Peter Basch

For the last nine months, I've been lucky enough (and, okay, skilled enough) to work at the legendary Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, in their Documentation Services department.  We support the scientists and engineers in their pursuit of NASA funding.  It's an awesome job, in the original sense of "awesome".  During the course of my day, I'll be thinking about the Moon, Venus, Mars, the Oort Cloud, galaxies, and dark matter.  I get to be a tiny part of the grand sweep of the history of science.  When Tycho was examining the starry dome, measuring the positions of thousands of points of light, you just know there was a guy right behind him, a Dane skilled with a quill, writing it all down.  I like to think that that guy was a poet after-hours, inspired by the grandeur and transcendence of his day job.  I'm the proud intellectual descendant of that unknown 16th century Dane.