Addendum

Addendum

   This is the page where I let you know about things that I snuck in, corrections, if you will.  Some were quite small, such as adding a bit of data to the Voyager piece on the energy expended now that the probes are so far from us (a femtowatt...don't worry, I hadn't heard the term before either).  Also, the misspelling of author Barbara Brown Taylor (for some reason I kept liking the name Taylor Brown more and thus perhaps sent you on a wild goose chase looking for her book...apologies)...all such mistakes have (so far) been corrected.

   This is also a time to correct one misconception about the Voyager probes, and that is their direction.  One would have thought that each was sent with the same goal, sort of a back up should one fail.  But this was a golden opportunity to explore our solar system (as one perspective put it, Jimmy Carter was President and Saturday Night Fever was the hit movie at the time).  So if you had that decision, keeping in mind that our solar system is basically flat and at one far end of our galaxy, what direction would you point those trajectories?  Would you head them toward the center of the Milky Way, or out past our edge and into deep space?  Would you head them above or below our disk of stars, or simply chance them heading directly into the cluster.  Sagan's book, Pale Blue Dot, makes fascinating work of such questions (in one chapter, you discover how rare the color blue is in our visible universe).

   I bring this tidbit up because life is indeed fragile.  Friends around us are going though difficult times, as are many of you.  Divorce or failing health, even the death of close family members has arrived.  And my wife and I recognize just how fortunate we are, not only in the life we have but just to be alive.  And that's perhaps the key word...life.  Around the world, life fights to stay living.  For those in war torn countries, this is a daily and difficult struggle.  For others, surrounded by comfort, life is simpler.  But even for our planet, it is sometimes a struggle...a few degrees closer or farther from our sun and life as we know it wouldn't exist at all.

   Kevin Fong brings this up in his recent book, Extreme Medicine.  As an astrophysicist and doctor, he writes about our fragility as humans.  We live in a small band of atmosphere, a small band of pressurization that sustains us and sustains life.  Our blood doesn't "boil" (but it can at higher altitudes), the oxygen mix is ideal (although nitrogen is the majority gas we inhale), and our temperature range is rather constant (five degrees beyond our heat threshold to touch, say a hot cup of coffee, and cellular damage occurs).

   The Maru people in Africa (among others) believed that killing an animal (which they do to survive) creates a "hole" in the universe and thus the spirit of the animal must be released before consumption in order to "fix" the hole.  The Miwok Indians of northern California (again, among others), believed that this was the case for all life, be it plant or animal.  It is along these lines that my wife and I give a blessing before we eat, one of both thanks and recognition.  Thanks that we are blessed and alive, and recognition that other life isn't but is sustaining us.  While not religious in any organized way, my wife and I feel that there is something out there, some-thing beyond our comprehension, some-thing that has allowed life to begin and continue, not only in our living-breathing form, but in the nebulous position our planet floats in space.  The simple fact that you are able to read this or that I am able to write this is a blessing...your mind is active, your faculties keen.

   We are not all in the same position physically or mentally or financially or contentedly, and we recognize that.  And we try not to judge where we or others are or are not.  Rather, as the Voyager probes demonstrate, we are becoming more and more that rare Pale Blue Dot, and soon even our "dot" will not be visible to them.  Life is indeed fragile...for animals, for plants, for us, and for our planet.  We are lucky, very lucky...and perhaps now and then it is good to remember that.