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144Observatory%u2013lower level, Monroe County (090-13) Observatory%u2013upper level, Monroe County (091-02)About a decade after this squatty, domed building first caught my attention, I finally got the urge to stop and investigate. When I walked through the tangled thicket of small trees and weeds taking over the property, I was amazed to see it was not a silo, as I%u2019d thought, but an abandoned observatory. The door was wide open, and the stairs leading to the viewing platform were sturdy, so I climbed up to the second level. Of course, the telescope that once scanned the heavens was long gone, but I could clearly see how the entire dome was made to rotate atop the circular masonry wall, allowing the telescope to point in any direction. As I walked around taking pictures, I realized that this was a place devoted to capturing light, that it%u2019s purpose was to reveal objects we don%u2019t ordinarily see. And that is exactly what I had been doing. For months, as Lynn and I drove up and down Indiana%u2019s back roads, I had used my camera to capture the light from objects that most of us don%u2019t even notice, so I could make them visible%u2014on the pages of this book. But there were other analogies as well: the observatory was a place devoted to searching and exploring, and Lynn and I had certainly explored many hundreds of square miles of territory. I also thought about how, when we see a star or galaxy, we are actually looking into its distant past, because it takes scores of years for its light to reach the earth. And that is my hope for Lingering Spirit%u2014that it will provide a means of seeing and experiencing the energy of an earlier time, and will illuminate that which has gone before. %u2013JB4