Who else thought, “Aww, the guy’s getting downsized,” when Pluto got bumped out of the planet category?  All my life I’ve enjoyed the fact that our solar system wound itself up with a quirky little rock that zipped through a crazy orbit–kind of cool, really.

While we lived in the DC suburbs the kids took us to the Air and Space Smithsonian Museum about a hundred times.  We even got the words to the song “The Family of the Sun.”  Obviously they will need to change that, and probably lots of other displays, too. 

Maybe Pluto doesn’t mind.  It’s alwasy been something of a free-wheeler, and it will have company in its new status as a dwarf planet.  Xena and others will be new comrades.  But I still think the family of the sun has lost a certain degree of humor with the new change in status.

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