A Thousand Words

    My wife has told me several times that my blog and its writings don't matter, that it is just a series of useless facts and often, opinions.  And she's likely correct, for as with most writers and singers and artists and such, people everywhere are simply trying to make some sort of a difference in a small way, hoping that some small thought or idea will cling onto them as lightly as a floating dandelion seed.  And although my wife never reads my blog, she's accurate in saying that what does matter is helping people, being kind and more caring, having compassion, and expressing true feelings.  And so it was difficult to continue jotting down an almost fluff piece on today's world of dating when people are staring at a pile of ashes, something which was once their home.  Perhaps because it IS Los Angeles, and it IS California, and it IS near the ocean and the homes of mega-zillionaires, many of us either felt that it was immune from major disasters or was basically a world unto itself.  An earthquake here, a small arsonist there, a riot or two over there, and of course, the flood of illegals doing all the work nobody else wants to do such as bending over for hours upon hours harvesting the perfect head of lettuce or basket of strawberries for our grocery shelves.  On sale: $1.99, which is about the wage they get since many are paid mainly by the weight of their baskets, all under the hot sun and the pesticide-ridden leaves.  But while we can almost dispassionately stare at images of leveled villages in Gaza and Sudan (which is perhaps why we don't seem to mind sending so many weapons around the world), it is somehow more penetrating when it is right on our doorstep.  All of these issues are about ready for another "useless" post, but not now (where our weapons go and just how many countries we send them to, however, is quite eye-opening).  Here in the U.S. we are facing an immediate dichotomy with fires at one end of the country and freezing snow at another.  So a series of photos to simply express this massive devastation  --take Manhattan, and double it; or walk across a football field, no, make that 22,000 football fields-- and realize that all of that is just the damage done so far.  For most of the affected residents, there is nothing to go back to: no pets, no documents, no photos, no landscape.  For many of the non-billionaires, there is only a cremated memory happening in real time as grids failed and, like what happened with the fires on Maui, the water was right there but not the power for the pumps.  To all of the people facing this immediate disaster, and to the people and animals facing disasters of their own in other places, it is a time for the world to pause and to offer compassion.

Satellite image: Maxar Technologies / DigitalGlobe / Getty Images

Photo: Ethan Swope / AP

Photo: Apu Gomes / Getty Images

Photo: Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times

Photo: Howard Blume / Los Angeles Times

Photo: Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times

     None of this is meant to take away what has happened and IS happening to others: those trying to stay warm in the Midwest as unusually cold weather arrives, the many around the world flooded out from recent hurricanes, the few watching a missile hit their last hospital in Gaza, the many seeing a final breath coming from an emaciated body that is your relative, the wild animals who have nowhere to go to escape the smoke or the bullets.  It would seem that our home, our planet's microbiome is under siege.  So now comes another dichotomy as a new administration arrives.  Even a few of my conservative friends have began placing blame and politicizing all that is happening.  But this is not the time, whatever your political persuasions.  If you're staring at a destroyed rubble of concrete, or a smoldering pile of ashes that once was the place you called "home," then likely such angered opinions mean little.  So in a spark of brightness, a true contrast, just days ago we saw the end of a President, someone who lived for a century and still taught Sunday school and built homes for the needy, someone who saw diseases such as Guinea worm wiped out in "poor" countries, someone who never saw a village needing pity but only a village needing hope and compassion, someone whose Foundation has 90% of its employees working overseas in poverty-stricken countries.   Consider it fortunate that it would be this President, Jimmy Carter, who would be chosen to write a message to space, a message to distant, perhaps ancient and more advanced civilizations out in space, a message placed on the Voyager I spacecraft nearly 50 years ago: This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America.  We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth.  We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.  We cast this message into the cosmos.  It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed.  Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some--perhaps many--may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations.  If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:

This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings.  We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.  We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations.  This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.

Photo of the Palisades area in Los Angeles: Mark J. Terrill / AP