A GOLD HALO FOR A SILVER MEDAL

Introductory photo Valentin Grigore
Text and photos Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
Design Florin Alexandu Stancu

“I am in Bucharest and I see a solar halo in the sky.
Come to the Youth Park, you’ll find me over there.” –
said to me by phone Valentin Grigore, the president of SARM.

For me, that day (Sunday 2018-05-06)
began with the Morning Moon
seeming like the half of a gold medal.

After the phone call of Valentin
I started to the meeting point,
following also the sky,
although the halo seemed to lose from intensity.

In the park,
Valentin taught me a new short lesson of astrophotography,
and after his departure I continued to photograph the colors of the sky.

Then I moved to the lake zone,
right vis-à-vis to the Polyvalent Hall,
where the feminine volleyball team of Victoria Blaj
just played the final of the Champions League,
loosing it in three sets.

But its qualification in the final was something like a miracle,
so I didn’t have reasons to regret that
our gold halo had transformed into a silver medal.

Blaj, a small town of over 20,000 inhabitants today,
was the spiritual and cultural Capital City of the Transylvanian Romanians
from 1738 (when its owner became the Greek-Catholic Church)
until the end of the 19th century,
when it shared this position with Sibiu.

And now this was able to create a team… able to become
runner-up in a Champions League,
among foreign teams with much bigger budgets!

Certainly, this event made me wish more
to make a profound visit to Blaj!

Returned home,
I saw a cloudy sky which made room, later,
to the planet Jupiter (right in the centre of the image).

And on the next morning
I saw the Moon as a half of a silver medal again,
wishing everybody:

“Don’t be obsessed by gold and silver,
You could become sick.
Your real medals are your good deeds.
Have a nice week!”