An Evening in America, July 9, 2017
Full Moon

Yes the world is full of contradictions.
It is totally messed up, socially, politically, interpersonally, right down to the macro-level of the search for understanding in intimate interpersonal relationships.
But there are moments, especially between people, that are sublime. They give people hope and make them feel, no matter how much loss, pain, illness and suffering there is in their lives that it suddenly seems like it’s all worth it, and that maybe, if we can feel like this, then it can all be worked out.
Also, there are more subtle moments, that just make us pause, take a breathe and reflect. We are alive, hopefully healthy enough to appreciate that, and that most of us are not starving or physically threatened at the moment.
It’s a beautiful night where I am. It’s 70 degrees and partly cloudy. The picture above was taken at 9:47. The clouds had moved aside and the full Thunder moon of July was early in its ascent.
The moon is always there, we know, but we don’t always see all of it, unless we look really closely. A full moon happens about every 29 days, so it’s not really that special. Except it is.
The picture above was taken with a longer exposure, otherwise it would look like just a dot. With this exposure you can see that the moon is so close to earth, and behind it, stretching out almost forever, is the rest of our galaxy with its billions of stars, and other galaxies, each with billions of more stars. (probably those dots are just pixels, but that doesn’t fit the message).
If you want to explore more, and have your mind-bent a bit, read Max Tegmark’s book about how there are very possibly other universes, an infinite number of them, and they may each have different laws of physics that we could never understand…..
But that’s not what I was thinking about. I was just happy to be here, in one piece, breathing and thinking.
I am aware of how fortunate I am, and that there is lots of mean, nasty, ugly stuff going on, stuff that need not be happening, and serves no purpose other than to enhance the image, power and wealth of a very few people.
It is our responsibility to do something about that, as best we can, given our own limitations. We don’t have to accept our society as it is. We can be part of creating something better.
The moon is just some big rock hanging out there, circling the earth due to a balance of gravitational forces. It just is. It’s been there for about 4.51 billion years.

