Five years

Wait, what? How is that even possible? I mean, I have to think for a second to come up with what I ate for dinner last night, how can a day that happened that long ago be so clear in my mind? I can close my eyes and relive the sheer horror of 9/11 almost moment-by-moment. Five years? Wow.

We tend to gloss over the fact that we live in a world where catastrophe is lurking around every turn. Terrorism. Bird flu. Global warming. Earthquakes. Tsunamis. Hurricanes. The ticking time bomb that is the Middle East. Nuclear missiles. Genetically engineered viruses. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Fish die-offs in the oceans, droughts deep in the heart of farm country, acid rain, dwindling oil supplies, dwindling fresh water supplies (and that's a much scarier thought than any oil shortage could ever be, but it just doesn't get all the sexy press)... The fact is, planet Earth is a pretty scary place, and a lot of that we've brought upon ourselves. But whether we want to or because we absolutely have to, we all push our fears to the side to varying degrees and go about our lives.

Sometimes, though, one of these spectres grabs us by the throat and demands that we take notice of it, that we drop everything else and take a good long look at just how easy it is for everything to go terribly wrong. And I'd assert that no occasion in American History fills that bill like 9/11. Pearl Harbor was a detestable event, but Headline News wasn't exactly on the scene to broadcast it to the world. Kennedy's assassination? Tragic, but it didn't shut down the entire country for most of a week. Katrina? Tragedy writ large, sure, but the entire country wasn't huddling around their televisions wondering just what city Mother Nature would destroy next. 9/11 was something absolutely new.

And as such, it stands as a dividing line. I read a column somewhere today that stated something to the effect of "As the events were unfolding, I felt like I was living in a dream. But when I think about it now, I realize I wasn't living in a dream on 9/11. I was waking up from one." I couldn't put it any better. Before 9/11, Americans felt safe. We felt secure. We thought that we were somehow above the rest of the world, that what affected everyone else didn't necessarily apply to us. Now, we know better. If anything good came out of that day (other than the worldwide good feeling and support that our government promptly squandered, but today is not the day for political quibbling), it was that. Our eyes were opened, and we all became a little more human. It brought us together, and we're better for that.

It goes without saying that I'll never forget that day. What we all need to remember, though, isn't the shock and horror that we felt. It's not the images of the planes flying into the towers, or the blackened swath of countryside in Pennsylvania, or the sight of a smoking Pentagon, or any of the other horrific words and pictures that branded themselves directly into America's consciousness that morning. It's the way we came together as a nation - as a world, even. It's the way we held each other up as everything around us seemed to be falling down. The way the American flag changed back from what it had become to most people - a decoration - to a symbol of pride. The sense of humanity, the sense of unity, the quick resolve on both a national and a personal scale that "we will get though this, because we are strong." We've lost a lot of ground on these issues as the months have become years, and it's sad that it takes such a deplorable act to bring these feelings back to the surface. It shouldn't. All we have is each other, and if we forsake that then there really isn't much of a point to it all.

Ben Franklin was credited with saying that "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." That's never been more true than it is today.

Oh Pluto, You Devil

While I understand the need for there to be a clear and distinct definition for what exactly constitues a "planet," not just in the case of our current solar system but also for the future as humanity's reach (and hopefully humanity itself) expands outward into space, I cannot help but be amused over all the time, energy, and emotion (not to mention newsprint) that is currently being expended in the "battle" over Pluto's status. Scientists do tend towards being a distracted lot with assorted disconnections from reality anyway, willing to battle to the death over the most excruciating of minutiae while outside the sun is exploding, but something about this debate being so in the public eye has taken it, for me, right into the realm of the absurd. I mean, come on, there have actually been *picketers* out there on this matter. It's an icy ball of rock in the outer reaches of the solar system! Relax, people.

In other astronomical news:

Dear World,
No, Mars is never going to be as large in the night sky as the full moon. At least, not until the apocalypse. And probably not even then, because if God wants to smite us I'm sure he can think of more interesting ways than crashing a planet into us. I mean, this is the deity who busted out the locusts, boils, and frogs on the Egyptians. He's creative.
The "closest approach to Earth" that you all keep sending emails around about actually happened over 3 years ago now, in August of 2003, and I'm sure that none of you remembers a giant Mars in the night sky. Because it didn't happen. There was another one in October of 2005, but 2003 was the king, and the next time Mars gets as close as that will be in 2287 and you will all be dead. So stop wasting bandwidth. It doesn't grow on trees, you know.