten Cops', starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Melissa noticed that I was gazing at her and in November invited me to a Sadie Hawkins Dance, where the girls asked guys to be their dancing partners. After that, we became steady partners and dated all through high school using my dad's car, a 1948 Chrysler DeSoto. (The DeSoto had an unusual transmission that was both a manual and automatic. It had four manual speeds. To use the automatic transmission, it started in third gear and when you lifted your foot from the throttle, a centrifugal clutch would shift to fourth gear.) My classmates at Lincoln High were envious because I had a girlfriend from a different school and I couldn't stand gossip. Melissa lived next door to a branch of the Haley family of the Brown & Haley Company, which made Almond Roca. We attended events at their vacation home near Puget Sound. We broke up when I went to California for higher education and Melissa went to the University of Washington.

 

I took an airplane to Pasadena, CA, to become a student at an institute. It was named Throop Polytechnical Institute, but after the institute brought in science superstars like Albert Einstein in the 1930's, it changed its name to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech for short). I never attended a college or university, except for Pasadena City College. Caltech had an agreement for PCC to allow Caltech students to study humanities courses. It was a good chance to meet college girls, since at the time Caltech had only male students. Attending an institute had the advantage of a low student to teacher ratio. Famous scientists who were professors were Albert Einstein, Fred Hoyle (an astronomer who developed the 'Big Bang Theory'), and Richard Feynman. Feynman wrote a textbook called 'Lectures In Physics' and lectured our freshman class about his work. He is famous for his investigation into the 1986 space shuttle disaster. The launch pad was in Florida, and that morning it was near freezing. Dr. Feinman took out a frozen orange and smashed it to pieces using a hammer!!! It turns out that the rubber seals insulating the main stage had hardened and developed a leak, which blew up the shuttle.

 

While attending Caltech a fellow Dabney House guy was a member of the Caltech Flying Club. He knew I had a German 35mm camera, a Contax III-a rangefinder with a 50mm, f/1.5 interchangeable lens and knew how to use it, so I loaded it up with Kodak Royal-X 1000 ISO black/white negative film, and he invited me to fly along with him on a night flight around the LA basin. Here is one of the photos of Hollywood and Vine:

www.flickr.com/photos/starmanmike/11994009166/in/album-72...

 

After my freshman year I returned to Tacoma and got a summer job as a pipefitter's assistant working on Navy destroyers at Todd Shipyards of Harbor Island, Seattle, thanks to my sponsor, Lockheed Industries.

 

After my sophomore year I stayed in Pasadena and acquired a summer job at LaMont-Doherty Seismological Laboratory as an assistant calculating the Richter Scale of an earthquake. I bought a motorcycle, a Honda 90cc from a friend since the laboratory was on the edge of the Arroyo Seco Canyon across from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, too far away for a city bus. Here is a link to the Arroyo Seco Canyon near JPL:

www.flickr.com/photos/starmanmike/11991065434/in/album-72...

 

Later in the 1970's my wife Jean's sister, Elinor Tafoya, worked as an intern at JPL. It was about that time that Elinor conceived a baby boy which she named Edward Furlong, after Jean's father, Robert Furlong. Edward was 'discovered' by scouts for an upcoming movie called "Terminator 2" starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton. In summer of 1991 Eddy came to Seattle to film "American Heart", starring Jeff Bridges. So, I took Paul and David, my sons, to Garfield High School. Eddy introduced me to Jeff, who introduced his wife and two teen-aged daughters. Jeff had to go get ready for another shoot, so he told all of us (me, my two sons, and Sean Furlong, Eddy's older brother and chaperone) to chow down on a lunch buffet, which we hungrily did because I neglected to bring any lunch!!! I had a camera along and made a number of photos of Eddy's trailer and that night when Eddy invited us as a family to visit Boppa de Beco at 1st and Broad St., next to the waterfront. Here are some links to that day:

www.flickr.com/photos/starmanmike/11560852153/

www.flickr.com/photos/starmanmike/11560875713/

 

One time a dance troupe, the 'Perfumes of Araby' by Dianne Weber performed outside at the Winnett Student Center. The staff photographer had another assignment, so when the troupe was done, he approached me and asked if he could develop my film, which was Tri-X ISO 400. And I was as close as 3 feet from the performers!!! Later it was published in the student newspaper. Here is their link:

 

Later in the summer I hopped on my motorcycle and rode to the 'Renaissance Pleasure Faire' in Agoura, CA to photograph the 'Perfumes of Araby' in living color!!! Here is the link:

www.flickr.com/photos/starmanmike/11976301624/in/album-72...

 

The autumn of 1972 I gave up my job as Head Usher for Beckman Auditorium because I was no longer at student at Caltech. After a few months of idleness, I met Phil Drake, who was ahead of me at Caltech. He was into gold mining using old jewelry, but he had a vending machine business at UCLA. Phil had a partner, David Appelbaum, who was a pinball wizard (seriously)!!! So, I filled the vending machines and cleaned the pinball machines with car wax. Later I learned how to replace the rubber rings to send the ball bouncing around the pinball machines.

 

In 1976 I had re-built the 2-cylinder engine of my Honda 160cc a few years earlier, but it was showing signs of another re-build. So I saved up $1200 and searched for a car. I found a Mazda RX-2 with a 1150cc, 2-chamber rotary (Wankel) engine. Each chamber equals three cylinders, and due to the Wankel engines' power was equivalent to a 2.3 liter 6-cylinder piston engine, the car had a powerful output. It didn't hurt that it had a 4-barrel carburetor almost the size of the rest of the engine and a redline of 7,000 RPM's. And, the fuel pump was inside the gas tank where the Almighty One intended to be. Most cars, even hot rods, had the fuel pump in the engine compartment. My pump had a 40 psi capacity and would literally pour gasoline in the carburetor. I used to say that under 2000 rpm's my car performs like a 4-cylinder, from 2000 to 4000 rpm's like a 6-cylinder, and over 4000 rpm's it was a V-8!!! That made my Mazda a true hot rod and muscle car!!! The redline was merely a suggestion since the engine had only 7 moving parts and would happily accelerate past the redline until the engine flew apart!!! I raced many a hot rod, including a Corvette and an AMC Javelin 350 cubic inch engine, and frequently won!!!

 

In 1977 I met my future bride, Jean Marie Furlong, on a trip to the beach. Using my car, I, Jean, and two of her friends rode to Dockweiler Beach by way of the Hollywood Hills and Griffith Mountain, going past I-405 west to the Pacific Ocean. We had a lot of fun, but every few minutes a jet airliner would take off from the LA International Airport. After that Jean and I started dating and by Christmas 1977 we were engaged. We married on August 19, 1978 at St. Phillips Catholic Church. When the reception was done, my Mazda was facing south, but I needed to go north. There were four traffic lights between the church and the freeway, and I had timed all of the lights. So, when the time to go arrived I floored the throttle, did a U-turn, and sped up Hill Avenue like a bat out of hell!!! The Wankel engine had a high-pitched screaming sound, so it even sounded like a bat out of hell. Only my brother Brian could keep up with me in his Volkswagen Rabbit. Jean and I continued to Santa Barbara and checked into a Motel 6 for the night. In the morning we headed to Tacoma, WA, to visit my parents, Paul and Hazel Williams.

 

My close friend, Shanti, I met when she was 18 years old and was playing soccer at a sports field across from my property. She was born in Myanmar in 1997 and became an orphan when she was 8 years old when her parents died. Shanti rented a basement room for about a year and then rented a studio nearby. But she maintained contact with us, even delivering food from a food bank until I convinced her that we weren't starving. She continued contact, coming by a few times a week for parties in my garage, which I converted into an art gallery, "The Milky Way Galaxy Gallery". The 'Milky Way' is short for the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

 

My Astronomy Gallery is almost open. My house mates, Arturo & Tomas Valdivia, are professional painters & did a great job on the gallery. The ceiling is midnight blue, the walls are lighter blue fading to white. I am reminded of the 'Clouds Gallery', a business in Pasadena, CA.