Part 2. Berkeley and San Francisco, 1934 to 1944: the Swami’s lecture, the war work and joining the monastery

He lasted about 2 years at Berkeley, and then he got fed up and quit. The city directory for 1936 lists John L. Dobson as a clerk, living at the family home at 1019 Ashbury Street, and the one for 1940 says the same. In the mid-1930s he lived on Ashbury above Haight Street with a beard and his hair grown long. “People tell me I’m the original hippie,” he said. The hair was met with surprise and sometimes with hostility, and he reasoned from it that if people could be so upset over “this dead stuff on our heads,” then every attitude society held was open to question.55.Crater Lake interview, edited; SF directories; Eugene Weekly 2004.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).record from the timeSF directories: Polk’s Crocker-Langley San Francisco City Directory (R. L. Polk), yearly volumes, 1929 to 1966.a later writerEugene Weekly 2004: “Seeing Stars”, Eugene Weekly, 15 July 2004.

Somewhere in these years he danced. He belonged to the Carol Beals dance group, which staged dramatizations with a political purpose. Dean Regas, who interviewed him in 2005, has him performing in 1934 for the strikers on the waterfront, and quotes him on the figure he cut there: all muscle in those days, and “I had this long hair, and, well, you might understand that I would look a little funny to the dock workers.”66.Levy 1995; Shields, club page; Regas 2014.a later writerLevy 1995: David H. Levy, “Walden of the Sky”, Sky & Telescope, September 1995, p. 84.a later writerShields, club page: Jim Shields, “Astronomy for Children Under 80 - Adventures with John Dobson”, undated, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).his own accountRegas 2014: Dean Regas, “The Astronomer Who Showed Us the Sky”, HuffPost, 2014 (from his 2005 interview).

His friend Lou Harrison was a musician, and very likely the composer of that name. The composer’s biographers, Leta Miller and Fredric Lieberman, write that Harrison shared a house near Sutro Forest with friends from college, something like a commune, and they count “astronomer John Dobson” among the people in it. Harrison’s catalogue of works has “Two Pieces for John Dobson”, dated 1935 to 1936, one of them a piano piece called “Apples”, and an incomplete score dated December 23, 1936, marked “for John Dobson”.77.Memoir 3; A Sidewalk Astronomer, at 00:19:24; Miller and Lieberman 1998.his own accountMemoir 3: John Dobson, “Memoir 3”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).his own accountA Sidewalk Astronomer: A Sidewalk Astronomer (film, dir. Jeffrey Fox Jacobs, 2005), from the distributor’s published transcript (paraphrased).a later writerMiller and Lieberman 1998: Leta E. Miller and Fredric Lieberman, Lou Harrison: Composing a World (1998); read as search snippets only.

In February 1937 Harrison took him one Sunday morning to hear a lecture in San Francisco, at the Century Club. Dobson noted more than once who was on his way there: “a belligerent atheist”, and on a Sunday morning. The lecturer was Swami Ashokananda, and Dobson said that “when that man opened his mouth, I knew I had made a mistake.” He had presumed too early that the notion of God belonged to mythology. Now he reasoned, “Either there’s something underneath this Universe that I hadn’t noticed or this man’s not here.”88.Memoir 3; A Sidewalk Astronomer, at 00:19:24, 00:19:35; Crater Lake interview, edited; Crater Lake interview, transcript.his own accountMemoir 3: John Dobson, “Memoir 3”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).his own accountA Sidewalk Astronomer: A Sidewalk Astronomer (film, dir. Jeffrey Fox Jacobs, 2005), from the distributor’s published transcript (paraphrased).his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountCrater Lake interview, transcript: F. Owen Hoffman’s own transcript of the same 31 July 2004 interview, posted before the edit.

He compared it to what Einstein said about the magnet he was given as a small boy: that things must have something at the back of them, far out of sight. Something of that kind, Dobson supposed, was what he had seen that morning. The monk, he said, had shown him a world that was new to him.99.A Sidewalk Astronomer, at 00:19:35; Space.com 2000.his own accountA Sidewalk Astronomer: A Sidewalk Astronomer (film, dir. Jeffrey Fox Jacobs, 2005), from the distributor’s published transcript (paraphrased).a later writerSpace.com 2000: Space.com profile of John Dobson, May 2000 (reprinted on sidewalkastronomers.us).

Ashokananda was a monk of the Ramakrishna Order of India who had led the Vedanta Society of Northern California, in San Francisco, since 1932, and he led it until his death in 1969. The city directory listed him as pastor of the Hindu Temple. Vedanta is a philosophy that comes out of Hinduism, and the Society belongs to the Ramakrishna Order: Ramakrishna was an Indian saint and religious teacher who died in 1886, and his disciple Vivekananda brought Vedanta to America in 1893. The word, as Dobson explained it, means the culmination of knowledge, and what the Vedantins are after first is information, not just the spooky side of things.1010.Vedanta Society of Sacramento; SF directories; Oregonian 2003; Space.com 2000; Levy 1995; LA Times 2005; Sacramento Union 1964-66, p. 12; A Sidewalk Astronomer, at 00:20:39.a later writerVedanta Society of Sacramento: Vedanta Society of Sacramento, “Our Story” and “Resident Swamis” (web pages).record from the timeSF directories: Polk’s Crocker-Langley San Francisco City Directory (R. L. Polk), yearly volumes, 1929 to 1966.a later writerOregonian 2003: Richard Hill, “Telescopic Visionary”, The Oregonian, April 2003.a later writerSpace.com 2000: Space.com profile of John Dobson, May 2000 (reprinted on sidewalkastronomers.us).a later writerLevy 1995: David H. Levy, “Walden of the Sky”, Sky & Telescope, September 1995, p. 84.a later writerLA Times 2005: Hugo Martin, “Astronomer a star in his profession”, Los Angeles Times, 2005.record from the timeSacramento Union 1964-66: Sacramento Daily Union items on the Vedanta Society’s Carmichael center, November 1964 to April 1966 (California Digital Newspaper Collection).his own accountA Sidewalk Astronomer: A Sidewalk Astronomer (film, dir. Jeffrey Fox Jacobs, 2005), from the distributor’s published transcript (paraphrased).

He dated the change in his whole life from that morning, but he did not join for another 7 years. A couple of years after he quit Berkeley he went back, and quit again after one semester.1111.Memoir 3; Crater Lake interview, edited; Levy 1995.his own accountMemoir 3: John Dobson, “Memoir 3”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).a later writerLevy 1995: David H. Levy, “Walden of the Sky”, Sky & Telescope, September 1995, p. 84.

By 1940, he said, he knew “there was also something to do about it”, and he wanted to join the monastery. The people at work on it, he had found, were monastics.1212.Crater Lake interview, transcript; Crater Lake interview, edited; A Sidewalk Astronomer, at 00:19:35, 00:20:35.his own accountCrater Lake interview, transcript: F. Owen Hoffman’s own transcript of the same 31 July 2004 interview, posted before the edit.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountA Sidewalk Astronomer: A Sidewalk Astronomer (film, dir. Jeffrey Fox Jacobs, 2005), from the distributor’s published transcript (paraphrased).

He had a saying for his classes: want nothing sweet on your tongue, no one warm in your bed and nothing jingling in your pocket, and you can see the world as it is. He told them about what he called his early days, when he practiced hard. Sometimes he went several days without eating, and he could tell his students it was very interesting. One winter he wore no warm clothes at all and slept by an open window under a sheet. He slept only a little at a time, flat on his back, for fear of forgetting what he was doing, and he was up and out of the house long before it was light. “I had a phobia for houses,” he said. It was like a disease, and he spent most of his time outdoors.1313.Cosmology class 9, at 00:07:48, 00:08:17, 00:08:54, 00:10:26, 00:10:33, 00:10:38. Recorded: “I had a phobia for houses” (Cosmology class 9, 00:10:38).his own accountCosmology class 9: John Dobson, cosmology class 9, audio recording, about 1994 (recording).

Wander off into the hills like that, he said, not tied to keeping warm or to eating, and the world looks very different. By his account it looked two-dimensional to him in those days, like a picture, and he reasoned that our evidence for depth comes to two flat pictures, one on each retina.1414.Cosmology class 9, at 00:09:13, 00:09:27.his own accountCosmology class 9: John Dobson, cosmology class 9, audio recording, about 1994 (recording).

In 1940, as he told it in a memoir late in life, he had an appointment with the Swami one morning, and he crossed the city on crutches to keep it. He had decided by then that he would not handle money. It stormed the night before, and at some point in the dark he made up his mind to go whatever the weather did. By morning it had blown over. “But for the next five years I wasn’t wet by rain,” he wrote. He was on the crutches for 10 months in all, and got good enough on them to hike 15 miles at a time over Mount Tamalpais. He had hurt a foot and given up on walking or running again. It was dislocated, and in the end he kicked the joint back into place and it healed. He was still keeping the crutches when he wrote, in case.1515.Memoir 3.his own accountMemoir 3: John Dobson, “Memoir 3”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).

For the same 5 years, he wrote, nothing anyone did could make him angry. Something happened in 1940 that he would usually have been very angry about, and he stopped to ask who the anger would help: the other person, himself, anybody else. Nobody, he decided, and the answer stuck.1616.Memoir 3.his own accountMemoir 3: John Dobson, “Memoir 3”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).

He went to the Swami for instruction, he said, and the Swami sent him back to the university. This time he finished.1717.Crater Lake interview, edited; A Sidewalk Astronomer, at 00:20:39.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountA Sidewalk Astronomer: A Sidewalk Astronomer (film, dir. Jeffrey Fox Jacobs, 2005), from the distributor’s published transcript (paraphrased).

He did not graduate until 1943. The degree was in chemistry, and the choice for a graduate that year, as he put it, was “a war-related job or rifle”. He took the job, as a chemist at the university’s Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, and by his count it lasted about a year and a half. The San Francisco directory for 1943 lists him in one word, chemist.1818.Crater Lake interview, edited; Oregonian 2003; LA Times 2005; The Astronomers 1991, at 00:34:43; SF directories.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).a later writerOregonian 2003: Richard Hill, “Telescopic Visionary”, The Oregonian, April 2003.a later writerLA Times 2005: Hugo Martin, “Astronomer a star in his profession”, Los Angeles Times, 2005.his own accountThe Astronomers 1991: The Astronomers (KCET/PBS, 1991), episode 1, “Where Is the Rest of the Universe?” (recording).record from the timeSF directories: Polk’s Crocker-Langley San Francisco City Directory (R. L. Polk), yearly volumes, 1929 to 1966.

From late 1941, by the government’s report of August 1945, Ernest Lawrence had his group at that laboratory at work on separating the isotopes of uranium electromagnetically. Within months most of the effort was going into the calutron, the method that in the end produced uranium-235 on a large scale. The chemistry the report describes is that of the calutron program as a whole: a good deal of it on the uranium salts that fed the ion sources, and, most important by far, getting the processed uranium back out of the separating units.1919.Smyth Report 1945.record from the timeSmyth Report 1945: Henry DeWolf Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes (the Smyth Report), US government, August 1945, chapter XI, “Electromagnetic Separation of Uranium Isotopes”.

Dobson’s own name for what he did there was the Manhattan Project, and on television the atom bomb project. Asked whether joining the monastery had anything to do with it, he said, “Not particularly.” He had known since 1940 that he wanted to join.2020.Crater Lake interview, edited; Crater Lake interview, transcript; Memoir 3; The Astronomers 1991, at 00:34:38.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountCrater Lake interview, transcript: F. Owen Hoffman’s own transcript of the same 31 July 2004 interview, posted before the edit.his own accountMemoir 3: John Dobson, “Memoir 3”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).his own accountThe Astronomers 1991: The Astronomers (KCET/PBS, 1991), episode 1, “Where Is the Rest of the Universe?” (recording).

In 1944, by his account, the Swami allowed him to join, but before he could leave the project the FBI put him through a double interview. This was before the bomb was dropped. The second interviewer asked him, “Do you think that the best thing you can do for your country at the present time is to join a monastery?” “Yes,” he said. The man answered that he might be surprised, but “many people feel like that.” Dobson was surprised, and wondered how the man could know. “Probably they all went through him,” he wrote.2121.Crater Lake interview, edited; Memoir 3.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountMemoir 3: John Dobson, “Memoir 3”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).

David Levy gives the day: May 8, 1944. The Swami he had first heard on a Sunday morning 7 years before, and who had sent him back to the university, let him into the Society’s monastery in San Francisco. Dobson was 28 years old, and by his own account he went in knowing that the universe was mostly hydrogen and that gravity, pulling the hydrogen together, had made the stars and the galaxies.2222.Levy 1995; Crater Lake interview, edited; Memoir 3; Moser 1989, pp. 102-110; Crater Lake interview, transcript.a later writerLevy 1995: David H. Levy, “Walden of the Sky”, Sky & Telescope, September 1995, p. 84.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountMemoir 3: John Dobson, “Memoir 3”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).a later writerMoser 1989: Don Moser, “John Dobson, the celestial Pied Piper”, Smithsonian, April 1989, pp. 102-110.his own accountCrater Lake interview, transcript: F. Owen Hoffman’s own transcript of the same 31 July 2004 interview, posted before the edit.

1. Whose account this is. His late tellings carry this part: television in 1991, classes recorded in 1994 or 1995, what he told writers in 2000, 2004 and 2005, the Crater Lake interview of 2004, the 2005 film, a talk of 2008 and the undated memoir. His recorded words are quoted only where several independent speech-recognition systems (different engines, run separately) heard the same words; where they did not agree, he is paraphrased and the note gives the time in the recording. The directory has him in 5 volumes: a clerk in 1936 and 1940, at another address, on Willard Street, in 1938 with no occupation, and a chemist in 1943 and 1944. A volume was compiled up to a year before its cover date. We have seen no record of him from the university, the laboratory or the FBI.2323.The Astronomers 1991, at 00:34:43; Cosmology class 9, at 00:17:22, 00:10:38; Space.com 2000; Eugene Weekly 2004; Regas 2014; Crater Lake interview, edited; A Sidewalk Astronomer, at 00:19:24; PATS talk 2008, at 00:11:44, 00:11:56; Memoir 3; SF directories.his own accountThe Astronomers 1991: The Astronomers (KCET/PBS, 1991), episode 1, “Where Is the Rest of the Universe?” (recording).his own accountCosmology class 9: John Dobson, cosmology class 9, audio recording, about 1994 (recording).a later writerSpace.com 2000: Space.com profile of John Dobson, May 2000 (reprinted on sidewalkastronomers.us).a later writerEugene Weekly 2004: “Seeing Stars”, Eugene Weekly, 15 July 2004.his own accountRegas 2014: Dean Regas, “The Astronomer Who Showed Us the Sky”, HuffPost, 2014 (from his 2005 interview).his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountA Sidewalk Astronomer: A Sidewalk Astronomer (film, dir. Jeffrey Fox Jacobs, 2005), from the distributor’s published transcript (paraphrased).his own accountPATS talk 2008: John Dobson, “Einstein’s Geometry”, talk at the Pacific Astronomy and Telescope Show, 14 September 2008 (recording).his own accountMemoir 3: John Dobson, “Memoir 3”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).record from the timeSF directories: Polk’s Crocker-Langley San Francisco City Directory (R. L. Polk), yearly volumes, 1929 to 1966.

2. The lecture: 1937. February 1937 is his date in the edited interview and in the memoir; the interviewer’s own transcript has 1937 and a Sunday lecture. A Space.com profile of 2000 puts a lecture by a Vedanta monk in 1944, and Wikipedia follows it; neither calls it the first he heard, and 1944 is the year he joined. None of his tellings that we have read says what the Swami spoke about that morning.2424.Crater Lake interview, edited; Memoir 3; Crater Lake interview, transcript; Space.com 2000; Wikipedia; A Sidewalk Astronomer, at 00:19:35.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountMemoir 3: John Dobson, “Memoir 3”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).his own accountCrater Lake interview, transcript: F. Owen Hoffman’s own transcript of the same 31 July 2004 interview, posted before the edit.a later writerSpace.com 2000: Space.com profile of John Dobson, May 2000 (reprinted on sidewalkastronomers.us).a later writerWikipedia: “John Dobson (amateur astronomer)”, Wikipedia (revision of 2026).his own accountA Sidewalk Astronomer: A Sidewalk Astronomer (film, dir. Jeffrey Fox Jacobs, 2005), from the distributor’s published transcript (paraphrased).

3. Lou Harrison. The memoir and the film both name the friend as Lou Harrison; the film calls him a musician and gives no year. That he was the composer rests on the biographers’ “astronomer John Dobson”, on the catalogue and on the name; we have seen no document that says so. Their book was read only as search snippets, which give the household no date or address. The catalogue also lists a song “For John Dobson”, undated in the snippets.2525.Memoir 3; A Sidewalk Astronomer, at 00:19:24; Miller and Lieberman 1998.his own accountMemoir 3: John Dobson, “Memoir 3”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).his own accountA Sidewalk Astronomer: A Sidewalk Astronomer (film, dir. Jeffrey Fox Jacobs, 2005), from the distributor’s published transcript (paraphrased).a later writerMiller and Lieberman 1998: Leta E. Miller and Fredric Lieberman, Lou Harrison: Composing a World (1998); read as search snippets only.

4. The Swami and the pendulum. From before 1945 the only records we hold of the Swami are the city directory’s entries for 1933 and 1940. A listener at one of his talks in the late 1990s remembered him telling of a day as a young man at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, when he watched the great pendulum, asked himself what it was moving relative to, and came away convinced for good of an unchanging substratum. The memory was written down about 15 years later and gives no year; no telling of his own that we have read has it.2626.SF directories; SRV Association 2014.record from the timeSF directories: Polk’s Crocker-Langley San Francisco City Directory (R. L. Polk), yearly volumes, 1929 to 1966.his own accountSRV Association 2014: SRV Association, “In Memoriam: John Dobson”, srv.org, 2014.

5. Berkeley. He gives 1934 for entering, and so does Levy; Moser’s 2005 article has him enroll in 1943, the year of the degree. The chemistry degree is in his own telling, The Oregonian, the San Francisco Chronicle in 2000 and the film’s press biography; Levy and Astronomy in 2001 add mathematics. He says only Professor Lawrence; that this was Ernest O. Lawrence, whose group the 1945 report describes, is our reading. The class memories and the astronomy remark carry no year. Levy makes the dance group an interruption of his schooling, a club page says the late 1930s, and Regas dates the performance to 1934 but places the dancing after his graduation.2727.Crater Lake interview, edited; Levy 1995; Moser 2005; Oregonian 2003; Perlman 2000; Film press biography; Sullivant 2001, p. 71-72; PATS talk 2008, at 00:11:44, 00:11:54; Cosmology class 6, at 00:04:52; Smyth Report 1945; Cosmology class 5, at 00:21:42; Cosmology class 4, at 00:18:10; Regas 2014; Shields, club page.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).a later writerLevy 1995: David H. Levy, “Walden of the Sky”, Sky & Telescope, September 1995, p. 84.a later writerMoser 2005: Don Moser, “35 Who Made a Difference: John Dobson”, Smithsonian, November 2005.a later writerOregonian 2003: Richard Hill, “Telescopic Visionary”, The Oregonian, April 2003.a later writerPerlman 2000: David Perlman, “A Star Among Astronomers”, San Francisco Chronicle, about December 2000 (reprinted on sidewalkastronomers.us).a later writerFilm press biography: Press biography for the film A Sidewalk Astronomer (2005), telescopepictures.com.a later writerSullivant 2001: Rosemary Sullivant, “On the Road with John Dobson”, Astronomy, September 2001.his own accountPATS talk 2008: John Dobson, “Einstein’s Geometry”, talk at the Pacific Astronomy and Telescope Show, 14 September 2008 (recording).his own accountCosmology class 6: John Dobson, cosmology class 6, audio recording, about 1994 (recording).record from the timeSmyth Report 1945: Henry DeWolf Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes (the Smyth Report), US government, August 1945, chapter XI, “Electromagnetic Separation of Uranium Isotopes”.his own accountCosmology class 5: John Dobson, cosmology class 5, audio recording, about 1994 (recording).his own accountCosmology class 4: John Dobson, cosmology class 4, audio recording, about 1994 (recording).his own accountRegas 2014: Dean Regas, “The Astronomer Who Showed Us the Sky”, HuffPost, 2014 (from his 2005 interview).a later writerShields, club page: Jim Shields, “Astronomy for Children Under 80 - Adventures with John Dobson”, undated, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).

6. The war work. The 1945 report’s chapter on electromagnetic separation does not name Dobson. Nothing we have seen, record or telling of his, gives his task or post at the laboratory. The edited interview and his 1991 television telling name the Radiation Laboratory alone; the interviewer’s transcript (“for Cal Tech and Berkeley”), Levy, an English newsletter of 2002 and the Los Angeles Times in 2005 add Caltech. A degree in 1943 and a monastery in May 1944 leave 16 months at most for his year and a half, so he was rounding up, or the work began before he graduated. That his own work was the Manhattan Project, and the FBI’s double interview, are his account alone. Later writers repeat it, or write “defense-related jobs”; the Chronicle’s “a factory job” has no other support. Wikipedia puts him in the laboratory of E. O. Lawrence in 1943 while he was taking the degree, and cites no source; by his own account the job came after he graduated.2828.Smyth Report 1945; Crater Lake interview, edited; The Astronomers 1991, at 00:34:43; Crater Lake interview, transcript; Levy 1995; Orwell newsletter 2002; LA Times 2005; Memoir 3; Astronomy review 1991; Oregonian 2003; Film press biography; Perlman 2000; Wikipedia.record from the timeSmyth Report 1945: Henry DeWolf Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes (the Smyth Report), US government, August 1945, chapter XI, “Electromagnetic Separation of Uranium Isotopes”.his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountThe Astronomers 1991: The Astronomers (KCET/PBS, 1991), episode 1, “Where Is the Rest of the Universe?” (recording).his own accountCrater Lake interview, transcript: F. Owen Hoffman’s own transcript of the same 31 July 2004 interview, posted before the edit.a later writerLevy 1995: David H. Levy, “Walden of the Sky”, Sky & Telescope, September 1995, p. 84.a later writerOrwell newsletter 2002: Neil Morley, on his visit to Orwell Park Observatory, 29 September 2002, Orwell Astronomical Society newsletter, November 2002.a later writerLA Times 2005: Hugo Martin, “Astronomer a star in his profession”, Los Angeles Times, 2005.his own accountMemoir 3: John Dobson, “Memoir 3”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).a later writerAstronomy review 1991: Review of John Dobson, How and Why to Make a User-Friendly Sidewalk Telescope, “Astronomy Books”, Astronomy, November 1991.a later writerOregonian 2003: Richard Hill, “Telescopic Visionary”, The Oregonian, April 2003.a later writerFilm press biography: Press biography for the film A Sidewalk Astronomer (2005), telescopepictures.com.a later writerPerlman 2000: David Perlman, “A Star Among Astronomers”, San Francisco Chronicle, about December 2000 (reprinted on sidewalkastronomers.us).a later writerWikipedia: “John Dobson (amateur astronomer)”, Wikipedia (revision of 2026).

7. The practice and the 5 years. The saying, the hard practice and the flat world are in one class recording and in nothing else we have, and nothing in it says that anyone set him the practice. He tied the flat world to his later cosmology, whose start he dated in more than one way; Part 7 takes that up. The memoir does not say what passed between him and the Swami at the appointment of 1940, and the sending back to the university may be that visit or another. The memoir gives a reason for the anger and none for the rain. Its 5 years, counted from 1940, run about a year past the day he entered the monastery.2929.Cosmology class 9, at 00:07:48, 00:08:17, 00:09:27; Cosmology class 4, at 00:23:16; Memoir 3; Crater Lake interview, edited; A Sidewalk Astronomer, at 00:20:39; Levy 1995.his own accountCosmology class 9: John Dobson, cosmology class 9, audio recording, about 1994 (recording).his own accountCosmology class 4: John Dobson, cosmology class 4, audio recording, about 1994 (recording).his own accountMemoir 3: John Dobson, “Memoir 3”, sidewalkastronomers.us (archived copy).his own accountCrater Lake interview, edited: F. Owen Hoffman, interview with John Dobson, 31 July 2004, Crater Lake Institute oral history, edited by Stephen R. Mark (December 2005).his own accountA Sidewalk Astronomer: A Sidewalk Astronomer (film, dir. Jeffrey Fox Jacobs, 2005), from the distributor’s published transcript (paraphrased).a later writerLevy 1995: David H. Levy, “Walden of the Sky”, Sky & Telescope, September 1995, p. 84.