Yearly Archives: 2010

Garden, Weather +Climate

Clarifying. Stimulating. Oh, All Right–Damn Cold.

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Winter                             Waning Moon of Long Nights

As Bilbo said, I have been there and back again.  Up here in the land of the midnight hobbit it remains cold, -7 now at noon.  On days when the high is below zero you know for sure you live in a cold part of the world.

I can look out the window of this room though and see beds where daffodils and tulips, iris and dicentra, liguria and lilies lie, apparently dead, but actually taking  a long winter’s sabbatical from photosynthesis.  Their presence, more than anything else, convinces me that the blooms of yesteryear are not figments of a hypothermic crisis, but rather the wonder they are.

The deep cold does not stop life here.  There were many folks at at the grocery store, a normal crowd for a Saturday.  An active snow storm, a severe one, can cause folks to stock up and sit tight, but the cold is part of the territory.  You deal with it, much as I assume the Bedouin do the heat.

GeekWorld

Apophis

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Winter                                 New Year’s Day            Full Moon of Long Nights      -11

Russia to Plan Deflection of Asteroid From Earth   asteroid-apophis-625x450

(Apophis* the meteor Russia plans to deflect)

I read about the Russian’s plan the other day and a bizarre thought crossed my mind.  I’ve watched several different asteroid approaches the earth movies and brave scientists or working class astronauts save the day.

Here’s the crazy idea:  what if an intended deflection does not work and has the unintended consequence of pushing an asteroid closer to us rather than further away.  In other words what if the big asteroid strike comes from human error not bad like orbital mechanics?

As these things move from science fiction movie into tomorrow’s news, we have to face our fallibility.  Just sayin’

*Known in scientific circles as both 2004 MN4 and 99942 Apophis, this 885-foot-long space rock has a fairly good chance of impacting the Earth within a quarter century..

After making a breathtakingly close pass on Friday the 13th in April 2029 — less than 10 percent of the distance between Earth and the moon — Apophis will have about a 1 in 45,000 chance of hitting Earth in 2036 when it swings back around.

To better understand Apophis’ danger to Earth, some scientists advocate sending a transmitter to the asteroid’s surface to better track its movement.

Aging, Great Work, Health, Politics

The Year We Make Contact

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Winter                                     Full Moon of Long Nights

Hmmm.  You know you’re getting old when the sequels to movies, one’s you saw when they came out, are now getting passed by the actual dates.

The year we make contact.  Indeed.

What will the next 10 years be like?  On an equally geezerly note the end of this new decade, Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, will find me 72 years old.  I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve known people that were 72 but I wouldn’t let my daughter marry one.  Of course, I don’t have a daughter, so that makes that easy.

My sense, my hope is, that in this coming decade, the teen years of this century, we will come to grips with climate change and in a way that will have a lasting, positive impact.  We won’t have completed the Great Work, the movement to a benign human presence on the earth, but we will have made substantial strides.

Terrorism will decline as a front-burner issue, though it will remain with us, if for no other reason than the continuing disparity between rich and poor countries, disparities exacerbated over the next ten years by the continued growth of India and China.

The Millennium generation will push us further toward a race neutral or race positive world.  It may be that we will develop the strength to see difference as a possibility for enrichment.  Or, maybe not.  I hope the tension begins to move in such a way that the fulcrum tips toward embracing pluralism.

At the end of this decade the grandkids will be ten years older:  Ruthie 13 and Gabe 11.  Yikes.

By the end of this decade I hope Kate and I have got this gardening thing well integrated into our lives.

I hope for, I want a move toward, as one foundation puts, “a more just, verdant and peaceful world.”