Earth Day 2011

Apropos thoughts from the great American poet given the giant’s recent stirrings:

“I thought, on the train, how utterly we have forsaken the Earth, in the sense of excluding it from our thoughts. There are but few who consider its physical hugeness, its rough enormity. It is still a disparate monstrosity, full of solitudes and barrens and wilds. It still dwarfs and terrifies and crushes. The rivers still roar, the mountains still crash, the winds still shatter.

“Man is an affair of cities. His gardens and orchards and fields are mere scrapings. Somehow, however, he has managed to shut out the face of the giant from his windows. But the giant is there, nevertheless.”

– Wallace Stevens (1904)

Blinded by the Light

Besides apparently wreaking havoc on migratory birds’ flight patterns, the increasing “light pollution” associated with the expansive suburbanization of America (as starkly depicted in the NASA photo above) has also compromised our appreciation of the heavens. Nighttime stargazing just isn’t what it used to be – a diminishment noticeable just in my lifetime. And though I live in a suburb 40 miles from the closest big city, being on the Eastern Seaboard, it doesn’t really matter, there is never the black velvety darkness through which celestial gems glisten in the night.

Where I live, despite having the darkness of the ocean nearby to the east, the night sky ranks only about a 4.5 as measured on the graphic above. That’s why it’s such a joy to get up to the remote environs of Vermont, New Hampshire or Maine, once in a while. There one can enjoy an unadulterated view of the nighttime sky ... No. 1, indeed!

Think About It

Earth Day ... 40 years on: Some progress, but much yet to be done.

“The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” – Bertrand Russell