Hello Friends,
I've realized that my last few newsletters have been less than joyful, and I apologize for that. It happens. The sign of the times, perhaps.
The lack of sunlight (and outside warmth) here in the Northeast puts a damper on my mood. During the winter, like many of you, I start work before the sun comes up and stay busy until the sun goes down, turning on my inside lighting just after lunch.
In truth, it’s a small price to pay for living where I live. None-the-less, I’m happy it only lasts a few months.
Just imagine if you could be reminded to smile in the middle of winter.
A lumber company in Oregon decided the world needed exactly this and strategically re-planted an area of the forest on a hill with trees that have leaves that turn orange and fall off in the fall, leaving a 300 foot smiley face, visible through the cold season.
Take that winter blues.
From a hill in Oregon to the far reaches of outer space
We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion year old carbon
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden
- "Woodstock", Joni Mitchell (with a slight, but prophetic modification by Stephen Stills.)
This song, composed by Joni Mitchell and most notably sung by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young became the anthem of a generation, mostly because of the third line of the chorus: "And we have to get ourselves back to the garden."
Not so fast…
I'm actually more curious about the second line. Apparently, after Mitchell wrote the song, Stephen Stills modified the second line to "We are billion year old carbon."
Interestingly, this week, I came upon a couple of articles that reported that we are, indeed, stardust, and that the atoms (carbon, notably) in our bodies have come from beyond the Milky Way.
It is a common, pop-culture consensus that life on Earth came from the stars, but how?
Well, there seems to be a cosmic conveyor belt, called "The circumgalactic medium", that moves particles all around the universe.
The fact that there are currents moving material through space is really cool. Space is not just stuff floating randomly, like that dust that you see in your house when the sun shines through a window just right.
The cosmos has some sort of organized motion, like an ocean. The real question is: “What’s driving it?” There has to be some kind of energy source moving all that space stuff around.
And, even more curious in my mind recently, does organization imply intelligence?
Something to ponder this week while you’re staying warm and hunting for those lovely doses of vitamin D.
Happy reading and happy writing.
David