Michael Chriss, Astronomer and Storyteller, Academy Village Resident
Wednesday, June 1, 2022,
2:30-3:30 pm,
ASA Great Room and Zoom Webinar
Note: Because of a technical failure in the first scheduling of Michael Chriss’s reading, on April 4 of this year, it couldn’t be Zoomed at the time. Consequently, quite a few who had hoped to avoid gathering live were unable to hear the performance. ASA has rescheduled the reading, with some of the original and some new material, for live and Zoom June 1.
In this delightful and poignant collection of memories, AV resident and popular ASA lecturer Michael Chriss looks back through eighty-six years of an interesting and thoughtful life. The contents range from more-or-less connected reminiscences of his schooldays in Brooklyn and his family history to short-story-like chapters from various “moments” of his life journey, some funny, some deeply serious. As we might expect from an avid traveler, Michael’s tales are often of adventures abroad; but several are also very close to home, as—for example—his story of finding and buying his wife an emerald.
Michael Chriss was Professor of Astronomy and Humanities at the College of San Mateo, (CA) and its Planetarium Director. Educated at the Universities of Arizona, California at Berkeley, Stanford, and Oxford, he studied not only astronomy but the history of art and science, preparing himself to teach interdisciplinary humanities classes. Some of his previous lectures at ASA include “Hollywood and the Stars” (the ones in the sky); “New Horizons and the Voyage of Columbus”; mapmaking and “The Mutiny on the Bounty”; and a talk about the history and phenomenology of time and time-keeping, “How Fast Are You Going When You Are Standing Still?”
Written by Suzanne Ferguson, Academy Village Volunteer
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PASSWORD: 85747