Poetry Sunday: Earthrise by Amanda Gorman

I've found myself thinking this week about how our planet is viewed from outer space and it turns out that former U.S. poet laureate Amanda Gorman has given some thought to that also. She published this poem on just that subject a few years ago. In it, she urges us "to keep rising up for an earth more than worth fighting for." Those are words we should take to heart and on which we must act for the future of life on Earth.

Earthrise

(Dedicated to Al Gore and The Climate Reality Project)

by Amanda Gorman

On Christmas Eve, 1968, astronaut Bill Anders
Snapped a photo of the earth

As Apollo 8 orbited the moon.

Those three guys
Were surprised
To see from their eyes
Our planet looked like an earthrise
A blue orb hovering over the moon’s gray horizon,
with deep oceans and silver skies.

It was our world’s first glance at itself
Our first chance to see a shared reality,
A declared stance and a commonality;

A glimpse into our planet’s mirror,
And as threats drew nearer,
Our own urgency became clearer,
As we realize that we hold nothing dearer
than this floating body we all call home.

We’ve known
That we’re caught in the throes
Of climactic changes some say
Will just go away,
While some simply pray
To survive another day;
For it is the obscure, the oppressed, the poor,
Who when the disaster
Is declared done,
Still suffer more than anyone.

Climate change is the single greatest challenge of our time,

Of this, you’re certainly aware.
It’s saddening, but I cannot spare you
From knowing an inconvenient fact, because
It’s getting the facts straight that gets us to act and not to wait.

So I tell you this not to scare you,
But to prepare you, to dare you
To dream a different reality,

Where despite disparities
We all care to protect this world,
This riddled blue marble, this little true marvel
To muster the verve and the nerve
To see how we can serve
Our planet. You don’t need to be a politician
To make it your mission to conserve, to protect,
To preserve that one and only home
That is ours,
To use your unique power
To give next generations the planet they deserve.

We are demonstrating, creating, advocating

We heed this inconvenient truth, because we need to be anything but lenient
With the future of our youth.

And while this is a training,
in sustaining the future of our planet,
There is no rehearsal. The time is
Now
Now
Now,
Because the reversal of harm,
And protection of a future so universal
Should be anything but controversial.

So, earth, pale blue dot
We will fail you not.

Just as we chose to go to the moon
We know it’s never too soon
To choose hope.
We choose to do more than cope
With climate change
We choose to end it—
We refuse to lose.
Together we do this and more
Not because it’s very easy or nice
But because it is necessary,
Because with every dawn we carry
the weight of the fate of this celestial body orbiting a star.
And as heavy as that weight sounded, it doesn’t hold us down,
But it keeps us grounded, steady, ready,
Because an environmental movement of this size
Is simply another form of an earthrise.

To see it, close your eyes.
Visualize that all of us leaders in this room
and outside of these walls or in the halls, all
of us changemakers are in a spacecraft,
Floating like a silver raft
in space, and we see the face of our planet anew.
We relish the view;
We witness its round green and brilliant blue,
Which inspires us to ask deeply, wholly:
What can we do?
Open your eyes.
Know that the future of
this wise planet
Lies right in sight:
Right in all of us. Trust
this earth uprising.
All of us bring light to exciting solutions never tried before
For it is our hope that implores us, at our uncompromising core,
To keep rising up for an earth more than worth fighting for.

This week in birds - #687

 A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

This is the the Peruvian Thick-knee, a bird of the hot, dry coastal plain of northwestern South America. It is an unusual desert-dwelling "shorebird" that is mostly nocturnal. It has not been studied extensively and so is not as well-known as many birds. Much is unknown about its basic biology and about the overall health of the species, although the known evidence suggests that it is declining. As with so many species, the main threat to its continued existence is habitat loss. The Peruvian Thick-knee is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week. 

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Scientists studying the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs sixty-six million years ago suggest that it turned the planet into an inferno where any creature who couldn't find cover would have been charbroiled.

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Ancient fossil footsteps that have been uncovered in Kenya suggest that one of our early ancestors may have been larger than previously believed.

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A new study suggests that linguistic diversity may have reached its peak three millennia ago and that humans of that era may have spoken thousands more languages that we have today.

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The dunes sagebrush lizard of the Permian Basin of southeastern New Mexico and west Texas was declared endangered by the Biden administration in 2024. The current administration has now stripped it of that protection.

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Wildfires in France have been so intense that they created a monster cloud which unleashed lightning that created more wildfires.

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Although the current administration canceled a project called the National Nature Assessment, the scientists who worked on it found a way to continue.

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Five rescued Kemp's ridley sea turtles were returned to the sea around Cape Cod this week.

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How did some reptiles lose their limbs and become snakes? An 80-million-year-old fossil is providing some answers to that question.

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The Okefenokee Swamp that spans parts of Georgia and Florida has been added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. 

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Here's a list of the best national parks in the United States where you can witness wildlife migrations. 

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If you are interested in attracting hummingbirds to your garden, here are some tips that could help you do it. One way is to put up feeders but ants can be a pest in those; here's how to keep them off. Hummers are tiny birds, of course, and they build tiny nests.

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The adult content site OnlyFans now has a G-rated account called "Only Marms." It features marmots and is an effort by scientists to get funds for their research on the squirrel-like rodents.

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Chimps and bonobos use hugs, kisses, and friendly pats to show affection and diffuse tension in much the same way as humans.

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If you visit a national park where there are elk, watch out; they are more likely than a bear to attack you.

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Researchers are tagging and tracking spinner sharks along the East Coast to try to get a clearer idea of their migration routes.

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Remember acid rain? Well, it's back.

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There is an effort to reintroduce storks to Derbyshire in England.

Poetry Sunday: Family Reunion by Dorianne Laux

Summer was the time for family reunions in the place where I grew up. My own family's (which coincided with that of our church) was the third Sunday in June. It was always hot - it was mid-June in the South after all. 

People came from far and near to spend a day with family and friends that they might not see for another year - if ever again. There was all-day singing at the church with "dinner on the ground," except it wasn't really on the ground. It was on a long series of wooden tables built behind the church. People brought their food from home and spread it on the tables and everybody shared. Potato salad and fried chicken always featured prominently in the food that was brought.

When I was growing up, my mother always got me a new dress and shoes for the day and I generally ended the day with blisters on my heels from the new shoes. But that was a minor inconvenience.

When I came across this poem in my search for one to feature this week, it reminded me of those days and of so many people that I loved who are no longer there. No more family reunions when so many of the family members are gone. But anyway who needs a picture of it all when the camera of the mind remembers...

Family Reunion

by Dorianne Laux

Camera in hand, I call out to them,
one by one, in twos and threes,

working up to the group shots,

the family portrait.

My nephews, scrubbed clean, dressed

in red, hug each other's mirror image

and smile the same smile.

Head to head, their dark hair mingles

as the shutter clicks.

Now I sit the baby between them,

my niece who has my eyes, my nose,

a stranger's wide mouth.

The flash going off in her face

makes her love the small black box

I hold, so much, she is willing to pose

forever, as if I held the force

of the sun, a gorgeous toy, and all

her days balanced in my hands.

Grandmother squeezes in, holds

her baby's babies in her diminishing lap,

circles the shoulders of her son,

her daughters, my own shy daughter,

and pulls them into the frame,

the fine lines of noses and chins

a painter's signature stroke.

I take picture after picture,

the windows going darker

with each bright flash, each face

held up to the repetition of light.

But when I look to see how many frames

are left, I find the tiny window

in the camera is empty, remember

the film left on my dresser

500 miles away. I smile at my family,

ask them to stay where they are

just a few minutes longer as I press

the blank shutter again

and again, burning their images into my own

incorruptible lens, picture

after perfect picture, saving them all

with my naked eye, my bare hands,

the purest light of my love.

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This week in birds - #686

 A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

                      Ruby-throated Hummingbird                                       Rufous Hummingbird

How well do you know hummingbirds? Well, here are seventeen facts about them that will help you know them just a little better. 

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The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is the Peruvian Thick-knee, a "shore bird" that lives far from any shore. It is, in fact, a desert-dwelling bird found in the dry coastal plains of northwestern South America. Its population is decreasing.

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The Environmental Protection Agency no longer seems intent on protecting the environment. One of its latest actions is to kill proposed rules for Pfas-contaminated sewage fertilizer.

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Beehives may operate as democracies but first the rival queens fight to the death.

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Poop from southern right whales is revealing that they have a more varied diet than previously thought and that just might make them more resilient to the effects of climate change. 

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Video of orcas off the California coast shows them ramming a sunfish so hard that it explodes.  

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Finally some good news about the endangered red wolves: There have been four litters born this year to the critically endangered species in North Carolina.

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Avocado seeds have been spread from South to Central America over a period of thousands of years. (And in fact I now have one growing in a pot in my backyard.)

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Hunter-gatherers introduced trout to a Norwegian mountain lake 7,000 years ago.

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Naked Mole-Rats are one of the more interesting (and surely one of the ugliest) species on Earth and it seems that the queens are able to emit a special scent that prevents their rivals from reproducing. 

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We don't usually think of deserts and penguins together but there is one species of penguin that thrives in deserts. It is the Humboldt Penguin of Peru but its population is in trouble.

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In still more bad news for the environment, the Trump administration plans to auction off sections of water around American Samoa for deep-sea mining. 

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Twin echidnas (called puggles) have been born at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

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Do our tiny acts meant to help the environment actually matter? They do indeed add up.

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A raccoon with a (possibly) rare congenital spine condition has become a celebrity in a Seattle neighborhood. He's even been given a name: Jimothy.

Nick Anderson is optimistic

Those branches that were cut off are significant, I think. It may be necessary to cut off a few more, but let's hope that the tree itself will remain sound and continue to grow. 
 

Poetry Sunday: Summer Magic by Leslie Pinckney Hill

Here's a poem about summer by a poet that I was not familiar with. He was an African-American born in Virginia in 1880. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard with a bachelor's degree in 1903 and a master's degree a year later and in 1922 he wrote this poem about summer. It seems to describe the season well, don't you think?

     She hung aloft the rounding moon,

  She poured her sunshine on the earth,
She drove the sap and broke the bud,
  She set the crimson rose afire.

Here's the poem in its entirety:

Summer Magic

by Leslie Pinckney Hill

So many cares to vex the day,  

So many fears to haunt the night,

My heart was all but weaned away

  From every lure of old delight.
Then summer came, announced by June,
  With beauty, miracle and mirth.
She hung aloft the rounding moon,
  She poured her sunshine on the earth,
She drove the sap and broke the bud,
  She set the crimson rose afire.
She stirred again my sullen blood,
  And waked in me a new desire.
Before my cottage door she spread
  The softest carpet nature weaves,
And deftly arched above my head
  A canopy of shady leaves.
Her nights were dreams of jeweled skies,
  Her days were bowers rife with song,
And many a scheme did she devise
  To heal the hurt and soothe the wrong.
For on the hill or in the dell,
  Or where the brook went leaping by
Or where the fields would surge and swell
  With golden wheat or bearded rye,
I felt her heart against my own,
  I breathed the sweetness of her breath,
Till all the care of time had flown,
  And I was lord of life and death.

This week in birds - #685

The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is the Andean Cock-of-the-rock, a non- migratory bird of South American forests. The main threat to the species is habitat loss. The population is thought to be decreasing but is of least concern to this point. 

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A meteorite that crashed into a New Jersey home in 2024 contains some of the building blocks of life according to scientists who have studied it.

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I've always been fascinated by the Mayan civilization and here is a particularly interesting character from that civilization - a math whiz who lived more than 1,000 years ago. 

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The Trump Administration has stripped the Endangered Species Act's ability to protect habitats.

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The Rusty Lark, a bird that had been lost for nearly a century, has been rediscovered by birders in Chad.

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New York state has banned the building of large data centers for a year while it studies energy and climate risks which they present.

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A worm-like creature that lived about 550 million years ago is the earliest known "right-handed" being. 

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Harvestmen, aka Daddy Longlegs (or Granddaddy Longlegs, as I knew them when I was growing up) are a particularly interesting and often misunderstood group of arachnids.

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Trump has reduced Bear Ears and Grand Staircase Monuments by three million acres with a single stroke of his pen. 

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"Space balls" have been washing up on Australian beaches presenting a mystery for authorities.

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Shrimp may be thought of as "bugs of the sea" but then bugs could be considered the "shrimp of the land."

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Sperm whales living in the eastern Mediterranean Sea seem to have developed a dialect of their own that is different from those in the west.

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We know that giraffes are clever animals but they may be even smarter than previously thought.

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Small-town communities are becoming alarmed about carbon storage projects planned for their area.

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Here are nine interesting facts about Bald Eagles.

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And here are some images from this year's Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest.

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Climate change is affecting how and where people take vacations.

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The Andean leaf-eared mouse has adapted to live at extremely high elevations where no other mammal is known to reside.