You Can See...Forever

     On a clear day you can see forever; well, maybe not quite as far as the other side of the Manson Crater, an impact crater so large that it "would make the Grand Canyon look quaint and trifling" in the words of Bill Bryson.  That and perhaps the fact that it's been buried for quite literally, ages.  And that it's in Iowa.  But that isn't even the largest crater in the U.S. -- that honor goes to the one in Chesapeake Bay (what??).  And if you're looking for a part of our planet that was heavily clobbered by meteors in general, then you're in the right place; North America is home to a third of all the major impacts.  Hmm, didn't see that coming, eh?  Or that the eight words that started this post came from a musical, one of those Broadway shows where one song (such as the Bocelli-sung, The Prayer) is far more remembered than the show itself.  The words went this way: On a clear day rise and look around you and you'll see who you are.  On a clear day, how it will astound you, that the glow of your being outshines every star.  You'll feel part of every mountain, sea, and shore.  You can hear, from far and near, a world you've never heard before.  And on a clear day, on that clear day, you can see forever and ever, and ever, and ever more.

     Breaking it down a bit, think back.  When was that?  A clear day?  This isn't meant to be so much about air pollution, although winter in my state brings plenty of that (Utah is often considered to have the worst air in the nation for a variety of reasons, said The New York Times).  Throw in the recent wildfires of summer, and the shrinking Great Salt Lake with its microscopic particles quietly floating into our lungs (a major worry in our area is that more of the toxic dust from the lake will be released as the lake continues to dry, reported the local Deseret News), and the inversion that happens each winter (the cold air "trapping" the hot exhaust) and okay, this isn't the best place to begin a discussion of "on a clear day."  

     But move over a few states to the ocean it's certainly not a clear day for all those ships waiting to dock either (or for those consumers waiting for their cars and chips and Xmas toys that are onboard those ships).  Wrote Rebecca Giggs (mentioned in an earlier post): The largest of these ships are propelled by engines that can approach five stories high, weighing 2,300 tons.  The fuel these vessels run on is, essentially, the dregs of crude-oil refinement -- it looks like asphalt, and is so thick that, when it is cold, a person can walk across it.  In 2009, data released by maritime industry insiders showed that fifteen of the world's biggest ships were emitting as much pollution as all the cars --760 million cars-- then in existence.  As of 2016, 80 percent of the world's merchandise trade relied on shipping.  The shipping industry said at the recent climate conference that it will consider changes in 2023, said The Guardian.  As to that other emitter, coal (which powers much of my state), Joe Manchin (now being considered a DINO or Democrat In Name Only because of all the GOP donations he's receiving) just pocketed another half million dollar dividend from the coal-energy company he founded and passed down to his son, reported Business Insider.  But what about the ash that is left over after all that coal is burned?  Said Sierra: That ash has then been removed, mixed with water, and placed in ponds and landfills.  Over 3 billion tons of it now occupy more than 1,400 sites across the United States.  According to the industry's own data, over 90 percent of these sites contaminate groundwater with almost two dozen heavy and radioactive metals—including arsenic, lead, mercury, selenium, and radium—at levels exceeding the EPA's health standards.  A 2014 EPA study revealed that living next to a coal ash waste site increases one's risk of getting cancer from drinking groundwater laced with arsenic.  Because of a dubious system engineered by industry groups, coal ash isn't regulated as hazardous waste.  What??

     Okay let's get off of this pollution bit and jump to the words "see" and "forever," which are equally complicated.  You can see, said the lyrics.  Not all of us, of course, and that's just physically; for some of us have great 20/20 vision but remain limited in what we can see right in front of us.  Look around you and you'll see who you are, said the lyrics.  But who is that?  We often read the term "peering into one's soul" but tend to feel that such a feat is done by someone else, rarely by ourselves.  But why?  Jennifer Sahn, the recently appointed editor of High Country News, wrote: One thing I've learned from years in journalism is that issues are always more complicated than they appear -- rarely black and white, more often prismatic, accounting for a range of beliefs, orientations and experiences.  We have a right to nature, but we who?  And nature where?  And what does that right entail?  Many of us also believe that nature has its own rights, irrespective of human endeavors.  Those rights --both of and to nature-- are intersectional and multicultural, extending to all humans and creatures and ecosystems.  They exist in the tiny, out-of-the-way hamlets that dot the rural West as well as in its suburbs and cities.  She added her surprise at webcams and night cameras capturing wildlife roaming at night "right here in our backyard."  They will even use those words, our backyard, to describe the foothills or the front country, as if the animals had somehow stumbled into the exclusive domain of the human species.  But the truth is quite the opposite.  It is we who are the encroachers.  Said the lyrics: And you'll see who you are...

     Next part of the lyrics: How it will astound you that the glow of your being outshines every star.  That could be since, at the basis of it, we are little different than much else.  Broken down genetically, we are more closely related to chimpanzees than a porpoise is to a dolphin, or a zebra is to a horse, noted Bryson once again...and all of life --from the speck of dust floating in deep space to us-- is merely a conglomeration of atoms.  So why are we so different, or seem to think that we are?  Just take the coronavirus which apparently doesn't give a hoot about what we think, changing and mutating just to keep "alive" (in quotes because viruses aren't "alive" to our way of thinking).*  How come countries such as Chile and Brazil are okay with getting fully vaccinated for this virus (84% and 71% respectively) but my own state struggles to reach more than 56%?  One could go further and ask why some of us follow the "conspiracy" theories sometimes felt to have originated in A.G. Riddle's book, Pandemic, a book written long before Covid even hit the world.  Don't rush to judge, said STAT...

     Going beyond those questions, why are some of us introverted and shy while others are outgoing, asked Discover.  And why are some of us quite happy with what we have while others want more and more, asked Bloomberg, this when the magazine was reporting on firms targeting elderly veterans out of their monies (what??).  And why is something as "simple" as bringing down the cost of essential medical drugs in the U.S. facing so much opposition, asked the NY Times?   Staff Atlantic writer Spencer Kornhaber may have summed this disparity up in his book review on a new Star Wars history: To cheer for a Hollywood product that emphasizes look and feel rather than story and character may sound superficial.  But in life, aesthetics are not incidental.  The dents on a vehicle tell a story.  So does the glint in a stranger’s eyes.  Tidy plots are scarce, and populations do not readily divide into Chosen Ones and Unchosen Ones.  Star Wars has proved that mass entertainment can wake us up to such realities.  My favorite of the many arcs in The Mandalorian involves a froglike creature carrying her unhatched eggs to another planet.  Because the alien doesn’t speak his language, the Mandalorian treats her coldly -- until she commandeers a droid’s translation system and delivers a desperate plea for help.  Watching that scene jangled my empathy so much that I began to look even at subway rats with a sense of wonder.  They are characters in this galaxy too.  Pulitzer Prize winning author, Elizabeth Strout, told TIME about advice her daughter gave her: Look in the mirror every morning and think to yourself, Well, you're not such a great prize either.  That sounds a little harsh, but I take the point.  We all have our difficulties.  You always think the other person’s not behaving the way you want them to, but then you look at yourself and realize, well, maybe I’m not behaving the way they want me to, either.

     Back to the musical and jumping a few more verses: You can hear from far and near a world you've never heard before.  How interesting that baby fish appear to use sound as one of their beacons to return home wrote Hakai: “The acoustic world underwater is critical for the survival of most animals,” Simpson says (marine biologist Stephen Simpson). “We are starting to see the world from their perspective in a way that we don’t, really, when we simply swim around with our eyes open.”  What was more striking was the navigation system whales are thought to be using, wrote Rebecca Giggs**: ...the aftermath of solar storms might govern the lives of whales in ways even more dramatic than the churn of the northern and southern lights that turn stunned human faces skyward, far above the water's surface.  The consequences of solar storms are believed to come up at whales from beneath, off the seafloor in darkness, rather than out of the air...How is this so?  Under the sea there are great mountain ranges made not from minerals but magnetism.  They can be sixty miles wide, these natural, unseen features of the planet.  The mountains have no specific density or charm.  They cast no shade, reflect no light, and obstruct no submarines.  An oil rig could pierce one without ill effect.  Unlike geological peaks, these are soft mountains, hills of pure energy measured in nanotesia, and their formation, their silhouettes, are a product of interactions between Earth's magnetosphere and the interstellar weather.  A solar storm humans can't feel --which we only have eyes to serve secondhand as shimmers of color in the night, and which our ears might take in, absentmindedly, as the sound of lost birds circling-- the far-off ejection of sun can, nonetheless, migrate a geomagnetic mountain.  It can tremble that mountain like a jelly, or reoutline it temporarily.  A strong sun storm might altogether dissolve such an undersea mountain...

     Let's face it, we are new to this place we call home, this planet Earth; and yet we belong.  We belong because we are all the same.  Solar flare, tiny diatom, methane burning off, or chimp...we are all the same.  James Parker wrote in The Atlantic: You’ve emerged.  You have been a weird little god, playing with Time.  You’ve been Max von Sydow, playing chess with Death.  And while you haven’t won, exactly, you haven’t lost, either.  You’ve been flirting with finality.  You’ve been fiddling with foreclosure.  You’ve been testing yourself against the mystery of your own cessation.  Ridiculous, and yet—heroic.  You have stood athwart the currents of life and felt them rush against you.  And you’ll do it again, even as they carry you to the last great deadline of all.  Put another way, and from a completely unlikely source, there was this: I mean, please, we can, we can get along here.  We all can get along.  We just gotta.  We gotta.  I mean, we're all stuck here for a while.  Let's, you know, let's try to work it out.  Let's try to beat it, you know.  Let's try to work it out.  That voice was Rodney King...

*So many strains and variants of this Covid-thing...what's the difference?  Broken down even more, what makes one version become a "variant" while another becomes an entirely different "strain?"  Here's what Bloomberg Prognosis had to say: For help in breaking down the virology basics, we turned to Covid Q&A regular Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco.  “The virus that causes Covid-19 develops mutations along its spike protein --the part of the virus that binds to the host cell-- during ongoing transmission,” says Gandhi.  Viruses, of course, are mutating all the time, but the changes usually don’t change the way they act.  It’s only when mutations alter things like a pathogen’s ability to spread or the severity of the disease it causes that it becomes a so-called variant of concern.  When a SARS-CoV-2 variant rises to that level, it gets assigned a Greek letter by the World Health Organization.  Omicron, for example, has a whopping 32 mutations in its spike protein, the part of the virus that vaccines train our bodies to attack.  Scientists are concerned that those changes may make the variant more contagious and better able to evade the antibodies generated by vaccination or a previous Covid infection.  To further complicate things, variants do sometimes build on each other, says Gandhi.  For example, the delta-plus variant was a mutated version of delta, essentially a mutation of a mutation.  Now, back to when a variant becomes a strain.  A strain is a variant that has significantly distinct physical properties.  Omicron, for example, has about 50 total mutations -- far more than any variant we’ve seen.  And those changes are what are making it now take off in countries like South Africa, which saw cases almost quadruple in four days.  “A variant becomes a new strain when it becomes dominant as the circulating strain either in a region or worldwide,” explains Gandhi.  So omicron is both a variant and a strain.

**Coincidentally, Giggs wrote in a review in The Atlantic about interspecies communication among trees.  One of the interesting notes was the different "types" of leaves throughout a tree, the ones near the top of the canopy being quite different from those nestled in the shadows far below...same tree, but as she noted, we're more familiar with the trunks of trees than the tops.  We need to look upwards...