Journal 7 by Bekah

The book Callings by Dave Isay is a book filled with stories about people following their dreams. Each part inspires the reader and fills the book with a different essence with each story. The story that caught my attention the most, and the one I’m focusing on, is Herman Heyn and his job as a street-corner astronomer, and how he’d overcome obstacles and followed his dreams.

Herman Heyn grew up with learning disabilities. He had/has trouble with memorization, spelling, and was/is relatively disorganized. When Herman was in eighth grade, his science teacher named Miss Wicker, encouraged her class to look for the constellation Big Dipper after drawing it on the board. Herman, who was intrigued by the drawing, went out to find it that night. After that, he was hooked on the stars’ beauty and complexity. Herman says about his love for stars, “Astronomy—it’s just me. Some people like trees, some people like birds. For me, it was always stars" (Isay 18).

The Big Dipper consultation (the constellation that contributed to Herman Heyn's love of astronomy). 

I believe that a big influence in Herman's life was his science teacher Miss Wicker. Herman even gives Miss Wicker credit when asked about how his love for astronomy blossomed. He wasn't sure whether she was even dead or alive until one day she contacted him and he visited her in the nursing home she resided in (Isay 20).

My research question was: how many constellations are in the sky at one time and what was the first constellation discovered? I found that astronomers officially recognize 88 constellations. The first constellation discovered was the "camel-leopard" or Camelopardalis, which in Latin translates to giraffe.