Travels with John Dobson

You've come here to see the pictures of JD and possibly yourself.  Hope you can find them.
The first few are of our stop in Buttonwillow Grammar School.
There, John saw beautiful mosaics done by the kids some 25 years ago.
Next is John telling the story to the Principal that the works should be preserved and deserve to be at the Met
We stopped at the Buttonwillow tree which is used as a gathering place for Native Americans.
On the way up Highway 38, we stopped for directions from some Park Volunteers on horseback.

The first photo you see of John at RTMC is with  Tom Mathews, one of the original Sidewalk Astronomers,
who was kind enough to find from a vendor at the conference, buy and give me a copy of the
August 1989  S & T  with his article on page 207  the column: Gleanings for ATM's,
THE DOBSONIAN SUN TELESCOPE
It's a classic.  Thanks Tom.
There's also a few pix of John signing a sun telescope with President of WAA Jack and his wife Judy, followed by
Doug Burger, another founder of SFSA and AANC 1980 award holder.
Michelle Stone of Plettstone gets a few pointers from John at lunch.
Sunrise and Moon set  Sunday morning.
Jack Eastman and  Valerie Goff clowning around with John.  Valerie's husband, the late Bob Goff was a master optician, and  was remembered by Valerie in her thank you presentation to Dean Ketelsen before his Robert Fulton Goff Invitational Lecture on Optics and Optical Design: "Big Glass: Making the Largest Mirrors in the World at Steward Observatory Mirror Lab"

Finally the ever lovely and hardworking Donna with and George and Bob rescue John from RTMC, and leave in a cloud of dust..

Of particular interest to telescope makers everywhere is from the Santa Rosa Girl Scout Troop 58,
in telescope building at RTMC is a  8" f/5 Dobsonian with homemade mirror can be viewed here.


BTW if you have jpgs (less than 150-175 kb please) of you or with your telescope that you've made,
and a few sentences of how you were influenced by John in telescope making,  or cosmology or life for that matter

please sent them to:
kennethfrank at planitarium dot net w/ JD Telescope  in the subject line.

These will be used as a keepsake for John and bound in a plywood book similar to his:
How and Why to make a User-Friendly Sidewalk Telescope.
and will be presented to him at his Birthday Celebration of which you are cordially invited.

Should you care to attend, please RSVP to: 
Donna Smith dsmith1055 at earthlink dot net with RSVP in the subject line, so we can get a
handle on how many of you will attend this historic occasion.

When:  Saturday, August 27th  all day, starting at 10 am
Where:  Randall Museum San Francisco
Why:  Because John is turning 90!  and we want to give thanks for all he's done.

Also, should you plan to attend as I have repeatedly told many of you, please bring your Dob... we'll have

VALLEY OF THE DOBS  

which will make for a great photo opp.

and

BIRTHDAY CAKE 

once again presented by King Sams

Thanks,

Kenneth