Pale Blue Dot ...

Here we are in the year 2026 and planet earth appears to be getting crazier, with its continued and somewhat determined course of threats, unrest, violence, destruction and death …

From billions of kilometres our planet does not shine or standout, it almost disappears. I read recently that in 1990 the spacecraft Voyager One (as a 16 year old I recall watching its launch in September, 1977), was leaving our solar system forever, scientists made one final request, to turn the spacecraft around to take one last photograph of our home. At that moment Voyager was nearly 6 billion kilometres away, further than any human object had ever travelled before. 

From the image earth was barely visible, captured as a tiny spec floating in a narrow beam of sunlight, surrounded by endless darkness. That single dot contained everything that humanity has ever known, every city, every ocean, every war and every human life that ever existed. From that unimaginable distance, borders vanish, nations lose meaning and human conflicts feel fragile and small.

The resulting photograph became known as the “Pale Blue Dot” and it delivered one of the most powerful messages in history ~ in a universe so vast and silent, earth is not the centre of anything. 

World leaders from the past and unfortunately still in the present, who have an excessive focus on themselves, characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance, self-praise, and the tendency to view oneself as superior or more central than others, have created the vast amounts of unrest, violence, destruction and death. In relative terms, our existence as humans together with the lifespan of our planet is incredibly brief ~ so while we are here, why all the violent and needless mayhem …?

This pics below are from this afternoon's incredible and rather warm beach wander on our Pale Blue Dot ….

Never forgotten in Leopoldsburg, Belgium …

In recent years on Christmas Eve, some of the town’s people of Leopoldsburg in Belgium have held a ceremony at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery.

There are 767 Commonwealth burials from WWII in the cemetery, 16 of them unidentified, and also a number of Polish and Dutch war graves. One of the graves belongs to my relative Hugh Wright, a Royal Engineer attached to the 49^th Infantry Division (The Polar Bears). Hugh was killed in Wuustwezel, Belgium on 21 October 1944.

The photos below were sent to me tonight from Belgium ~ thank you Cindy from Leopoldsburg, who regularly visits and cares for Hugh’s grave. 

You can learn more about Hugh and his war service from the following blogs, click on the images or links …

https://southshoretidewatch.blogspot.com/2017/10/hugh-wright.html

 

https://southshoretidewatch.blogspot.com/2024/06/euro-2024-wuustwezel.html

https://southshoretidewatch.blogspot.com/2024/06/euro-2024-my-return-to-leopoldsburg-war.html

Splashing time at Rissers …

Overnight we had some fierce winds, during which there were times I thought the house would take off. By late morning they had settled down and moved out to sea. At such times it is always good to head down the road to Rissers Beach to check out the big waves, I was not disappointed ….

At the end of the beach in a more sheltered area, it was like this ...