“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 “supreme leader,” every “superstar,” 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 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. 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.

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.

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 only home we’ve ever known, the pale blue dot.”

Street Scene, Shanghai

One from the archives.

I haven’t been taking many pictures lately… I really should be!

Bittersweet black-and-white motion picture from 1907 featuring a pig. I’m sure there’s more to this than just face value, but let’s not give it too much thought.

This has to stop.

Is there any way to opt out of this call list? Should I be taking up this issue with them instead? Do let me know if the only way to stop the calls is to cease being a Citibank customer - because that is exactly what I am prepared to do.

.backwards

Back from Bangkok - now waiting as Lightroom slowwwly imports all my shots. Here’s a quick and dirty one to get things off the ground!

Glass doors at the lobby of The Heritage Bangkok.

Libra - by Jake Catlett

This picture made me miss Vietnam. After visiting it 3 times in one year I told myself I’d hold off on the place for a while. Well, break’s over…