Premiering Tonight!

I have the privilege tonight of attending a local event celebrating the national premiere of the new television series Meteorite Men, starring Geoffrey Notkin, the gentleman for whom my friend Leigh Anne DelRay works. The program airs on the Science Channel at 9 PM EST. Please check your local listings.

I would be remiss in not mentioning Geoff’s partner in space rock sleuthing, Steve Arnold. The two make a great team, educating the audience in an entertaining fashion without going totally over the top. No death-defying stunts, but plenty of adventure, and contagious enthusiasm for finding these fallen pieces of our universe.

One has to be part scientist, part historian, and a world traveler to be a meteorite hunter. It also helps to be creative, inventive, and a mechanic to fix the vehicles that inevitably break down in the course of rambling across all kinds of terrain.

Geoff and Steve are doing for meteorites what I want to do for urban wildlife. All of us have lived vicariously through National Geographic, Nature, NOVA, the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. We’ve been down the Amazon several times over, and have about had our fill of lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!), but we certainly haven’t explored beneath the soil for meteorites, or made a discovery-filled trek through our own backyards and city parks.

Who knows, Geoff and Steve might dig up a meteorite in your backyard at some point in the course of their own show. Did I mention that it also helps to know how to research ownership of property, and negotiate with landowners to be a meteorite hunter?

Please join me in congratulating these two fine men on achieving a dream two years in the making. Follow their exploits via Geoff’s blog, also: Meteorites: They Came From Outer Space. They may be the hardest working scientists in show business.

Leigh Anne DelRay

I recently met a person so exceptional that she deserves to be featured in both of my blogs, just to make sure you can’t avoid getting to know her. We met via (what else) the Bugguide.net website where she has started submitting images. While she is a certified animal enthusiast, from the feathered and two-legged to the hairy and eight-legged, her passion for life and art is contagious.

Leigh Anne has endured serious tragedy and drama in her life, but you wouldn’t know it from her affectionate, sunny disposition and creative and intuitive personality. She has a way of turning her experiences into a shared tapestry through her evocative photography skills and choice of subjects. Many of her images literally bring me to tears, but Leigh Anne recognizes the power of imagery and uses it to remind us that places, people, and stories are worth knowing, if only briefly.

One of Leigh Anne’s favorite pursuits is hunting meteorites. It has been a real education for me to learn just how popular a “hobby” this is, and the great value, both scientific and monetary, that is attached to “space rocks.” She recently invited me to a party at her employer’s house to watch the television debut of Meteorite Men, featuring her boss, Geoff Notkin, and his teammate Steve Arnold. Who knew Kansas was such a mecca for meteorites? About 30-40 friends of Geoff’s were packed into his living room, riveted to the TV screen, tuned to the Discovery Science Channel. A fun time was had by all, and I thank Leigh Anne for continuing to introduce me to more fascinating people. I’m not the most sociable sort, but she may change that.

Leigh Anne is well-traveled, too, and embraces all that a given location has to offer. While she was in Los Angeles she successfully auditioned as an extra in several films and popular television shows. For example, she was a patient with a broken leg on an episode of ER, and stood in line behind leading man Kevin Costner in the airport scene in the movie Dragonfly (alas she was left on the cutting room floor in that one). That kind of spontaneity speaks to her adventurous nature.

I should really let Leigh Anne’s work speak for itself, so I encourage you to visit her website, Callisto Images, and see if you, too, are not moved by her profound vision, the intimacy of her subjects, and the playfulness that she expresses. Thank you, Leigh Anne, for helping me re-awaken to the depth of life around us, and reminding me to “live in the moment. Oh, and lest one get the wrong impression, Leigh Anne is with another wonderful gentleman who is a gifted woodworker and a caring, upstanding individual in his own right.”