Wednesday, September 25, 2024

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Messier's famous catalog, but definitely not one of the least. About 170,000 light-years across, this galaxy is enormous, almost twice the size of our own Milky Way. M101 was also one of the original spiral nebulae observed by Lord Rosse's large 19th century telescope, the Leviathan of Parsontown. Assembled from 51 exposures recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope in the 20th and 21st centuries, with additional data from ground based telescopes, this mosaic spans about 40,000 light-years across the central region of M101 in one of the highest definition spiral galaxy portraits ever released from Hubble. 
The sharp image shows stunning features of the galaxy's face-on disk of stars and dust along with background galaxies, some visible right through M101 itself. Also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101 lies within the boundaries of the northern constellation Ursa Major, about 25 million light-years away.”

The Poet: Wendell Berry, "The Circles Of Our Lives"

"The Circles Of Our Lives"

"Within the circles of our lives
we dance the circles of the years,
the circles of the seasons
within the circles of the years,
the cycles of the moon,
within the circles of the seasons,
the circles of our reasons
within the cycles of the moon.

Again, again we come and go,
changed, changing. Hands
join, unjoin in love and fear,
grief and joy. The circles turn,
each giving into each, into all.

Only music keeps us here,
each by all the others held.
In the hold of hands and eyes
we turn in pairs, that joining
joining each to all again.
And then we turn aside, alone,
out of the sunlight gone
into the darker circles of return,
Within the circles of our lives..."

- Wendell Berry
“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust,
swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of Infinity.
Life is Eternal.
We have stopped for a moment to encounter 
each other, to meet, to love, to share.
This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in Eternity.”

- Paulo Coelho
"We all know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars... Everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being."
- Thornton Wilder

"No Smooth Road..."

"Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere
of a high aim the very roughness stimulates the climber to steadier steps,
till the legend, over steep ways to the stars, fulfills itself."
- W. C. Doane

The Universe

“There are no accidents. If it's appeared on your life radar, this is why: to teach you that dreams come true; to reveal that you have the power to fix what's broken and heal what hurts; to catapult you beyond seeing with just your physical senses; and to lift the veils that have kept you from seeing that you're already the person you dreamed you'd become. There are no accidents. And believe me, that was one heck of a dream.”
“Tallyho,”
The Universe

“Thoughts become things... choose the good ones!”

"It Better Be Damn Good..."

 

The Daily "Near You?"

Concord, North Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Jeremiah Babe, "Another Attempted Home Invasion - Springfield, Ohio Is Coming To Town"

Jeremiah Babe, 9/25/24
"Another Attempted Home Invasion -
 Springfield, Ohio Is Coming To Town"
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Adventures With Danno, "I Don't Even Know Where To Start, This Was Terrible"

Adventures With Danno, PM 9/25/24
"I Don't Even Know Where To Start, This Was Terrible"
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Gerald Celente, "Politicians Embracing Slaughter... We Are On The Verge Of Nuclear Annihilation"

Gerald Celente, 9/25/24
"Politicians Embracing Slaughter... 
We Are On The Verge Of Nuclear Annihilation"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
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"How It Really Is"

 

"The Difference..."

"One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire – then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference."
- Robert Fulghum

"If Our Cities Already Look Like They Belong In “Grand Theft Auto”, What Will They Look Like Once The Economy Implodes?"

"If Our Cities Already Look Like They Belong In “Grand Theft Auto”, 
What Will They Look Like Once The Economy Implodes?"
by Michael Snyder

"As you will see below, video footage that was just captured on the streets of Philadelphia looks like it could have been pulled out of an extremely violent video game. If this is what our streets look like now, what are they going to look like once economic conditions become very harsh in this country? Just a few days ago, I wrote about the tremendous chaos that is erupting in cities all over America. When I wrote that article, I wasn’t even aware of the drama that had just played out in the city of Philadelphia. From late on Saturday night through the early hours of Sunday morning, there were multiple clashes with police as authorities attempted to break up a series of illegal street takeovers…

"Philadelphia continues its spiral into chaos under Democratic leadership, with violent mobs once again taking to the streets, this time attacking police officers and patrol cars in a brazen display of lawlessness. According to reports from 6 ABC, hundreds of cars and massive crowds participated in illegal car meetups, causing widespread chaos that lasted from 9:30 p.m. Saturday until 4:30 a.m. Sunday. At least 11 meetups took place, six of which turned into violent confrontations with police. The mayhem resulted in the hospitalization of one officer, while five police cars were heavily damaged."

These kids are completely and utterly out of control. One of them even had a flamethrower that he used to create a ring of fire in the middle of one major intersection. And when the police arrived at these events, these kids were not afraid to attack them at all… “Everything they do is disruptive, they’re ruining the quality of life. At one point, they had a flamethrower -yes, there’s video with a flamethrower.” They’re able to disperse quickly and then reform at other locations. That’s why we have officers dedicated. It’s playing wack-a-mole. We hit them at once, and they move to another,” he added.

“It was the aggressiveness at some of the locations - the incident outside of City Hall was aggressive. They physically went after our officers,” Cram said. “They don’t care about your safety, their own safety. You’ve all seen the videos of their behavior. How much chaos can they cause?”

Isn’t it odd how the word “chaos” just keeps popping up all over the place these days? As you can see in this video footage, the streets of Philadelphia really do look like they belong in “Grand Theft Auto”…
Of course Philadelphia is far from alone. At this point, there are millions of Americans that are literally afraid to leave their own homes because violent crime has become so pervasive.

In a “tiny Wisconsin community”, a member of the Tren de Aragua gang was just arrested for “sexually assaulting a mother and abusing her daughter”…"A member of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang was arrested in a tiny Wisconsin community for allegedly sexually assaulting a mother and abusing her daughter after he had been arrested and released earlier this year in Minneapolis.

Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden, whose grandchildren live less than a mile away from the Prairie du Chien home where the mother and daughter were held against their will and repeatedly victimized, told Fox News Digital that it was only a matter of time before tragedy would strike the community amid the White House’s open-border policies and sanctuary city initiatives."

All of this chaos is going to play a major role in how these swing states vote. People are afraid of what they see in the streets, and that isn’t going to change any time soon. If things are this bad now, what is our society going to look like once economic conditions get really bad?

Yes, economic conditions are not good at all right now. This is something that I have documented extensively. But as bad as things are at this moment, the truth is that this is going to look like rip-roaring prosperity compared to what is coming.

Sadly, there are lots of signs that the economy is starting to move in the wrong direction quite rapidly now. For example, it is being reported that U.S. consumer confidence just dropped by the largest amount in over three years…"Consumers’ view on the economy tumbled in September, falling by the largest level in more than three years as fears grew about jobs and business conditions, the Conference Board reported Tuesday.

The board’s consumer confidence index slid to 98.7, down from 105.6 in August, the biggest one-month decline since August 2021. The Dow Jones consensus forecast was for a reading of 104. By contrast, the index had a reading of 132.6 in February 2020, a month before the Covid pandemic hit. Each of the five components the organization samples fared worse on the month, with the biggest fall coming among those aged 35-54 and earning less than $50,000."

And banks continue to permanently shut down more branches at a staggering rate…"US banks have closed more than 50 branches in just two weeks, as the march towards online banking continues to decimate local services. Wells Fargo, Chase, and Fulton were among the banks who closed locations between August 19 and September 7. Bank of America and Chase gave notice to close the most locations, notifying the regulator that they will shut a further twelve of their branches each."

Every week, more branches are disappearing, and that should deeply alarm all of us. Of course the exact same thing could be said about retail stores. Sadly, the very last full-size Kmart store in the continental United States is about to close forever…"The last full-size Kmart store in the continental United States is set to close in October, leaving only one downsized location remaining, reports say. The department store chain, which once operated around 2,300 locations in the early 1990s, will shutter the full-size store in Bridgehampton, New York, on Oct. 20, Newsday is reporting, citing an employee there. That means a smaller Kmart store in Miami will become the last one remaining in the U.S. Kmart, which is now owned by Transformco, also has three stores in the U.S. Virgin Islands."

As economic conditions deteriorate, millions of impoverished people that inhabit our major cities are going to become extremely desperate. And extremely desperate people do extremely desperate things. We are already seeing so much chaos all over the nation, but what is ahead is going to be so much worse."

Dan, I Allegedly, "Bank Cracks Down on Meat Eaters"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 9/25/24
"Bank Cracks Down on Meat Eaters"
"Did you know banks are now tracking your meat purchases? Welcome back to IAllegedly, it's Dan here bringing you the latest on how NatWest Bank is spying on what you eat! Insane, right? From encouraging vegan choices to controlling our energy usage, it seems like privacy is under attack."
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Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Loving Touch"

Full screen recommended.
Deuter, "Loving Touch"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its more familiar outlines are seen in the brighter central region of the nebula in this impressive wide-angle view. But the composite image combines many short and long exposures to also reveal an extremely faint outer halo. At an estimated distance of 3,000 light-years, the faint outer halo is over 5 light-years across.
Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a sun-like star. More recently, some planetary nebulae are found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years. Visible on the left, some 50 million light-years beyond the watchful planetary nebula, lies spiral galaxy NGC 6552.”
"Our planet is a tiny porthole, looking over a cosmic sea.
Can we learn what lies beyond our own horizons of perception?" 

"What Is Hope?"

"What Is Hope?"

"What is hope? It is the pre-sentiment that imagination is more real and reality is less real than it looks. It is the hunch that the overwhelming brutality of facts that oppress and repress us is not the last word. It is the suspicion that reality is more complex than the realists want us to believe. That the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of the actual; and in a miraculous and unexplained way, life is opening creative events which will light the way to freedom and resurrection. But the two - suffering and hope - must live from each other. Suffering without hope produces resentment and despair. But hope without suffering creates illusions, naïveté and drunkenness.

So let us plant dates even though we who plant them will never eat them. We must live by the love of what we will never see. That is the secret discipline. It is the refusal to let our creative act be dissolved away by our need for immediate sense experience, and it is a struggled commitment to the future of our grandchildren. Such disciplined hope is what has given prophets, revolutionaries and saints the courage to die for the future they envisage. They make their own bodies the seed of their highest hope."
- Rubin Alves

"The Most Honest Three Minutes In Television History"

Strong language alert!
Full screen recommended.
"The Most Honest Three Minutes In Television History"
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Gerald Celente, "Israel War + Ukraine War = Nuclear War"

Very strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 9/24/24
"Israel War + Ukraine War = Nuclear War"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Comments here:

Jeremiah Babe, "Warning: We Now Have A Major Debt Crisis On Our Hands, People Can't Afford To Live"

Jeremiah Babe, 9/24/24
"Warning: We Now Have A Major Debt Crisis On Our Hands, 
People Can't Afford To Live"
Comments here:

The Daily "Near You?""

Padova, Italy. Thanks for stopping by!

"The US Government's Debt Crisis: Why Bankruptcy Is Unavoidable and What It Means for You"

"The US Government's Debt Crisis: 
Why Bankruptcy Is Unavoidable and What It Means for You"
by Nick Giambruno

"The US government can no longer delay or disguise its impending bankruptcy. The US federal government has the biggest debt in the history of the world. And it’s continuing to grow at a rapid, unstoppable pace. First, let me put some crucial numbers and concepts into perspective.

You often hear the media, politicians, and financial analysts casually toss around the word "trillion" without appreciating what it means. A trillion is a massive, almost unfathomable number. The human brain has trouble understanding something so huge. The image below shows stacks of $100 bills and a human for reference.
That's one trillion. Here's $30 trillion when the national debt was "only" $30 trillion:
Suppose you had a job that paid you $1 per second, or $3,600 per hour. That amounts to $86,400 per day and about $32 million per year. With that job, it would take you 31.5 years to earn a billion dollars. With that job, it would take you over 31,688 YEARS to earn a trillion dollars. Suppose you earned $75,000 a year, which is the typical household income in the US. It would take you over 13 million years to make a trillion dollars. If you had a trillion one-dollar bills, you could cover the surface area of Delaware twice over.

If you stacked a trillion one-dollar bills on top of each other, it would reach 67,866 miles high, about one-fourth of the distance from Earth to the moon. If you took that same trillion one-dollar bills and instead stacked them end-to-end, the length would exceed the distance between the Earth and the sun. So that’s how enormous a trillion is.

When politicians carelessly spend and print money measured in the trillions, they are in dangerous territory. And that is precisely what the fiat currency system has enabled the US government to do. Today, the US federal debt has gone parabolic and is over $35 TRILLION.

To put that in perspective, if you earned $1 a second 24/7/365 - about $31 million per year - it would take over 1,109,080 YEARS to pay off the US federal debt. And that’s with the unrealistic assumption that it would stop growing. In short, the US government can’t repay its debt. It can’t even pay the interest expense without going into further debt. Default is inevitable.

It Will Not Be an Explicit Default: The US government is out of options and cannot repay what it has borrowed. Therefore, the question is not whether the US government will default but how.

Consider the recurring debt ceiling farce in the US Congress, which has been raised over 100 times since 1944 to avoid an explicit default. When faced with a choice, politicians always choose the most expedient option. In this case, that means issuing more debt rather than making tough budget decisions or explicitly defaulting.

That raises an important question: who will buy all this debt (Treasuries)? Historically, there has been a vast foreign appetite for Treasuries, but not anymore. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the US government has launched its most aggressive sanctions campaign ever. The US government and its allies froze around $300 billion of the Russian central bank’s reserves - the nation’s accumulated savings. It was a stunning illustration of the political risk associated with the US dollar and Treasuries. It showed that the US government could deny access to another sovereign country’s reserves at the flip of a switch.

Then, in April 2024, President Joe Biden signed the REPO Act into law. It allows the US government to seize frozen Russian state assets and transfer the funds to Ukraine. In short, the US dollar and Treasuries have become weaponized in a way they had not before. They are now clearly not neutral assets worthy of forming the bedrock of the international financial system but political tools for Washington to coerce others.

The rising political risk attached to Treasuries has made them even less attractive as a store of value. Many countries are undoubtedly wondering if the US government will seize their savings if they run afoul with Washington in even the most trivial ways. China is one of the largest holders of US Treasuries, and it indeed took note of what is happening. Since 2022 - when the US froze Russian state assets - China has sold about 25% of its Treasuries, an enormous change in such a short period. Even US allies, like Japan, have cut their Treasury holdings.

There are numerous other examples. The bottom line is that it’s clear the world isn’t hungry for US debt right now as supply is exploding. In the bond market, when demand for a bond falls, the interest rate rises to entice buyers and holders. However, the US government cannot allow interest rates to rise because the skyrocketing interest expense has become an urgent threat to its solvency. The interest expense on the federal debt is already bigger than defense spending and is set to become the largest item in the US government’s budget in months.

If higher interest rates are off the table and cannot entice more natural buyers, who will buy all this debt? The only entity capable of doing this is the Federal Reserve, which buys Treasuries with dollars it creates out of thin air. Here’s the bottom line. The US government can’t pay off its debt. They won’t explicitly default. They can’t entice a meaningful amount of new Treasury buyers by allowing interest rates to rise. That means currency debasement is their only practical option.

Fed Chair Powell’s recent pivot to monetary easing and rate cuts is compounding the situation. That means the Fed has given up on bringing inflation down… even though it remains well above their target. It’s an incredible failure and will have ENORMOUS investment implications for the US dollar and gold. If the gold price is already hitting record highs, imagine what will happen when the Fed flips back to easing with even more currency debasement than the previous rounds of stimulus.

I think the gold price could skyrocket. The last time the US experienced runaway inflation was in the 1970s. Then, gold skyrocketed from $35 per ounce to $850 in 1980 - a gain of over 2,300% or more than 24x. I expect the percentage rise in the price of gold to be at least as significant as it was during the 1970s. While this megatrend is already well underway, I believe the most significant gains are still ahead."

Redacted, "U.S. Congress Is Prepping For A 'Mass Casualty' Event Before Election"

Redacted, 9/24/24
"U.S. Congress Is Prepping For 
A 'Mass Casualty' Event Before Election"
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"Israel in Turmoil: Hezbollah Crushes IDF's Lebanon Offensive"

Danny Haiphong, 9/24/24
"Israel in Turmoil: 
Hezbollah Crushes IDF's Lebanon Offensive"
Lebanese journalist Ghadi Francis and UK-based journalist and rapper Lowkey react to the shocking Israeli offensive in Lebanon and give their assessment of what it means for the future of the conflict.
Comments here:
o
Full Screen recommended.
Times Of India, 9/24/24
"200,000 Israelis Flee Homes As Hezbollah Rains Missiles; 
'50 Rockets In 10 Mins' Shake Israel"
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"How It Really Is"

 

Dan, I Allegedly, "We Are in a Debt Spiral - 40% Didn't Pay Rent!"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 9/24/24
"We Are in a Debt Spiral - 40% Didn't Pay Rent!"
"Get ready to uncover the shocking truth about the small biz collapse with a staggering 40% bankruptcy rate! Today, we're diving deep into the troubling debt spiral that's hitting hard. As I unravel these numbers, it becomes clear: businesses are in trouble, and things aren't getting better anytime soon. Rent's unpaid, sales are plummeting, and expenses are spiraling out of control."
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Greg Hunter, "Massive Unrest in 2024 No Matter Who Wins"

"Massive Unrest in 2024 No Matter Who Wins"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Financial writer and precious metals broker Bill Holter says the latest .5% rate cut by the Fed shows something is very wrong with the economy. There were some big reported problems a few months ago with the yen carry trade blowing up and 63 banks hiding $500 billion in losses. Now, billionaire investor Warren Buffett is selling off millions of shares in BofA stock, inflation has surged, along with business bankruptcies in America, and total household debt and federal debt has hit new all-time highs. This is just scratching the surface of the financial problems that are already here. The world is wrestling with unpayable debt everywhere. So, why the big rate cut now when the Fed says the economy is going great? Holter says, “I think there is absolute desperation. They look at the poll numbers, and they realize they are not going to be able to cheat enough to win. They certainly know behind the scenes that the entire system, including the Federal Reserve and including the Treasury, is all insolvent. So, yeah, there is absolute desperation. I was saying 10 years ago they would ultimately kick the table over because that’s the way to cover their tracks. They don’t want fingers pointed at them. So, what do you do? You nuke a city. Oh, then they can’t have an election, and their tracks get covered. My odds for not having an election in November are now 65% to 70% we don’t have an election.”

Holter says keep your eyes on the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and the real possibility of them starting to settle trade in something other than US dollars sooner than later. This is extremely dollar negative and highly inflationary. Holter contends we are going to see a massive credit crisis, and that will “bring things to a screeching halt.” Holter explains, “Nothing will function if credit ceases. It is used in every single process everywhere for everything. So, if credit breaks, and confidence breaks and credit is not forthcoming, then nothing is forthcoming. You get some sort of credit event. Then stores are going to be wiped out immediately, but they are not going to be resupplied.”

Holter has long warned about a real-life Mad Max apocalyptic world where people scrounge for what they need to survive. Holter says, “Every day you wake up, you are only 72 hours away. I can’t tell you when this is going to happen. All I can say is the financial system in the West is untenable. From a math standpoint, this Mad Max scenario is going to happen. When I first talked about Mad Max in 2017, I got an absolute rash of crap in emails and comments that said I was crazy, you are nuts, Mad Max will never happen because this is America. Now, it seems to me it’s common that people are using the term Mad Max over the last few years.” Holter told me he no longer gets any negative comments when he brings up the Mad Max world he sees coming.

Holter says, “If there is an election, no matter who wins, there is going to be massive unrest. If Trump wins, there will be unrest that is paid for (by Democrats and the Deep State). And if Kamala wins, you will finally see polite conservatives, who have followed the rule of law, who are finally going to say that’s the last straw. So, I believe no matter who wins, there will be massive rioting and massive strife, and it could get to civil war. We could see that.”

In closing, Holter says, “The country has been hollowed out in every way possible. One of the biggest hollowing outs is the country has specifically, from a government and school standpoint, turned away from God. If you live in a city, you are not going to make it - end of story. Once you get derivatives cascading, it’s a 72-hour event, and no markets will open anywhere. When markets don’t open, that means there is no more credit. When there is no credit, the real economy stops.” There is much more in the 46-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One
 with financial writer and precious metals expert Bill Holter.

Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 9/24/24"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/24/24
"Alert! Prepare For A Worst Case Scenario, 
The System is Being Deliberately Destabilized"
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o
Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/24/24
"FED Warns, Red Flag; Consumer (Con)fidence Craters; 
Home Prices Hit New Record"
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Monday, September 23, 2024

Canadian Prepper, "Alert! Russians Told To Prep For A 'Nuclear Event'; US Troops Enter Israel"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 9/23/24
"Alert! Russians Told To Prep For A 'Nuclear Event';
 US Troops Enter Israel"
Comments here:

“Death twitches my ear; 'Live,' he says...
'I'm coming.”
- Virgil

God help us...

"The Economy, 9/23/24"

Jeremiah Babe, 9/23/24
"Your Job Is On Borrowed Time,
Chipotle Fast Food Robots Replacing Workers"
Comments here:
o
Steven Van Metre, 9/23/24
"You Won’t Believe What’s Coming – 
Millions Will Lose Their Jobs in the Coming Months!"
Comments here:
o
Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/23/24
"The FED Is Going Down! 
We Are Returning To A Constitutional Money System!"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Sea and Silence"

Deuter, "Sea and Silence"

"A Look to the Heavens, With Chet Raymo"

“Reaching For The Stars”
by Chet Raymo
“Here is a spectacular detail of the Eagle Nebula, a gassy star-forming region of the Milky Way Galaxy, about 7,000 light-years away. This particular spire of gas and dust was recently featured on APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day). The Eagle lies in the equatorial constellation Serpens. If you went out tonight and looked at this part of the sky - more or less midway between Arcturus and Antares - you might see nothing at all. The brightest star in Serpens is of the third magnitude, perhaps invisible in an urban environment. No part of the Eagle Nebula is available to unaided human vision. How big is the nebula in the sky? Hold a pinhead at arm's length and it would just about cover the spire. I like to think about things not mentioned in the APOD descriptions.

If the Sun were at the bottom of the spire, Alpha centauri, our nearest stellar neighbor, would be about halfway up the column. Sirius, the brightest star in Earth's sky, would be near the top. Let's say you sent out a spacecraft from the bottom of the spire that travelled at the speed of the two Voyager craft that are now traversing the outer reaches of the Solar System. It would take more than 200,000 years to reach the top of the spire.

The Hubble Space Telescope cost a lot of money to build, deploy, and operate. It has done a lot of good science. But perhaps the biggest return on the investment is to turn on ordinary folks like you and me to the scale and complexity of the universe. The human brain evolved, biologically and culturally, in a universe conceived on the human scale. We resided at its center. The stars were just up there on the dome of night. The Sun and Moon attended our desires. "All the world's a stage," wrote Shakespeare, and he meant it literally; the cosmos was designed by a benevolent creator as a stage for the human drama. All of that has gone by the board. Now we can travel in our imagination for 200,000 years along a spire of glowing, star-birthing gas that is only the tiniest fragment of a nebula that is only the tiniest fragment of a galaxy that is but one of hundreds of billions of galaxies we can potentially see with our telescopes.

Most of us still live psychologically in the universe of Dante and Shakespeare. The biggest intellectual challenge of our times is how to bring our brains up to speed. How to shake our imaginations out of the slumber of centuries. How to learn to live purposefully in a universe that is apparently indifferent to the human drama. How to stretch the human story to match the light-years.”

The Poet: Barbara Crooker, "In the Middle..."

"In the Middle..."

"In the middle
of a life that's as complicated as everyone else's,
struggling for balance, juggling time.
The mantle clock that was my grandfather's
has stopped at 9:20; we haven't had time
to get it repaired. The brass pendulum is still,
the chimes don't ring. One day you look out the window,
green summer, the next, and the leaves have already fallen,
and a grey sky lowers the horizon. Our children almost grown,
our parents gone, it happened so fast. Each day, we must learn
again how to love, between morning's quick coffee
and evening's slow return. Steam from a pot of soup rises,
mixing with the yeasty smell of baking bread. Our bodies
twine, and the big black dog pushes his great head between;
his tail is a metronome, 3/4 time. We'll never get there,
Time is always ahead of us, running down the beach, urging
us on faster, faster, but sometimes we take off our watches,
sometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh
of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up
in love, running out of time."

~ Barbara Crooker

"Perhaps They Never Will..."

"One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be seen many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will."
- Rachel Carson

"The Sharp Tang And Savor Of Existence..."

"The Sharp Tang And Savor Of Existence..."

"The thought of the disaster which almost certainly lay in wait for the Other Men threw me into a horror of doubt about the universe in which such a thing could happen. That a whole world of intelligent beings could be destroyed was not an unfamiliar idea to me; but there is a great difference between an abstract possibility and a concrete and inescapable danger. On my native planet, whenever I had been dismayed by the suffering and the futility of individuals, I had taken comfort in the thought that at least the massed effect of all our blind striving must be the slow but glorious awakening of the human spirit. This hope, this certainty, had been the one sure consolation. But now I saw that there was no guarantee of any such triumph. It seemed that the universe, or the maker of the universe, must be indifferent to the fate of worlds. That there should be endless struggle and suffering and waste must of course be accepted; and gladly, for these were the very soil in which the spirit grew. But that all struggle should be finally, absolutely vain, that a whole world of sensitive spirits fail and die, must be sheer evil. In my horror it seemed to me that Hate must be the Star Maker.

Not so to Bvalitu. "Even if the powers destroy us," he said, "who are we, to condemn them? As well might a fleeting word judge the speaker that forms it. Perhaps they use us for their own high ends, use our strength and our weakness, our joy and our pain, in some theme inconceivable to us, and excellent." But I protested, "What theme could justify such waste, such futility? And how can we help judging; and how otherwise can we judge than by the light of our own hearts, by which we judge ourselves? It would be base to praise the Star Maker, knowing that he was too insensitive to care about the fate of his worlds." Bvalitu was silent in his mind for a moment. Then he looked up, searching among the smoke-clouds for a daytime star. And then he said to me in his mind, "If he saved all the worlds, but tormented just one man, would you forgive him? Or if he was a little harsh only to one stupid child? What has our pain to do with it, or our failure? Star Maker! It is a good word, though we can have no notion of its meaning. Oh, Star Maker, even if you destroy me, I must praise you. Even if you torture my dearest. Even if you torment and waste all your lovely worlds, the little figments of your imagination, yet I must praise you. For if you do so, it must be right. In me it would be wrong, but in you it must be right."

He looked down once more upon the ruined city, then continued, "And if after all there is no Star Maker, if the great company of galaxies leapt into being of their own accord, and even if this little nasty world of ours is the only habitation of the spirit anywhere among the stars, and this world doomed, even so, even so, I must praise. But if there is no Star Maker, what can it be that I praise? I do not know. I will call it only the sharp tang and savor of existence. But to call it this is to say little."
- Olaf Stapledon, "Star Maker"
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Freely download “Star Maker”, by Olaf Stapledon, here:

"From Stars to Souls: The Science of What Made You You, with a Dazzling Poem Read by David Byrne"

Pillars of Creation, Eagle Nebula, Messier 16. 
Infrared photograph. NASA /Hubble Space Telescope.

"From Stars to Souls: The Science of What Made You You,
with a Dazzling Poem Read by David Byrne"
by Maria Popova

"We are each a chance constellation of elements forged in long-dead stars assembled by gravity, which may be the other word for God - the weakest of the four fundamental forces, yet the great cosmic compactor that made the first atoms cohere into a common center to form the first star: an immense ball of gas, at the core of which was a hydrogen sphere that eventually reached pressures of millions of atmospheres and heated up to millions of degrees. These extreme conditions triggered a new phenomenon in the cosmos - the first nuclear fusion reactions: When two hydrogen atoms collide with immense force, neutrons are transferred from one nucleus to the other, making some atoms larger. After a series of such collisions, a nucleus with two protons forms and the second element - helium - is born. As the star ignites, illuminating the austere darkness of pure spacetime surrounding it, it keeps burning its hydrogen to make more helium. The fusion accelerates, forging carbon, then neon, then oxygen, and so forth across the periodic table, turning the star into a kind of onion with layers of fusion reactions.

Most of the first twenty-six elements in the periodic table - the elements composing almost everything we can touch and see - were created by nuclear fusion in individual stars. If you could tag any individual atom in your body and follow it backward in time, across all the other matter it composed before it became yours - your mother’s body, the food your mother ate, the soil in which that food grew, the geologic strata ground down by the oceans to make that soil - you could trace it all the way back to the core of a particular star that lived and died billions of years ago: an actual atom that is now in you, having prevailed over the infinite probabilities by which it could have ended up in someone else.

To this Rube Goldberg machine of chance you owe all of your particularity - alter any part of that cosmic genealogy, and you would have ended up as someone else.

The victory march of our particularity against probability comes alive in a short, dazzling poem by Ruth Stone (June 8, 1915–November 19, 2011). Stone was six and enchanted by her grandmother’s dictionary when she began writing poetry. She was eight-four and the grandmother of seven when she received major recognition as a poet. By the time she died, having lived nearly a century and survived her husband’s suicide, she had been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won the National Book Award with her singular poems bridging the domestic and the cosmic, lensing the world of love and loss, of rapture and regret, through the world of galaxies and particles - poems shimmering with the spirit of The Universe in Verse (which is now a book).

This poem, found in "What Love Comes To" (public library) - Stone’s final poetry collection, published just before her death at age 96 - was read at the seventh annual Universe in Verse by David Byrne:

"Strings"
by Ruth Stone

"We pop into life the way
particles pop in and out
of the continuum.
We are a seething mass
of probability.
And probably I love you.
The evil of larvae
and the evil of stars
are a formula for the future.
Some bodies can
thrust their arms into
a flame and be instantly
cured of this world,
while others sicken.
Why think, little brother
like the moon, spit out like
a broken tooth.
“Oh,” groans the world.
The outer planets,
the fizzing sun, here we come
with our luggage.
Look at the clever things
we have made out of
a few building blocks -
O fabulous continuum."

Follow the continuum forward into the science of what happens when we die, then revisit David Byrne’s animated reading of Pattiann Rogers’s magnificent poem “Achieving Perspective,” with art by Maira Kalman, and Nick Cave’s animated reading of “But We Had Music.”

The Daily "Near You?"

Commerce City, Colorado, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"It's Just Life..."

“Bad things don’t happen to people because they deserve for them to happen. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s just… life. And no matter who we are, we have to take the hand we’re dealt, crappy though it may be, and try our very best to move forward anyway, to love anyway, to have hope anyway… to have faith that there’s a purpose to the journey we’re on.”
- Mia Sheridan