I was at the Inauguration last week.  Braved the cold and the crowds and witnessed history – up close.  It wasn’t easy getting there, but it was worth the trip.  I’m glad I went.  Lots of others have already used up a lot of ink and bandwidth dealing with the event, its symbolisms and import for the future, so I’m not going to go there.  Rather, my mind has been occupied with more mundane matters:

What happens when a really good transportation system is asked to carry many times more people than it has ever done before? Read more »

I’m writing this in – actually near – Washington DC, arguably the most “powerful” city in our contemporary world.  It is both the seat of government of what is, for now, the lone superpower on earth.  The city and its surrounding communities are therefore inhabited by people who are powerful because their hands are on the levers of government.  And by many more who influence, or at least who are seeking to influence the former group.

Watching this city go through a power-transition, I’ve made several observations:

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The following column, by me,  appears in the January 8, 2009 Wisconsin State Journal:

The present economic crisis poses a dilemma for me.

I’m an environmentalist. And I know that a great deal of the blame for the environmental crisis has to be placed squarely on our culture’s addiction to material goods.

We buy more stuff than we need, we throw out stuff that is perfectly good to replace it with other stuff, and in the process we’re trashing the planet, using up scarce energy resources, and pumping billions of tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, forever changing the future for our children and grandchildren.

People like me should be celebrating the current economic slowdown.

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A good friend, who doesn’t think himself an intellectual but who in fact is one of the best-read people in my life, sent me two different pieces over the last couple of months, both of which qualify as being old, if not ancient.  But which both speak volumes to our present environmental predicament:

Today, a poem that is at least 150 years old:

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge |&| shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

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Earth Rise - by Astronaut William Anders (Christmas Eve, 1968)

One of the most significant anniversaries in human history has just passed, with little notice.

Christmas, 1968 – 40 years ago – Apollo 8 was the first manned space vehicle to completely escape the pull of earth’s gravity, travel to and around the moon and return.  This picture – one of the most famous in the world – is called “Earth Rise” – and captures the view as the Apollo spacecraft came out from behind the moon and back into the view of our home planet.

If you’ve seen the Al Gore slide show or his film, ‘Inconvenient Truth’ you will recall that he begins his presentation with this and one other picture of earth from space.  His point – and it’s a very valid one – is that this event, one of the most unique in human history, represented a particular opportunity for us.  For the first time we could see our world from the outside.  We could see how beautiful it is.  We could see how fragile it is.  We began to realize how really small it is compared to the vast, vast universe we were just beginning to discover.

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Welcome to the Our Father’s World blog – oh, and I might as well say ‘Happy New Year!’ at the same time.