After the Miracle on the Hudson is over, its hero comes under fire In Theaters - Get Showtimes | A woman finds a disturbing secret in her family's new country home When the Bough Breaks A couple is ensnared in the obsession of their unstable surrogate A couple raise a baby found in a boat, but later meet its real mother The Birth of a Nation Katie Walsh, Chicago Tribune The sight of a passenger plane along the skyline of New York is an image that has been seared in the global collectiv... It wouldn't be fair to compare father and son, but Ridley Scott's progeny, Luke Scott, takes on some similar themes t... With "Blue Valentine" and "The Place Beyond the Pines," filmmaker Derek Cianfrance has proved tha...One of the most phe­nom­e­nal moments of my life took place five sum­mers ago dur­ing a vaca­tion in Michi­ana Shores, Indi­ana.  Tra­di­tion­ally my hus­band and I pack up our two kids and catch a plane for the Pacific North­west to immerse our­selves in spec­tac­u­lar moun­tain views, ferry rides to dis­tant islands and gas­tro­nomic seafood delights.

But this sum­mer the bud­get was much tighter, so we set­tled for a last-minute beach­front house rental on Lake Michi­gan for one week in mid-August. In order to make this closer-to-home trip more spe­cial we invited our adult niece and her hus­band to join us, and told our kids they could bring along some friends. All told, our house party con­sisted of four adults, three teenagers and two ‘tweens—a fun group. As might be expected, the group’s delight with the same strip of sand and water waned after a cou­ple of days. Small, pre­dictable annoy­ances arose:  one fair-skinned teen passed up the tube of SPF 50 sun­block one day and got pink. Another com­plained that his bed­room was too hot at night and that the fan didn’t help. The tweens had a spat over who was sup­posed to put the lid back on the hot tub. On day four we climbed into a cou­ple of cars and drove to an out­door water park. On the morn­ing of day five I went into a small nearby town for more gro­ceries.

Next to the Food­liner was a dol­lar store. I con­cocted the idea buy­ing some cheap sum­mer toys and dol­ing them out as prizes for as yet unspec­i­fied activ­i­ties through­out the next cou­ple of days. So I pur­chased a cou­ple of cheap blow-up rafts, plas­tic glasses with eye­balls attached to springs, choco­late candy coins and a whoopy cush­ion, chuck­ling occa­sion­ally over the imag­ined fun my prizes would cre­ate on the drive back to the house. That evening we made din­ner and watched a movie on the TV in the small liv­ing room. When it was over, night had fallen but it was still too early to go to sleep. Every­one was bored but no one had any good sug­ges­tions for what to do. Finally, my hus­band, who loves all things celes­tial, said, ”Let’s all go out to the beach and look at the stars.” This idea was met with what can best be described as tepid enthu­si­asm. How­ever, no other ideas were pro­posed, so out the back door we all went, trudg­ing sin­gle file along the short weedy path that opened out onto the sands of Lake Michigan.

After a few min­utes of strain­ing neck mus­cles, some­one decided star-gazing would be more com­fort­able and effec­tive while con­ducted in a prone posi­tion and pro­ceeded to stretch out on the beach face-up. The rest of us promptly con­curred with the bril­liance of this idea and flopped down on the sand until we had formed a sin­gle orderly row of nine bod­ies of var­i­ous sizes and shapes lying almost shoul­der to shoul­der, star­ing alertly up into the clear, star-spangled night.Windows 7 Pl Aktywowany Against a silken black sky the stars reminded us of our child­hood astron­omy lessons. 3m Wide Vinyl FlooringOne of the teens pointed out the Big Dip­per. French Spaniel Puppies For Sale UkMy response was, “OK, so where is the Lit­tle Dip­per,” because I can never find it.

My hus­band located the row of stars that sig­nify Orion’s Belt because that is what he always looks for in the night sky. Then one of the ‘tweens said, “ I want to see a shoot­ing star!” I rec­og­nized this as an oppor­tu­nity to intro­duce my dol­lar store game idea. The first one to see a shoot­ing star wins a prize!”  I could feel the group’s level of con­cen­tra­tion pal­pa­bly increase. After a moment my niece exclaimed, “Look, I see a satel­lite!” “Over there by that really bright star, and just to the right of it.” “Yes, I see it, too—awesome!” Over the course of the next five min­utes, more satel­lites were spot­ted. Abruptly, a cou­ple of us shouted out, “I see a shoot­ing star!” Oth­ers said, “Awe, I missed it,” and focused on other sec­tions of the sky to servile. It became very quiet, and I remem­ber my inner eye look­ing down at all of us lying in our orderly row in the cool sand, and smil­ing at the one­ness of this casual group of celes­tial seekers.

What hap­pened next was truly stu­pen­dous and com­pletely unex­pected. An object I can only describe as a gigan­tic fire­ball sud­denly appeared in the sky to our left. It was a huge flam­ing boul­der with a long fiery tale and it was so close that it felt only a fly-ball-to-the-outfield out of reach. You could see its dented sur­face beneath the yellow-orange flames. It looked mag­nif­i­cently beau­ti­ful and dan­ger­ous. It invoked that poignantly human desire to touch some­thing you know would kill you. And, like a Shake­spearean actor strut­ting before a cap­tive audi­ence, it arced ever so slowly and majes­ti­cally past us across its dark stage while our jaws dropped in dis­be­lief.  If it had been able to, I have no doubt that this blaz­ing divo would have come back for an encore. We were all stunned, thrilled and excited. We knew exactly how priv­i­leged we were to have wit­nessed such a phe­nom­e­non. We remained on the beach for a long time after­wards, talk­ing about the details of this amaz­ing meteor, and the nature and fla­vor of our indi­vid­ual sur­prise and reaction.

The next morn­ing was our last at the beach house. We packed up after break­fast and were still talk­ing about the fan­tas­tic fire­ball on the drive back to Chicago. The day after our return, I did a lit­tle inves­ti­gat­ing. It turns out that there are recur­ring meteor show­ers dur­ing many months of the year. With­out plan­ning it, we had been at the right place at the right time at the beach house. And, although the Indi­ana trip hadn’t been filled with the awe-inspiring moun­tains and vast roman­tic ocean views I usu­ally crave, it had given me a sin­gle, tran­scen­dent mem­ory of human unity and celes­tial won­der that is eas­ily one of the sem­i­nal moments of my life. NOTE:  As the warm weather approaches, I heartily sug­gest you plan an excur­sion away from city lights to expe­ri­ence a meteor shower event. Click on Sky­scrap­ers  for a descrip­tion of mete­ors and mete­orites, as well as a cal­en­dar describ­ing which recur­ring meteor show­ers can been seen dur­ing each month of the year.