November is a big month for Whitley and me. We were married 30 years ago on November 28 and our son was born on November 30, eight years later. And then, of course, there’s Thanksgiving.

I remember our wedding well. We were recent immigrants to New York, so poor that the super in our building took pity on us and loaned us some furniture. Despite our monetary situation, Whitley was determined to be married in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

We didn’t live in the right parish, so we had to wade through a lot of red tape (and there’s no bureaucracy like the Vatican), but we managed to do it. They didn’t let us use the main cathedral, but we did get access to the small Lady Chapel behind it.
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On October 13, 2000 at approximately 7:30 PM a group of lights streaked across the Midwest, appearing first over northwest Texas, and ultimately being sighted from Oklahoma to Nebraska and as far east as Illinois.

On October 18, NASA issued a statement that the objects were the remains of a Russian Proton rocket that had been fired earlier that day had re-entered the atmosphere and broken up. In an unexpected development, US Space Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command both said that no such object had entered the atmosphere at that time.

Then, on October 29, NASA announced that the remains of the rocket had been found on a farm near LaCrosse, Kansas. This appeared to close the case, as Whitleysworld reported on October 30.
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The Leonids are coming, and it’s a pretty decent meteor storm! Sky watchers in North America may be able to spot an unusually beautiful type of meteor called Earthgrazers during this year’s Leonid shower.Earthgrazers are long, bright shooting stars that streak overhead from just below the horizon. They often display colorful halos and long-lasting trails. Earthgrazers are so distinctive because they follow a path nearly parallel to our atmosphere.

Observers in the Canaries counted upwards of 90 meteors an hour earlier tonight, and Canadians are seeing as many as 230 an hour. This is nothing like the 10,000 an hour the Leonids are expected to bring in 2001 and 2002, but it still makes for a wonderful display. Click here to learn more.
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Two weak candidates, a hung election. Who could have expected otherwise? Not only that, they begin making spectacles of themselves almost immediately. First, Al Gore, foolishly relying on television news as his source, concedes. Then, a few minutes later, he retracts his concession. Does George Bush react in a statesmanlike manner? Perhaps, if it’s statesmanlike to be snippy.

Then there follows the grotesque, contradictory and foolish battle of the ballots in Florida, as each candidate frantically seeks to get the roulette wheel to stop on his color. The actual truth is that balloting this close has a random outcome. So the electorate hasn’t spoken at all. The roulette wheel has spoken.
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