I've been president of the AAA of New York since the first of this month. To be honest with you, it's not like there are a large number of candidates for it. What happened is, we had a previous president, Michael O'Gara, who was president for four years, and he was looking for a replacement, and there really wasn't anybody else willing to take it on, and as it happens I was very interested in taking it on.

I joined the Westchester club for one year, hoping to get up there, but even there, it was not that dark a sky, and it was kind of hard to get up there. So, one day, I was checking out the AAA website, seeing if there was anything new, and I saw they had observing on Cadman Plaza, which is walking distance from my apartment in Brooklyn Heights. I said, "Whoa, this is like a sign from above!"

And I found really good people here. A fellow named Bob, who's a professional photographer, had gotten a "Go To" scope, which I was interested in but a little intimidated by. A Go To scope is a scope that's computer controlled, where, once you set it up, you say, "Find me Mars," and it gets Mars for you. And in New York City, that's very important. If you're in the country, you can see enough stars that you can do what they call "star hop" your way: I get to this bright star and then to this not so bright star, then a fainter star, and then to the little galaxy or whatever I'm looking for. It's like you're on the Interstate, and then you go on to a local road and then a little lane... But in New York City, it's like you go on the Interstate and now you've got no instructions where to get off, because you cannot see the road signs.

My first telescope, which was a little piece of junk, I would hunt back and forth, trying to find something. And I didn't have any experience, so I didn't know, in many cases, it was hopeless. You really need experience to be a good observer, because you have no clue what you're looking for. You might actually be looking at it, and not realize it.

I didn't study astronomy, I followed it. I never took a course in it, though I would occasionally get a book on it. Mostly I would read Sky and Telescope magazine. And I have an encyclopedic tendency. My mother got me encyclopedias when I was a kid, when you used to get them at the supermarket for 99 cents a volume—which was decent money in those days—and I remember reading a couple of encyclopedias, and I have to say, I want to know everything. I don't like being incomplete. So, I guess with being an observer, I see certain things, but I'm frustrated because I can't see everything. So I want to see everything! That's part of my psyche, I guess. So the telescope fulfills that.