Not a Teacher

On the list of the many jobs I'm incapable of doing, right after "Opera Singer" comes "Teacher." I'm an awful teacher - - I can't figure out how to assemble tests, I wander far from whatever syllabus is planned for the day, and I am miserable at grading papers.

If I were a teacher, though, I'd want to teach the geography of the Moon. Wait - let's not use "geography" as the proper word, because "geo" means "Earth." So, what I'd like to teach is the *MAP* of the Moon. Back in the dinosaur days when kids my age were studying everything they could about Project Apollo, Moon maps were everywhere: on the backs of cereal boxes, on placemats at Howard Johnson's Restaurants, in schoolbooks, and on TV. Everyone with a lick of interest in current events knew where the big craters were, and where Apollo XI landed.

All that's gone now. I was on the front lawn of my house last night, taking pictures of the Moon through my new Celestron telescope, and it struck me that I may be the only person for miles around who could name locations on the Moon. That thought made me really sad.

So, I've decided that I'm going to write three blog posts about the basics of the Moon: why it has phases, what the principal features are that we can see from Earth, and where and why the astronauts landed where they did.

I don't know if project will be interesting or not for my readers, but I feel like I must write about the topic to appease the part of me that wishes I could be a teacher.

Stay tuned.