A quick note about the dating of events in the newsletter and other references to events in the evolution of life, the universe, and everything. For brevity, I did not include many important nuances or explain that some dates and events (like The Big Bang) are the subject of ongoing scientific debate and inquiry. And the universe may be teeming with life; we just haven't found it (yet). (But the Fermi Paradox must be considered.) The existence of RNA viruses suggest that that there may have been an RNA life form that lives on in DNA-based molecules. Etc. I am happy to have readers provide detail and nuance that I did not include because of my effort to be brief, but I would be disappointed if anyone felt I was being superficial or sloppy. I tried otherwise.
As noted below, many readers comment that "civilization" began earlier than 3,500 BCE, the emergence of the Mesopotamian cities. Drawing that line is difficult and definitional.
A perfect piece to end 2022, Robert. Thank you. The photos from the James Webb Space Telescope also put things in perspective. One of the newer Webb photos shows a cartwheel galaxy, which the BBC says has a diameter of about 145,000 light years. 1 light year equals 5.88 trillion miles, so the diameter of this cartwheel galaxy is 85,260,000 trillion miles. We humans might not matter to the universe, but it's sobering to remember that we matter to each other. Dignity, courtesy, respect, kindness.
When one considers where most of us would have said we thought things were at 365 days ago, and where we think they are at tonight, I think that answers the question, does taking action have any consequence? A whole lot of people listened to "those who know these things" and their predictions of what was going to happen and what people were going to do as a result and said "Nope! Not even!" And went out and worked their assets off, and virtually nothing that "everyone" knew was going to happen and what it would mean went on to happen. Who ever thought Kansas - Kansas! - would vote to keep their constitution pro-choice? Who ever thought that Michigan would flip completely to Democratic control for the first time in 40+ years? The "red tsunami" turned out to not even be a rain puddle.
None of those things "just happened." They happened because a whole lot of us said "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
I really like the big picture that your timeline conveys. I am struggling to be proud to be an American. I’m incredibly grateful as a baby boomer to have grown up with leaders having just defeated Nazism and Imperialism and bestowing values of integrity for us. And women who were another level of independent because they had to do everything while the men were away.
A total fun aside here is in my own family, brothers of one family married sisters of another so those families were double cousins. While those dads were away at war, my aunts and the 2 kids each family moved in together. One went to work and the other took care of the 4 kids. They became a very resilient family unit and lucky that both dads eventually returned, albeit one with a serious arm injury.
Back to being proud to be an American. During my lifetime I saw civil rights much improved, the end of Jim Crow laws, women’s rights start to take off. This greatly impacted me by being the first generation with birth control and ability to achieve as we chose, subject to the social limits, which moved in the right direction. I, myself, broke several glass ceilings at work by being the first woman allowed in the computer room and then various leadership positions.
I’m ashamed to see our progress crash so badly. I’m sadder yet to see the impacts on people of color, Jews, and gays. I want to get back on track of progress of civil rights and truly find ways for all people to live up to their potential. Oh, and I want to live in a country that values its children more than its guns.
"From the moment that the first cell twitched to life 3.7 billion years ago, every one of your ancestors over the course of billions of years had to survive and reproduce in order for you to be here today."
So true, and yet so difficult to swallow. I remember first thinking about that when I was 7, realizing it was incredible that I actually existed--that ***I*** was conscious, despite the odds against it--odds which I lacked the perspective to come close to fully comprehending. Yet I sometimes wonder if this is really true, or if any philosophers have theories that all of our consciousnesses were inevitable, because the odds against survival of every ancestor seem so overwhelming.
And on the other hand, my brother in law, and his and my sister's two sons had a very close encounter with non-existence in late October or early November of 1621, when their ancestor tumbled off of the Mayflower during a gale. Here's the story:
"In the fall of 1620, the Mayflower's ability to steady herself in a gale produced a most deceptive tranquillity for a young indentured servant named John Howland. As the Mayflower lay ahull, Howland apparently grew restless down below. He saw no reason why he could not venture out of the fetid depths of 'tween decks for just a moment...
"The Mayflower lurched suddenly to leeward. Howland staggered to the ship's rail and tumbled into the sea.
That should have been the end of him. But dangling over the side, and trailing behind the ship was the topsail halyard, the rope used to raise and lower the upper sail. Howland was in his midtwenties and strong, and when his hand found the halyard, he gripped the rope with such feral desperation that even though he was pulled down more than ten feet below the ocean's surface, he never let go. Several sailors took up the halyard and hauled Howland back in, finally snagging him with a boat hook and dragging him up onto the deck."
--Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower, a story of courage, community, and war
So much less dramatically, and yet, with its own drama of a different sort, had my father gone for graduate school to the University of Chicago instead of to Harvard, he would not have been present to flip over my mother the moment he saw her enter the statistics class on his first day of graduate school, and I would never have marveled, at age 7, at the beauty of the hill on which we lived in Seattle, and how amazing it was that I existed to perceive it.
Happy New Year to Rob, your Managing Editor, and to the whole TE Community. I'm an eternal optimist, who's also a realist. I believe good things will happen because I have faith that the majority of people in this country, and indeed, in the world, want the same thing... to have a positive influence on their neighbors, and to leave the world a better place than they found it. All good intentions, which, to date, we have failed at. But the future is yet to be written, and I believe humanity will step up and do the right thing.
That paragraph near the end about what it has taken for me, for any of us, to survive and be living at this moment in history, resonated with me. I have often wondered why, after three bouts with cancer, I'm still here. I'm not sure that I have what it takes to have a tremendous effect on the future of the country or the world. But I do know, that even though by all rights, I should have died four years ago, I've been granted the opportunity to care for my aging parents - my mother passed away two weeks ago, and my father lives with us. My prayer has been to outlive them, so I can always care for them. I've been blessed to have that opportunity so far, despite all probability to the contrary. I hope I can have many more years to see my non-binary kid continue into productive adulthood.
I also believe what has been told in so many time travel movies, that one small change in the past, can have gargantuan (and usually) catastrophic consequences. If that's true, then the tiniest things we do today, like a butterfly's wings, can surely change the future for the better. I'm resting my New Year's hopes on that.
2022 has been another miraculous year. I could never have imagined that I would teach an Afghan refugee how to parallel park. Can whatever lies ahead beat that? Thank you all and Robert and Jill for all you bring to my life.
Dec 31, 2022·edited Dec 31, 2022Liked by Robert B. Hubbell
“We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon” sang CSN of Joni Mitchell’s lyrics. Or “May the Force be with you”…. There are many amazing species (all!) on this earth, some, like Homo sapiens have curiosity and imagination (almost more important than intelligence IMHO) and that is a wondrous thing…..a thing that will not save human-kind with its hubris in most matters. Maybe, just maybe, there are other worlds of curious, intelligent, imaginative beings as well….I, for one, would like to know that, but probably never will. Important, tho’, that I can IMAGINE it…. Edit: Oh, and I should add my oft said statement: The only reason I want to live forever is to find out how it all turns out!
At first, not having given birth to children of my own, I was feeling sad, left out. And then I remembered the chance I have many times a day, maybe right here, right now, to jiggle another person’s DNA (please take this loosely) to an act of kindness. Recognition. Appreciation. Perhaps simply hearing what another person has to say. And I will have made my mark through them in the days and who-knows-how-long to come. I remembered that tomorrow morning I will be leading a class in an embodied meditation practice called Sensory Awareness where people may discover that their feet are in relationship with gravity, and thus Earth, and at the same time in a Greater Knowing. a Spaciousness, our head in the Stars. Robert, I will bring your beautifully expressed sense of perspective with me into our class nine hours from now.
I found your remarks about the evolution of our planet and life on it uncanny because I was just thinking about the same thing in the book I am writing on the future of cultural memory in the era of climate emergency. Instead of the cultural evolution model than runs from primitive to civilized - totally debunked but it still underlies so much thinking - we might think of how amazing that the early life forms passed themselves on into us - we are continuous with them - you put it much better than I - and how wondrous to contemplate that early hominids developed and passed on so much knowledge to get us to where we are today. By which I mean, where we would like to go to keep the earth habitable and to thrive. Happy new year to all, and thank you again Robert for your amazing and inspiring wisdom.
I love your perspective! Thank you! Truly, we are each a miracle. Let us acknowledge that in ourselves, and every other creature, even those with whom we disagree.
Bless you and your Managing Editor for your beautiful, encouraging work. I look forward to reading you every day, and have found many ways to work on behalf of democracy thanks to you and the community you gave created.
A quick greeting to you and yours and sincerest wishes for a healthy and happy new year. Thank you for getting me, and countless others, through another crazy year!
May next year bring us the satisfaction I know most of us are waiting for 😁
A quick note about the dating of events in the newsletter and other references to events in the evolution of life, the universe, and everything. For brevity, I did not include many important nuances or explain that some dates and events (like The Big Bang) are the subject of ongoing scientific debate and inquiry. And the universe may be teeming with life; we just haven't found it (yet). (But the Fermi Paradox must be considered.) The existence of RNA viruses suggest that that there may have been an RNA life form that lives on in DNA-based molecules. Etc. I am happy to have readers provide detail and nuance that I did not include because of my effort to be brief, but I would be disappointed if anyone felt I was being superficial or sloppy. I tried otherwise.
As noted below, many readers comment that "civilization" began earlier than 3,500 BCE, the emergence of the Mesopotamian cities. Drawing that line is difficult and definitional.
A perfect piece to end 2022, Robert. Thank you. The photos from the James Webb Space Telescope also put things in perspective. One of the newer Webb photos shows a cartwheel galaxy, which the BBC says has a diameter of about 145,000 light years. 1 light year equals 5.88 trillion miles, so the diameter of this cartwheel galaxy is 85,260,000 trillion miles. We humans might not matter to the universe, but it's sobering to remember that we matter to each other. Dignity, courtesy, respect, kindness.
When one considers where most of us would have said we thought things were at 365 days ago, and where we think they are at tonight, I think that answers the question, does taking action have any consequence? A whole lot of people listened to "those who know these things" and their predictions of what was going to happen and what people were going to do as a result and said "Nope! Not even!" And went out and worked their assets off, and virtually nothing that "everyone" knew was going to happen and what it would mean went on to happen. Who ever thought Kansas - Kansas! - would vote to keep their constitution pro-choice? Who ever thought that Michigan would flip completely to Democratic control for the first time in 40+ years? The "red tsunami" turned out to not even be a rain puddle.
None of those things "just happened." They happened because a whole lot of us said "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
Hurrah for us.
I really like the big picture that your timeline conveys. I am struggling to be proud to be an American. I’m incredibly grateful as a baby boomer to have grown up with leaders having just defeated Nazism and Imperialism and bestowing values of integrity for us. And women who were another level of independent because they had to do everything while the men were away.
A total fun aside here is in my own family, brothers of one family married sisters of another so those families were double cousins. While those dads were away at war, my aunts and the 2 kids each family moved in together. One went to work and the other took care of the 4 kids. They became a very resilient family unit and lucky that both dads eventually returned, albeit one with a serious arm injury.
Back to being proud to be an American. During my lifetime I saw civil rights much improved, the end of Jim Crow laws, women’s rights start to take off. This greatly impacted me by being the first generation with birth control and ability to achieve as we chose, subject to the social limits, which moved in the right direction. I, myself, broke several glass ceilings at work by being the first woman allowed in the computer room and then various leadership positions.
I’m ashamed to see our progress crash so badly. I’m sadder yet to see the impacts on people of color, Jews, and gays. I want to get back on track of progress of civil rights and truly find ways for all people to live up to their potential. Oh, and I want to live in a country that values its children more than its guns.
G-D bless you, Robert, and Jill and your entire family. You are a miracle, an inspiration, an adventure, an awakening spirit, an “old soul.”
I dedicate Joni Mitchell’s song, “Woodstock,” to you!
“...We are stardust We are golden And we’ve got to get ourselves Back to the garden.”
May the bombers turn into butterflies in 2023.
"From the moment that the first cell twitched to life 3.7 billion years ago, every one of your ancestors over the course of billions of years had to survive and reproduce in order for you to be here today."
So true, and yet so difficult to swallow. I remember first thinking about that when I was 7, realizing it was incredible that I actually existed--that ***I*** was conscious, despite the odds against it--odds which I lacked the perspective to come close to fully comprehending. Yet I sometimes wonder if this is really true, or if any philosophers have theories that all of our consciousnesses were inevitable, because the odds against survival of every ancestor seem so overwhelming.
And on the other hand, my brother in law, and his and my sister's two sons had a very close encounter with non-existence in late October or early November of 1621, when their ancestor tumbled off of the Mayflower during a gale. Here's the story:
"In the fall of 1620, the Mayflower's ability to steady herself in a gale produced a most deceptive tranquillity for a young indentured servant named John Howland. As the Mayflower lay ahull, Howland apparently grew restless down below. He saw no reason why he could not venture out of the fetid depths of 'tween decks for just a moment...
"The Mayflower lurched suddenly to leeward. Howland staggered to the ship's rail and tumbled into the sea.
That should have been the end of him. But dangling over the side, and trailing behind the ship was the topsail halyard, the rope used to raise and lower the upper sail. Howland was in his midtwenties and strong, and when his hand found the halyard, he gripped the rope with such feral desperation that even though he was pulled down more than ten feet below the ocean's surface, he never let go. Several sailors took up the halyard and hauled Howland back in, finally snagging him with a boat hook and dragging him up onto the deck."
--Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower, a story of courage, community, and war
So much less dramatically, and yet, with its own drama of a different sort, had my father gone for graduate school to the University of Chicago instead of to Harvard, he would not have been present to flip over my mother the moment he saw her enter the statistics class on his first day of graduate school, and I would never have marveled, at age 7, at the beauty of the hill on which we lived in Seattle, and how amazing it was that I existed to perceive it.
Happy New Year to Rob, your Managing Editor, and to the whole TE Community. I'm an eternal optimist, who's also a realist. I believe good things will happen because I have faith that the majority of people in this country, and indeed, in the world, want the same thing... to have a positive influence on their neighbors, and to leave the world a better place than they found it. All good intentions, which, to date, we have failed at. But the future is yet to be written, and I believe humanity will step up and do the right thing.
That paragraph near the end about what it has taken for me, for any of us, to survive and be living at this moment in history, resonated with me. I have often wondered why, after three bouts with cancer, I'm still here. I'm not sure that I have what it takes to have a tremendous effect on the future of the country or the world. But I do know, that even though by all rights, I should have died four years ago, I've been granted the opportunity to care for my aging parents - my mother passed away two weeks ago, and my father lives with us. My prayer has been to outlive them, so I can always care for them. I've been blessed to have that opportunity so far, despite all probability to the contrary. I hope I can have many more years to see my non-binary kid continue into productive adulthood.
I also believe what has been told in so many time travel movies, that one small change in the past, can have gargantuan (and usually) catastrophic consequences. If that's true, then the tiniest things we do today, like a butterfly's wings, can surely change the future for the better. I'm resting my New Year's hopes on that.
Blessings to you all.
“What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” ~ Mary Oliver.
2022 has been another miraculous year. I could never have imagined that I would teach an Afghan refugee how to parallel park. Can whatever lies ahead beat that? Thank you all and Robert and Jill for all you bring to my life.
“We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon” sang CSN of Joni Mitchell’s lyrics. Or “May the Force be with you”…. There are many amazing species (all!) on this earth, some, like Homo sapiens have curiosity and imagination (almost more important than intelligence IMHO) and that is a wondrous thing…..a thing that will not save human-kind with its hubris in most matters. Maybe, just maybe, there are other worlds of curious, intelligent, imaginative beings as well….I, for one, would like to know that, but probably never will. Important, tho’, that I can IMAGINE it…. Edit: Oh, and I should add my oft said statement: The only reason I want to live forever is to find out how it all turns out!
At first, not having given birth to children of my own, I was feeling sad, left out. And then I remembered the chance I have many times a day, maybe right here, right now, to jiggle another person’s DNA (please take this loosely) to an act of kindness. Recognition. Appreciation. Perhaps simply hearing what another person has to say. And I will have made my mark through them in the days and who-knows-how-long to come. I remembered that tomorrow morning I will be leading a class in an embodied meditation practice called Sensory Awareness where people may discover that their feet are in relationship with gravity, and thus Earth, and at the same time in a Greater Knowing. a Spaciousness, our head in the Stars. Robert, I will bring your beautifully expressed sense of perspective with me into our class nine hours from now.
Thank you for your insights throughout the year. I wish you and your loved ones health and love in 2023. Peace on earth would be good too!!!
I found your remarks about the evolution of our planet and life on it uncanny because I was just thinking about the same thing in the book I am writing on the future of cultural memory in the era of climate emergency. Instead of the cultural evolution model than runs from primitive to civilized - totally debunked but it still underlies so much thinking - we might think of how amazing that the early life forms passed themselves on into us - we are continuous with them - you put it much better than I - and how wondrous to contemplate that early hominids developed and passed on so much knowledge to get us to where we are today. By which I mean, where we would like to go to keep the earth habitable and to thrive. Happy new year to all, and thank you again Robert for your amazing and inspiring wisdom.
Happy New Year to you and your dear Managing Editor . . . all things told, it's been a very good year!
I love your perspective! Thank you! Truly, we are each a miracle. Let us acknowledge that in ourselves, and every other creature, even those with whom we disagree.
Bless you and your Managing Editor for your beautiful, encouraging work. I look forward to reading you every day, and have found many ways to work on behalf of democracy thanks to you and the community you gave created.
A quick greeting to you and yours and sincerest wishes for a healthy and happy new year. Thank you for getting me, and countless others, through another crazy year!
May next year bring us the satisfaction I know most of us are waiting for 😁