Ballard Street by Jerry Van Amerongen for November 08, 2016

That’s gin.

That’s what they all say.

It’s important to stay hydrated, but I’m not sure Vodka Tonics are the way to go.

Never hurts to stay hydrated. You never know when Ballard Street might turn into a vast saharan desert.

.

Besides, it’s a long walk for Myron and Myra to the Tiki from where they live.

My mid-day client is in the ICU in Corvallis.

I am taking care of his little dog, Pookie While his wife is there.

She is staying in a Family Lodging facility there at the hospital.

It is probable that he will be transported to a hospital in Portland that has a cardiac unit that does heart surgery.

Transported AFTER they get him more stable than he is right now.

This is the client that helped me decide to get a wheelchair assessable van.

Took me way too long to realize that wasn’t a window weight. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2713/4229860697_e87b2d014a.jpg

I never go any where—-not even around the block—-without water. Stuff happens.

Perhaps it’s for a hitherto unforeseen “evacuation” emergency…

I’ve been around the block a time or two.

It’s a big block.

Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

Carl Sagan