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Shores of the cosmic ocean...

Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards.
Fred Hoyle (1915 - 2001)

Amazing to think that I am much closer to 'space' than I am to Florida! Sagan talked about how we "stand on the shores of the cosmic ocean" and look outward. It really hits home when you look at it like this. We live at the bottom of a gravity well thank goodness! That gravity, weak as it may be, is enough to keep that tenuous atmosphere over our heads. That atmosphere is our protection from cosmic rays and solar radiation. It shields from small meteors. Its constituents are what we breathe. I think we look upward toward the planets, the sun, and the myriad stars and envision the gulf of distance between them without understanding just how little separates us from its vacuum. Sobering thought that all the pollution we pump out has a relatively small volume to dissipate in. I've spent many a summer night lying in my driveway as a teen just staring up at the stars for no other purpose than to admire their beauty. It gave me a feeling of awe like nothing else. I remember spending time lying in the grass at the old house in Oldfield just staring at the fluffy white clouds that glided across the sky. Occasionally the view would be broken by a propeller plane that would drone slowly across the horizon. I think that is why many folks are fascinated with weather. We realize that all of it is a part of ourselves and we a part of it. There is nothing in our world that we can stand apart from.

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