Who loved you into existence?

I finished the July/August 2013 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. One of the science fact articles was *Galactic Cannibalism: Who’s On the Menu* by H.G. Stratmann. It talks about what happens when galaxies collide. In particular, he says the Andromeda Galaxy will collide with our own Milky Way Galaxy in about … 3¾ billion years.

But don’t fret. Galaxies, in spite of their size and having billions of stars, have a huge amount of open space. Our nearest stellar neighbor is about 4 light-years away, which is about 24 trillion miles. So the chance of a star from the other galaxy crashing into our sun is quite tiny. Even so, as the to galaxies interact it is possible the orbit of our sun within the Milky Way may be perturbed, sending our sun (and solar system) either closer to the galactic center or away into the depths of space.

NASA and its Hubble Telescope site and some talented artists created a series of images showing what the collision, um, “merger” will look like from earth over the next 7 billion years. The link is to the first image. Click next for the rest of the series.



This afternoon I went to see the film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Lloyd Vogel (played by Matthew Rhys) is a writer for Esquire magazine. After he gets into a fight with his father at his sister’s (third) wedding his editor sends him out to interview Fred Rogers – yes, that Fred Rogers (played by Tom Hanks, who did a wonderful job capturing Rogers). The editor knows Vogel demonizes his subjects and Rogers is the only one who returned calls. Throughout the story I was repeatedly amazed at the kindness that Rogers showed to everyone around him, especially Vogel. At one point Rogers asks Vogel to think about the people who loved him into existence. I highly recommend it.

The editor asked Vogel to write 400 words. The final article was 10,000 words. It was the cover story for that issue.

The movie is based on real life events. Journalist Tom Junod really did write an Esquire article on Rogers and as a result the two men became lifelong friends. Though Junod is clear he did not punch his father at his sister’s wedding – his sister didn’t have a wedding.



Bodie Ashton tweeted a thread about the bush fires in Australia. He talks about how clueless the government is. One measure of the magnitude of the fires: Summer started there about ten days ago. Fire season usually starts two weeks from now. But fires have already been raging for three months. And temperatures have already been consistently well above 40C (104F).

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos adds a few more details. As well as the hottest year, this has also been the driest. Fires have pushed people to beaches or even into the ocean to avoid the heat and flames. The Navy is being rather slow in rescuing those who have been trapped. The gov’t says it is “mostly” meeting goals for carbon reduction. But that statement ignores that a third of the world’s coal comes from Australia. A lot of the locals have moved away from cash but downed telecommunications lines means credit/debit cards can’t be used for gas or lodging.



David Rothkopf tweeted a thread. Here’s part of it:

I just don't believe the only goal is to beat Trump. I believe it is to find a president who can help defeat Trumpism, inequality, and rise to the challenges ahead. I believe any Dem can beat Trump.

If we settle for someone who wins but has no new ideas, does not address the underlying problems, can't rise to the new challenges, can't be re-elected, is unrealistic about the nature of the opposition, then we can win the battle and (continue to) lose the war.

Though Rothkopf doesn’t say which of the Dem candidates best fits this ideal, this is why Elizabeth Warren is my favorite candidate.



Lauren Floyd of Daily Kos suggests four companies to boycott in 2020. I already boycott all four, though only two by conscious decision.

Amazon treats employees “like the gum stuck on the bottom of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ shoes.” He also doesn’t seem to mind extra pollution in neighborhoods of black and brown people. I began boycotting Amazon when I realized how much money he had and that it means he is exploiting his suppliers (he demands special deals that mean authors are underpaid) and workers. When Amazon bought Whole Foods I stopped going there too.

NFL got on the list for its treatment of Colin Kaepernick and because it pays its athletes (mostly black) less money than any other major sport. This one wasn’t a conscious decision for me. I’m just not into football or any other competitive sport.

Walmart has a long reputation for paying its workers so little they qualify for poverty assistance while the owners earn billions a year. This was a decision I made several years ago.

Wells Fargo repeatedly settles lawsuits because of its discriminatory lending policies. This one wasn’t a conscious decision. I’m happy banking with my credit union so never considered being a Wells Fargo customer.



Quote of the day:

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”
~~Theodore Roosevelt, Metropolitan Magazine (1918)

Acceptance, kindness, respect, and love

This afternoon I went to see the movie Won’t You Be My Neighbor? With a title like that it can only be a documentary of Fred Rogers, of the famous Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. And indeed it is.

We see how Rogers gets into television before going off to seminary, then getting back into TV to start his show. We meet the puppets, Daniel (sometimes Rogers’ alter-ego, able to say things the adult can’t), King Friday, and the rest. And we see how Rogers interacts with kids.

After Robert Kennedy’s assassination Daniel asks what that word means. When the space shuttle blows up with a teacher on board Rogers takes up the issue. When Superman becomes popular and kids are hurt playing with Superman capes he tackles the difference between real and make-believe. Public Television barely gets started when a senator wants to defund it and Rogers’ testimony convinces him otherwise. He helped kids cope and made sure he could continue to do that.

One of the recurring characters of the TV series was Officer Clemmons, a black police officer. At a time when black children were being chased out of public swimming pools Rogers invited Officer Clemmons to share his wading pool (only big enough for their feet) and share a towel when they were done. In this movie we learn another aspect of Officer Clemmons – Francois Clemmons, who played the officer, is gay. And in the early 1970s that could not be mentioned on air. Clemmons married, which was a disaster. A while later (perhaps a few years later) Rogers sang a song while Clemmons was there, the song was about I love you as you are. Clemmons realized a man is telling me he loves me, which his father and step father never did, and he loves me knowing I’m gay and he’s okay with that, he loves the gay part too.

Back to the way he treated kids. He respected them. He cared about them. He focused on the child in front of him. And he listened to what the child had to say.

I didn’t watch the show growing up, partly because by the time it would have been available where I lived I would have been in high school or college. I did see an occasional episode over the years, such as when he visited a musician in the neighborhood. Even so, I heard of his reputation – which was considerable.

Fred Rogers and his display of acceptance and kindness is something sorely needed at a time when the leader of the country practices cruelty and his party and voters approve. This was mentioned briefly – what would Rogers say and do about today? I’ll paraphrase a line near the end (only because I can’t remember the original wording) – Don’t ask what Mister Rogers would do. Ask what you will do.