Being Thankful

Copyright © 2019

by Ralph F. Couey

Written content only

Thanksgiving is one of those unique American holidays, and while the traditional foods and activities are firmly established, the origins of some of those traditions is shrouded in historical ambiguity.  That being said, as everyone gathers around the table today, none of that will matter.

The traditional first Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony in what would eventually be Massachusetts.  The colony had undergone a terrible trial in trying to establish their community in this new, but raw land.  When that first harvest came in, for really the first time, the colonists were able to eat a full meal.  This was something worth celebrating.

For a lot of our history, American was agrarian in nature.  Before industry took hold, it was the basis for the economy.  Anyone who's been a farmer or known one also knows how chancy that industry is.  There has to be a last frost early enough to allow the soil to be turned in time for planting.  There has to be sufficient rainfall, but a minimum of crop-destroying severe storms (hail, in particular).  There absolutely cannot be invasions of pests or locusts or grasshoppers, as farmers in the Dakotas would find out in the 19th century.  As summer wanes, there is the desperate race to get the harvest in and stored before the first plant-killing frost.  For the farmer, summer was four or five months of very long days, short nights, and constant worry about the immediate future.  Back then, if your crops were destroyed, there was no grocery store to back you up.  A successful harvest meant one thing:  Survival.  

Midway, That Day, and This Day

IJN HIRYU.  Note the cavernous hole left in the forward 

flight deck by U.S. bombers from ENTERPRISE and YORKTOWN.

By Special Service Ensign Oniwa Kiyoshi - U.S. Navy photo NH 73065, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2009298

Copyright © 2019

by Ralph F. Couey

Written content only

On June 4, 1942 naval and air forces of the United States and Imperial Japan met in what has been called one of the most crucial and history-altering battles in history.  The fight took place northeast of a small atoll of two islands called Midway.  Japan intended to invade and occupy Midway to provide a staging area for continual bombing attacks on military installations in Hawai'i and possibly an eventual invasion and occupation of O'ahu itself.  The U.S. Navy, still reeling from the losses suffered at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, made a desperate stand based on seemingly thin intelligence gleaned from intercepts and decryptions of Japanese communications.

In the six months since Pearl Harbor, the Japanese carrier force, known as Kido Butai (mobile force) had enjoyed an unchallenged mastery of the seas.  Admiral Chuichi Nagumo had taken his powerful fleet from Hawai'i to Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean without losing a single ship.  The U.S. Navy, on the other hand, was vastly outnumbered in every ship and aircraft type.  After the loss of Lexington and the critical damage to Yorktown during the Coral Sea battle, there were only two battle-worthy carriers in the Pacific.  Fortunately, two of  Nagumo's carriers were sent back to Japan.  Shokaku was heavily damaged at Coral Sea, and Zuikaku's air group suffered severe losses and needed replenishment of planes and pilots.

Pioneers, Voyagers, and the Evidence of Our Passage

NASA

Heavens-Above.com

Positions of Earth's distant emissaries.

Copyright © 2019

by Ralph F. Couey

Written content only

I revisit this subject from time to time, mainly because of my interest in deep space.  I find it fascinating, not just that there are four probes either in or nearing interstellar space, but that long after we and our planet are gone, they will be drifting through the Milky Way Galaxy, the sole evidence that Earth and its creatures ever existed.

Voyagers 1 and 2, and Pioneers 10 and 11 were all launched in the 1970s, all part of the first real exploration of the planets of our solar system.  The knowledge gained expanded by several orders of magnitude our understanding of the Sun's family, and as science often does, inspired several thousand new questions.

Once that mission was completed, all four were on trajectories that would take them all beyond the reach of the Sun's influence and into the unknown of interstellar space.  The Pioneers are silent now, their power sources exhausted.  The Voyagers are also expected to go dead sometime within the next year or so.  But even though they will be inert, they will still be indisputable evidence to any intelligence which encounters them that there is, or was, other intelligent technological beings among the stars.  The Pioneers have only their own existence to make that statement.  But the Voyagers both carry gold plated disks, once called "records," along with instructions for their viewing that contain images and sounds of our planet and most important, images of us.  In the perfect vacuum of space, they will be preserved for as long as the spacecraft themselves exist.  For anyone who finds them, what we were, what we sounded like, how we lived, and where will become knowledge which will alter forever their view of the universe.

I thought if might be of interest to share the current locations of these spacecraft, where they are headed, and their ultimate fate.  

Grief: The Necessary Path

From Davidsrefuge.org

Copyright 2019

by Ralph F. Couey

Written content only

For all of us there will come a time when we lose someone very close to us, someone who has been one of the pillars that always seemed to be there to prop us up when we needed it.  They were loved, deeply and unconditionally, and their passing leaves an open wound.  Unlike physical ailments, the wound of grief may eventually close, but the scar will always remain.

There are several undeniable truths about grief, the most important being that it is a journey, one that must be taken, unfortunately, by the grieving individual alone.  Friends and love ones will offer empathy and solace, but this is a path that can only be walked alone.  There are no shortcuts, no easy stretches.  The path of grief must be walked to its completion.

In 1969, the Swiss-American Psychiatrist Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote a book entitled, "On Death and Dying" in which she introduced the five stages of grief, a model which is widely used today by professionals and lay people as a way of navigating the grieving process.  There are some psychiatric professionals who say that the existence of these stages hasn't really been demonstrated fully.  But Dr. Kubler-Ross's model still survives to this day.

The five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  

The Universe, Fate, and Our Choice

M31, AKA the Andromeda galaxy

Image by Amir Hossein Abolfath

Through Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)

Copyright © 2019

by Ralph F. Couey

I have always enjoyed television programs about science, particularly anything about space.  I spend a lot of time (perhaps too much) on the Science Channel, in particular a program entitled "How the Universe Works."  The episodes deal with knowledge, past and current, with some healthy speculation about the unknown.  The series "stars" consist of about 145 of the most preeminent scientists working in various aspects of the astronomy/cosmology field.  The information is presented well, managing to balance on the knife-edge of comprehension for the rest of us, while still managing to teach at the same time.  The graphics are cutting edge, and if you have one of the advanced technology televisions, eye-popping as well.  

Just this past week, I learned the latest theories on the birth and evolution of our solar system, and how big it actually is.  (Hint:  It's way bigger than you think.)  I also learned what is currently known about the most distant objects, quasi-stellar objects, or Quasars.  I already knew that at the center of our galaxy exists a super-massive black hole.  I also learned that the one at the center of the Andromeda galaxy is ten times larger.  I learned what the best idea is for why the crust of the moon is twice as thick on the far side as it is on the side that perpetually faces us.  I also learned that if it wasn't for this uncommonly oversized moon, not only does it keep the earth from tumbling its axis, it is, because of its effects on earth's tides,  probably most responsible for the beginnings of the complex microbial life that eventually led to us.