Monet is the president of Friends of Arlington’s Donald M. Brown Planetarium, a group that’s raising funds to fix the planetarium, which Arlington County might shut down after a series of sweeping budget cuts. An astronomer herself, Monet recently retired from the Naval Observatory, and credits the planetarium for piquing her interest in the stars in high school. Tell me about your first visit to the planetarium. I went to Washington and Lee [high school], and our class went to visit the planetarium. … I’d always been interested in astronomy, but I was thinking in that stage in my life that I’d probably go into law as a career. But I went to the planetarium with my class and … it was this mind-blowing experience.
Former Arlington School Board Chairman Preston Caruthers recently gave you $100,000, and now you’re using it to raise more money?
