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Mars and GW Bush: "The following is from page 116 of Dear Visitor: Voices of McDonald Obsevatory (ISBN 0-9742535-0-2; I can't find it on Amazon.com, but the publisher is here), which I purchased while in Ft Davis on vacation in September. The book is a compilation of interviews conducted, for the most part, by its editor, Karen Stewart Winget, the wife of astronomer Don Winget, who I heard give an amazing talk at the 1997 Texas Star Party -- but that's a subject for an entirely different post. The interviewee is Tom Barnes, a former associate director of the observatory and presently a senior research scientist there. Emphases added:

Now, one more favorite story. It was in August of 1997 [that is, the month after the Mars Pathfinder/Sojourner landing -- JDM], when President Bush was Governor. President George W. Bush and the First Lady came out for a tour of McDonald and I got the job of giving the tour. They came out late one afternoon, spent the night in House A [VIP guest accomodations -- JDM], and left late the next morning. I have given lots of politicians tours of McDonald; it is one of those obligatory stops when they are out. I won't speak about the politicians that caused me to say this, but the difference in giving President Bush and the First Lady a tour was that it didn't feel like giving a politician a tour. He has tremendous one-on-one charisma. He just was one of the guys; he made jokes and just talked with me about stuff. It was obvious that Laura had an interest in science. After dinner, I was all set to give them a tour through the 36-inch telescope. When it got dark enough I had an observer set up to run the telescope and we had programmed what we'd look at. We were all set. After dinner we visited for a while, and it was getting dark. But President Bush said, 'Oh, I think I'm going to bed.' So okay, all right, everybody goes to bed.

His staff was all staying at the TQ [transient quarters, for visiting astronomers -- JDM] with us, and so I'm sitting, BS-ing with one of the observers and people came walking up the stairways, talking on telephones. They say, 'Tom, Laura wants to see something with the telescope.' Okay. We went out to the telescope and gave her a tour of the sky. She was fascinated, asked questions and was very interested. President Bush didn't show up. The morning after, we are sitting at breakfast just chatting, and President Bush said something like, 'Now what was that bright light that I viewed from the patio last night?' I looked at him curiously because he had not come to the dome last night. He said, 'Oh, I got up in the middle of the night and was looking out. What was that light?' So, he did go out and look."

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