January 26, 2015, Prescott- An asteroid, replete with its own tiny moon, zipped past us today.  As our area was overcast, no one here would have been the wiser, had it not been for the media making several references.  Apparently, Russia, Australia and the midmost Pacific Ocean were all spared, as was the rest of the planet.  God knows, we need no more extinctions or disasters, given that there are plenty of both happening, almost on a daily basis.

The last five Northern White Rhinoceros are being prepped for DNA extractions, in hopes that a female Southern White Rhino might be a surrogate mother of an IVF Northern White Rhino baby, or two.  In order for the population to be restored, however, one would imagine the process would have to be repeated at least four more times. I mention this, because we tend to think of life as being subject to human whim.

This is a peculiar narcissism.  Life happened so long before any creature resembling us was more than a part of the Creative Force’s long-range plan.  We have the power to undo so much, though, that I shudder at the tendency of some to look at profit as the sole determinant of who, or what, lives and dies.  Mass extinction, though, would seem to require far more.

It could be that someday the  planet will be visited by an orb large enough to bring about a “night” of three to six months.  There will, no doubt, be human and animal survivors of such a dreadful occasion, just as there were animals which thrived, even after the asteroid which most likely precipitated the demise of the dinosaurs, as the fossil record revealed them to be.

Through it all, I hope that people will look upwards, at the noonday Sun and at the bright moon and stars of night, and remember that, as life was generated, seemingly from nothing, so many eons ago, any acts of ours which extinguish one living flame will be answered by a new torch of life.