Forty years ago this month, the Napa County Board of Supervisors made history by creating the Agricultural Preserve, stopping urban sprawl into the Napa Valley in its tracks. That was a historic event. Not widely known is that the Angwin Community Council, then called the Angwin Chamber of Commerce, was the first chamber of commerce in the County to endorse the plan.

This is something to remember when someone says our opposition to development on agricultural lands in Angwin is just a case of "Not in My Back Yard." No, sir, Angwin was among the pioneers, and we have never wavered.

Just now when the lilacs are blooming in Angwin, I am reminded of two poems about the lilac time of the year.

One was written a hundred years ago by Alfred Noyes. In "The Barrel Organ." Noyes hears an organ grinder playing at sunset one quiet evening in London and it wafts him to memory land.

In the middle of this epic, he finds himself at Kew Gardens, hearing the warblers and seeing all the Springtime blooms. As light-hearted and romantic as you can get.

The other lilac-time poem is just the opposite, the terribly sad elegy, "When Lilacs Last by the Door-yard Bloom'd." In this heart-wrenching tribute to the April 14 death of Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman poetically plucks a sprig from the lilac bush to lay on the coffin of "the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands."

When Whitman started a poem with reference to lilacs, he touched a universal heart, because every farmhouse in Vermont, Ohio, Wisconsin had a lilac bush blooming by the dooryard. And almost every family had lost a son in that war, and every family wept as the funeral train passed through 420 little towns enroute from the capitol to Illinois.

Both of these poems are long and there is much more to them than lilacs. For "The Barrel Organ," go to this website: http://www.bartleby.com/103/117.html

For the full text of the Walt Whitman poem, go to this website: http://www.bartleby.com/142/192.html

Meanwhile, in Angwin, a morning walker sidles over to her neighbor's lilac bush to bury her nose in the fragrance. What a way to start the day!

For the fourth year in a row, two Angwin guys stayed up all night recently to participate in the Messier Marathon. This is not a race, but an attempt to spot all of the110 deep-space heavenly objects catalogued by the French comet hunter, Charles Messier 225 years ago. The Messier list includes galaxies, nebulae, open clusters and globular clusters.

This is a telescope trip. Most objects are very far away and not visible to the human eye.

The ideal date for the marathon takes place on the 3rd week in March when all 110 pass on parade, but the chosen date each year it is adjusted some to coincide with March's new moon. The marathon starts at dusk when the first object on the list comes into view and ends when the rising sun lightens the sky too much to see far.

Mark Pacini and Larry Thomas were the only Angwin participants this year. It would be unusual for amateurs to identify all 110, but it happens, when the dates and the moon work together. On such occasions, it is alright to jump up and down and scream. "Yes! Yes!." Most years will net at least 100 however.

Cloudy skies made this year's marathon difficult. The local guys racked up only 61, but were able to show some visitors other beautiful sights.

Angwin is a good location because there are so few distracting lights.

It is important to dress warmly and bring a sleeping bag for snoozing until the next object appears on the horizon. Is it fun? Mark says it is, and he encourages Angwinites of all ages to study the stars. It's kind of wonderful to see all that stuff out there in space, and there is far more to see than most people realize.

Just to give you an idea of how the searching goes, here are some tips from an experienced marathoner:

"The next object on our list is perhaps the easiest to find. The Pleiades (M45) is visible as a compact collection of six or seven stars to the naked eye. A simple pair of binoculars will reveal dozens of beautiful blue stars. Next is the first globular cluster on our list. M79. To track down this cluster, the equivalent of 90,000 suns, use the magnitude 2.84 Beta Leporis located 4" southwest of M79. Things get a little easier with M42 and M43. Both are part of the Great Nebula in Orion and both are found in the "sword" of the mighty hunter. .. "

A serious amateur could spend upwards of $4,000 for a telescope, but a beginner would be amazed and what he could see with a l5x70 binocular. "Most people would be amazed if they took out their binoculars and just scanned the Milky Way. Many deep sky objects pop into view and are beautiful to see, especially in the southern summer sky."

Anyone, adult or youngster, who would like to do some star-gazing could contact Mark. He's in the phone book. Meanwhile to see the complete catalog of the Messier objects, go to this website: http://www.astr.ua.edu/gallery2t.html