Looking up

I had a great time at Friday's Astral Harp presentation by Kevin and Janet Witman at Kennett Friends Meeting. Kevin showed stunning photographs of the planets and stars (some taken by him, some by the Hubble Space Telescope) and told us some mind-boggling facts about the age and size of our galaxy, while his wife Janet performed wonderful music on her harp (including "Twinkle Twinkle," "Stairway to Heaven," "Moon River," "Ain't No Sunshine," and Gustav Holst's "Jupiter").
Kevin, a workout buddy of mine from the Jennersville YMCA (seeing him in a necktie was a novelty!), is an enthusiastic and knowledgeable speaker who lectures at Franklin & Marshall's planetarium, and Janet is a professional harp player and teacher and director of the Brandywine Harp Orchestra. They live in Cochranville.
Kevin showed close-ups of the moon's surface and compared its potholed surface to a Pennsylvania road in the spring. And during the section of the lecture on the sun, a stinkbug crawled up the screen and seemed to be walking on the surface of the sun, right near a sunspot. Kevin was able to shoo him away.
The program ended on a more terrestrial note, with some vacation photos of Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, where the couple went so Kevin could photograph an annular solar eclipse; the Grand Canyon; and Scotland, where Janet was attending a harp conference and Kevin went along as "harp-schlepper."

At one point Janet said the purpose of their program was to "entertain and calm nerves," and it certainly did both. The harp music was remarkably soothing, as was the candlelit setting. I feel like I would be able to recognize Kevin's profile anywhere now, as he was silhouetted against the screen for much of the program.

The meetinghouse was standing-room-only, including a busload (literally) of people from Jenners Pond, including former Kennett residents Dick and Janice Taylor. I also saw in the audience my friends Babette Jenny (whose harpist daughter, Gillian Grassie, studied with Janet) and Karen Statz.
This was one of the most memorable and best-attended Hadley Fund programs I've ever been to.