For Global Astronomy Month 2020 (212): Inertia of Inertia (58)

By Andrei Dorian Gheorghe (text and photos) and Florin Alexandru Stancu (design)

Published: Friday, August 21 2020 18:12

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REQUIEM FOR “TANTI SILA”
Astro-photo-poem (cosmopoem) by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe

On June 29,
after I photographed the star Vega in a park,
my niece Luminita (Little Light)
informed me by phone from Braila
about the death of “Tanti Sila”
(my adoptive mother and the main human support
for my astro-humanistic activities in the 2010s)
and forbade me to risk going to the funerals.

In these conditions,
knowing that “Tanti Sila” was a firm believer,
on July 11
I went to the oldest church in Bucharest,
Saint Antony the Great
(made in the 1540s by the ruler
Mircea Ciobanul the Shepherd) -
where the Wallachian-Romanian
“domnitors” and “voievodes” were usually crowned
(good or bad, they kept the border of
European Christianity on the Lower Danube
for several centuries) -
to dedicate a photo-series to her memory
(those who had or have a “Tanti Sila”
can understand me).

Just because for me
“Tanti Sila” was a small, but firm beam
from the Sun’s crown.