So amateur astronomy is featured in the Home and Garden section of the New York Times. Times have certainly changed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/18/garden/18NOTE.html
I was heavily involved during my teen and undergrad years and it was something that had a profound impact on my appreciation of nature and education path. At the time it was a reasonably geekish activity (like amateur radio), requiring a bit of technical and scientific skill to get anything done.
Amateur astronomy stlll is one of the few areas in science where amateurs still make important contributions to the field. These days one buys pre-made telescopes and imaging devices that render older hardware and techniques primitive.
Even though some of the romance of building your own hardware is largely gone, modern techniques allow amazing things to be done. Sky and Telescope is an excellent amateur journal that is friendly to beginners. Their website is useful with timely postings, but is no substitute for the excellent magazine.
http://skyandtelescope.com/
One of the great revolutions in professional astronomy was the development of the CCD camera. The technology has trickled down to the advanced amateur level and great things are being done. The Santa Barbara Instrument Group makes wonderful amateur arrays. Check out their image gallery and product page. Most of this was done with hardware that costs less than the average new car. The hardware is still on a technology ramp and I suspect people in this game will be making the "new car vs new ccd vs food on the table" decision at regular intervals.
http://www.sbig.com/
*geek alert on*
It is still possible to be an astro-geek. Amateur radio astronomy would be terrific for a kid who loves astronomy and, in earlier years, would be attracted to amateur radio. I used to "view" the Sun and Jupiter at 408 MHz with a Yagi and homemade receiver. These days some wonderful things can be done working with large satellite antennas. A few folks are even experimenting with interferometry and wide baseline interferometry. The Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers is the relevant group
http://www.bambi.net/sara.html
*geek alert off*
Looking at the sky exposes you to the wonders of nature. It can be done with anything from the naked eye to the Hubble Space Telescope and expands the mind.
Looking at your neighbor strikes me as a more shallow activity and having largely unvetted observations of "suspicious" activity seems to be something from places like North Korea and Iraq rather than a democracy. Unfortunately there seem to be plans underway to have a massive citizen based spy organization. The creation of organizations like this strikes me as a victory of those who are opposed to democracy.
http://www.citizencorps.gov/tips.html
Shifting gears. Tamales -- wonderful things. Unfortunately they aren't vegetarian friendly as good old lard is the canonical binder for the corn meal. Vegetarians (and even Vegans) can find wonderful stuff from Tamale Molly in Santa Fe. She will ship via FedEx and this makes a wonderful gift (I was the lucky recipient a few months ago).
http://www.tamalemolly.com/index.htm
The "beauty" of commerical food is that, if anything, it is uniform. For better or worse there are some famous foods that are ingrained in our memories.
Top Secret Recipes is filled with good amateur approximations of commercial food. Ending today's notes with a twinkie recipe seems reasonable. This is just the filling - you will need to buy the book if you want to assemble the whole thing.
2 teaspoons very hot water
rounded 1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups marshmallow creme (1 7-ounce jar)
1/2 cup shortening
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1. Combine the salt with the hot water in a small bowl and stir until salt is dissolved. Let this mixture cool.
2. Combine the marshmallow creme, shortening, powdered sugar, and vanilla in a medium bowl and mix well with an electric mixer on high speed until fluffy.
3. Add the salt solution to the filling mixture and combine.
Makes 1 1/2 cups.
I have no idea if the shelf life of the clone approaches that of the real product. I also haven't tried the recipe, but the book is an amusing read.
http://www.topsecretrecipes.com/index.html
4:16:45 AM 
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