Ad Astra

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:

AD ASTRA

John J. Ingalls gave us the best motto a state could ask for: Ad astra per aspera.

And if you’re not into Latin: To the stars through difficulties.

Yeah, yeah, difficulties, we’ve had them before and are up to our budgets in difficulties now, but I really like that “to the stars” part of the motto.

Ad astra stretches our thoughts, even our eyes, sends them both into the atmosphere. And that big old sky of ours, bursting with blue in the daytime, full of glittering stars at night, gives us endless space on which to scatter our dreams.

That’s the good part, ad astra.

The other part of the phrase is per aspera. This is the line that builds character, makes us work hard, keeps us humble.

Our motto-writer, Ingalls, lived through some of those difficult pre-state years. He arrived in the Kansas Territory in 1858, worked as a lawyer in Atchison and was a member of the Wyandotte Constitutional Convention. Ingalls became a state senator in 1862 and later served Kansas as a U.S. Senator for 18 years. A likeness of Ingalls stands in National Statuary Hall in Washington D.C.

As the motto suggests, it was a tough road getting Kansas admitted to the Union. And there have been many per aspera years since, including, but not limited to: 1863, Quantrill’s raid on Lawrence; 1874, grasshopper plague; 1918, influenza pandemic; 1935, dust storms; 1951, flood; 1966, Topeka tornado; 2007, Greensburg tornado.

Our sesquicentennial year, 2011, meant to be a year of celebration, will also be a year of additional devastating budget cuts. So we can expect a few discouraging words to be heard this year.

Perhaps it’s our open and unburdened topography that saves us from utter despair when crises hit. Our close connection to the land keeps us grounded. And with two-thirds of our view as sky, we can’t help but look up, gaze into to the blue background, the passing clouds, and at night, the stars.

Clyde Tombaugh looked up. He moved to Burdett with his family when he was 16. He ground his own mirrors and built a telescope in his quest to study the stars and planets. After drawing detailed sketches of Jupiter and Mars, he contacted Lowell Observatory in Arizona. They were impressed with Tombaugh and offered him a job. And the rest is history. (Including Pluto.)

Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930. And, for decades, we celebrated that planet as one of our own. Unfortunately, Pluto was down-sized to a dwarf planet in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union.

During her childhood years in Atchison, Amelia Earhart surely spent time looking at the sky and dreaming.

In 1937, she and navigator Fred Noonan set out to circle the globe in a Lockheed Electra and never came down to earth, as far as we know. Current DNA testing of bones found on a deserted South Pacific island may prove otherwise.

Many other residents have sent their energies upward including Wichitans Walter and Olive Ann Beech, Clyde Cessna, Bill Lear, and others who have tested their locally-built planes in the airspace over Kansas.

To help keep our vision aimed toward the heavens, the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson tells the story of space exploration.

And our “to the stars” motto became art. A Kansa warrior, “Ad Astra,” created in bronze by Salina artist Richard Bergen, now stands atop the Kansas Capitol building.

In 2002, after the dome’s cupola was reinforced to handle the statue’s 4,420 pounds, a crane raised the 22-foot 2-inch “Ad Astra” to its place of honor.

The Kansa warrior holds a powerful stance on the copper dome, bow in full draw, his arrow pointed toward the North Star.

At times, the state of the world and the state of the state can seem uncertain, but the celestial bodies remain steady. And in case we need reassurance, “Ad Astra” stands ready to show us the way to the stars.

Copyright 2011 ~ Cheryl Unruh