Growing up, Carl Sagan was one of my heroes - I watched Cosmos with my father when it was first aired. He later bought me the companion book, along with several other books on astronomy and cosmology - most likely as a way to stave off the hundreds of questions that I had after every episode. It’s funny, but 25 years later I still have that book - I just pulled it out the other day to show Alex when we were watching the remastered series.

I was cleaning up my computer today and found this bit of text saved off in a file. It’s a piece that eloquently and succinctly speaks to us all about our place in the universe. It’s something that I’ve read through from time to time whenever I needed a bit of perspective. Apparently I’m not the only one - as I went to post this, I found a link to a beautifully done video about our Pale Blue Dot which I’ve included at the bottom. Enjoy.

The picture above is of Earth (the dot in the middle) as seen from 3.7 billion miles away by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, on 6/6/1990.

… Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Carl Sagan, Random House, 1994

The post below is something I first read on a mailing list many, many years ago. It was sent to our list by an Army Vet named Rick.

Although I have a printed copy that’s tacked to my corkboard in my office at home, it became a bit of a tradition to get this in my inbox at the tail end of May. The mailing lists have died off of over the last few years, so I wasn’t expecting to see it today. So it was a pleasant surprise when it popped up in my inbox a few minutes ago.

I’m posting it here so that those of you who have never seen this have a chance to read it - and those of you who have can read it again.

As I told Rick, I can never finish reading this without a tear in my eye.

Memorial Day is their day, isn’t it? It is supposed to be the day a grateful nation pauses to quietly thank the more than one million men and women who have died in military service to their country since the Revolutionary War.

Or is it the day the beach resorts kick into high gear for the summer season, the day the strand is covered by fish-belly white people basting themselves in coconut oil, the day the off-season rates end and the weekend you can’t get in a seaside seafood restaurant with anything less than a one hour wait.

Or is it one of the biggest shopping center sales days of the year, a day when hunting for a parking space is the prime sport for the holiday stay-at-homers? Or is it the weekend when more people will kill themselves on the highways than any other weekend and Highway Patrol troopers work overtime picking up the pieces?

I think the men and women who died for us would understand what we do with their day. I hope they would, because if they wouldn’t, if they would have insisted that it be a somber, respectful day of remembrance, then we have blown it and dishonored their sacrifice.

I knew some of those who died, and the guys I knew would have understood.

They liked a sunny beach and a cold beer and a hot babe in a black bikini, too. They would have enjoyed packing the kids, the inflatable rafts, the coolers, and the suntan lotion in the car and heading for the lake. They would have enjoyed staying at home and cutting the grass and getting together with some friends and cooking some steaks on the grill, too.

But they didn’t get the chance. They blew up in the Marine Barracks in Beirut and died in the oily waters of the Persian Gulf. They caught theirs at the airstrip in Grenada in the little war everyone laughed at. They bought the farm in the I Drang Valley and on Heartbreak Ridge, Phu Tai and at Hue. They froze at the Chosin Reservoir and were shot at the Pusan Perimeter. They drowned in the surf at Omaha Beach or fell in the fetid jungles of Guadalcanal. They were at the Soame and at San Juan Hill and at Gettysburg and at Cerro Gordo and at Valley Forge.

They couldn’t be here with us this weekend, but I think they would understand that we don’t spend the day in tears and heart-wrenching memorials. They wouldn’t want that. Grief is not why they died. They died so we could go fishing. They died so another father could hold his laughing little girl over the waves. They died so another father could toss a baseball to his son in their backyard while the charcoal is getting white. They died so another buddy could drink a beer on his day off. They died so a family could get in the station wagon and go shopping and maybe get some ice cream on the way home.

They won’t mind that we have chosen their day to have our first big outdoor party of the year. But they wouldn’t mind, either, if we took just a second and thought about them.

Some will think of them formally, of course. Wreaths will be laid in small, sparsely attended ceremonies in military cemeteries and at monuments at state capitols and in small town’s squares. Flags will fly over the graves, patriotic words will be spoken and a few people there will probably feel a little anger that no more people showed up. They’ll think no one else remembers.

But we do remember. We remember Smitty and Chico and Davey and the guys who died. We remember the deal we made: If we buy it, we said, drink a beer for me.

I’ll do it for you, guys. I’ll drink that beer for you today, and I’ll sit on that beach for you, and I’ll check out the girls for you and, just briefly, I’ll think of you. I won’t let your memory spoil the trip but you’ll be on that sunny beach with me today. I will not mourn your deaths this Memorial Day, my friends. Rather, I’ll celebrate the life you gave me.

This Bud’s for you, brother!

-Author Unknown-

I just finished updating my Wordpress installation to version 2.2. This upgrade has been somewhat slow for me - on my hard disk I have at least three different versions of Wordpress since 2.0.2, none of which have made it up to my web host.

So this evening I bit the bullet and started to go through the upgrade process during commercials while I watched the Cavs game.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but damn did this upgrade go smooth! Not only does the team at Wordpress turn out great software, they also manage to put together a brain-dead simple upgrade procedure and very well written documentation.

As of right now, all my plugins seem to be working fine. All of my posts are showing up fine. Now all that’s left to do is post this piece through Ecto to make sure that part works. I’m not too worried.

Not wanting to sound too gushing, but I can’t say enough about the Wordpress development team. Their hard work enables me to spend less time managing my blog and more time writing on it.

Now to get back to that writing bit….

I’ve posted the schedule for Alex’s baseball team below for everyone - this year Alex is on the Manchester A’s. Like last year, this is a kid-pitch league. However, unlike last year when we played only Manchester and Doylestown teams, this year we are in the “Hot Stove League” and as a result play several additional communities.

I’ll be honest - I’m looking forward to seeing the boys play, but I’m not too excited by this new league. One of the big positives that we were being told was that this league would be “more competitive”. However, this didn’t impress me since I never really felt that we needed a “more competitive league” for the kids. Let’s face it - we’re Manchester, not the Bronx. Nothing against our kids, but I don’t see us competing at the Little League World Series level. This league also has different rules on substitutions (both players and pitcher) than the other league, and I’m sure that there are a host of other rule changes that we’ll find out as the season goes on. Since Beth and I are going to be scoring again this year, we’d like to get those rules nailed down sooner rather than later.

Alex’s defense has been improving over the course of the last few weeks of practice, and desperately wants to play in the infield. He’s seen time both at short and at second during the practice games (in addition to the outfield) and this year should mark his first foray into the infield. On the offensive side, he’s still somewhat maddeningly sporadic - he’ll miss a half dozen pitches, foul a few off, then drive one or two up the middle. If he can keep things consistent it should be a good season.

So here’s the schedule - if you’re free for a few hours in the evening or on Saturday over the next two months come on down and see some baseball. It’s not the precision of major league ball, but what they lack in skill they make up with in enthusiasm.

• 05/01/07 (Tuesday) Ellet Dodgers @ BMX-5 (Rained Out)
  
• 05/03/07 (Thursday) Coventry White Sox @ Play Center Upper
• 05/04/07 (Friday) Ellet Dodgers @ BMX-5 (Make-up for 05/01 Game)
• 05/05/07 (Saturday) Ellet Cardinals @ Lockhart 4
• 05/08/07 (Tuesday) Coventry Mets @ Lockhart 2
• 05/10/07 (Tuesday) Ellet Red Sox @ Lockhart 2
• 05/15/07 (Tuesday) Firestone Park Rams @ Heinz 2
• 05/17/07 (Thursday) Kenmore Royals @ Lockhart 4
• 05/19/07 (Saturday) Springfield White Sox @ Waterworks
• 05/22/07 (Tuesday) Manchester Dodgers @ Lockhart 4
• 05/24/07 (Thursday) Springfield Bulldogs @ Lockhart 4
• 05/29/07 (Tuesday) Kenmore Red Sox @ Lesser 2
• 05/31/07 (Thursday) Firestone Park Indians @ Heinz 2
• 06/02/07 (Saturday) Ellet Indians @ Lockhart 4
• 06/07/07 (Thursday) Firestone Park Pirates @ Lockhart 4
• 06/09/07 (Saturday) Springfield Indians @ Young 3
• 06/12/07 (Tuesday) Manchester Indians @ Lockhart 4
• 06/14/07 (Thursday) Kenmore Indians @ Lockhart 4
• 06/16/07 (Saturday) Coventry Orioles @ Play Center Upper
• 06/19/07 (Tuesday) Springfield Vipers @ Lockhart 2
• 06/21/07 (Thursday) Coventry Pirates @ Lockhart 4

All Tuesday/Thursday games are scheduled to start at 6pm; all Saturday games start at 1pm. Maps, standings, and scores are available at http://eteamz.com/fpys