With the duel going on between Obama & Clinton being "all the rage" and such, I was caught a bit off guard to the fact that yesterday was EARTH DAY. My favorite planet, by the way. Hell! The best planet in the whole of the universe! Even never having traveled to another I can say that unequivocally, yet not based on any exploration of other worlds. I know, to say otherwise might seem foolish, but it’s not the same as declaring, “America is the greatest country on EARTH!” especially when those uttering the words have never been outside of her borders, save for maybe Canada! This isn’t to say that their assessment of America is wrong, necessarily, it's just to say that they’re only guessing. Uttering the words and doing something to make sure it stays the “greatest country” on EARTH are two very different animals. It would, I imagine, be more apt to exclaim, “EARTH is the greatest planet in the universe!” even though we’ll likely never have the opportunity to find out first hand. It may well be a silly, if not a rather odd thing to say, but surely more appropriate... considering.
BELATED EARTHDAY!
Oh. Sorry. I seem to be losing my train of thought and the screaming of BELATED EARTHDAY is my muses way of scaring the shit out of me because she thinks it’s funny… You see, she, my muse, told me that she would not participate in this particular post because, as she said, and I quote, “It’s stupid”, end quote….
Where was I?
BELATED EARTHDAY!
Oh. Yes. …Pardon the late notice, but betmo's post was on Tuesday, which was EARTH DAY, so I had to hold my tongue until today here on the revamped association of The Tree.
Before I continue with the BELATED EARTHDAY post I want to let everyone know that by "revamped association of the Tree" I mean I’ve made a rather sweeping change to the contributor list of this blog. I narrowed it down to only seven contributors. This was mainly due to the fact that it was a bit difficult to know when and if anyone was going to post anything, my fault of course, and couple that with the fact that when no one posted a thing for days my little pea-brain didn't fill the yawning void. Well, since yesterday was EARTH DAY, I decided it was time to put “The Tree” in order. (Those that are no longer on the sidebar are still- VERY- thank you, muse- valuable contributors to the blogosphere.) It was just inevitable that it came down to the seven, who, to my astonished pleasure, still found it in their hearts to post on a blog that had long lost its stability since I took over the reigns.
Inevitable you say? Yes. That and I very much like the number 7!
There are 7 days in a week.
7 is (supposedly) a lucky number.
7 is the 3rd Lucas prime number
and I was a third child
and my last name is Prime.
7 is the only number less than 15 which cannot be represented as the sum of the squares of three integers!
Did you know that 7, in the English language, is the only 2-syllable natural, positive 1-digit number? Well don’t feel bad. I hadn’t a clue.
I did know, however, that a group or a series of 7 is a heptad.
How on EARTH could I know something like that when I flunked Algebra and EARTH Science?
I know this because my family, when I was very young, traveled to attend our cousin’s annual barbeque in Kansas City, Missouri. While we were there my very dear Aunt Clementine, who had an odd habit of sucking on ice cubes, was telling everybody gathered around the picnic table about the history behind her lawn ornament collection of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Apparently, according to my dear Aunt Clementine who never told a lie in her life, she had bought the yard ornaments at a garage sale in Memphis from a man named Elvis Presley. Dear Aunt Clementine was a real piece of work. Anyway... she was sucking on a couple of big cubes of ice as she talked and was keeping an eye on my cousin Tad who was rearranging the ornaments into a more symmetrical fashion around Snow White, when he accidently knocked Dopey over and Dopey fell with a thwack against Sneezy. My Aunt Clementine nearly feinted! She turned to my Uncle Chester and with a mouth full of ice yelled, “Chester, go heptad with my dwarfs!”
What better way to segue into the original topic of this post- BELATED EARTHDAY!
EARTH. Yes. You know, that oft overlooked third planet from the sun which has an orbit that is 149,600,000 km from the sun and a diameter of 12,756.3 km with a mass of 5.972e24 kg? Whoooo! Somebody throw water on me quick!
Did you know that EARTH is the only planet whose English name doesn’t derive from Greek slash Roman mythology? Yip... It derives its name from the Old English and the Germanic. Go figure. There are, of course, hundreds of other names for EARTH in other languages. Terra. Pamint. Id-Dinja. Erde. Jorden. Maa. Zeme. Föld. Dedamizha. Prithivi. Eretz. Honua. Jeegoo. Papatuānuku. Lefatshe. Telluric. Lok.
Either way you spin it, in any language, EARTH remains our one and only home. With that in mind, don't you think we should take better care of it? I mean if your house has a leaky roof you patch it up as fast as possible before it comes to raining cats and dogs, right?
I always wondered where that particular phrase, “It’s raining cats and dogs” originated, so I did a web search and the first link I hit gave me the answer I sought!
"We use this idiom to say that it is (or was) raining very heavily. (It doesn't mean that cats and dogs are falling out the sky!) "
Ain’t the internets grand?
BELATED EARTHDAY!
Did you know that in Roman Mythology, the goddess of the EARTH was Tellus - the fertile soil from the Greek, Gaia, terra mater - Mother EARTH?
Did you know that it was not until the time of Copernicus (the sixteenth century!) that it was understood that the EARTH is just another planet? Yip... Whew! Shore does seem that way back when, unlike today, people were awfully gull durned ignurnt!
In closing… I leave you with some of my favorite EARTHY quotes-
A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The mountain remains unmoved at seeming defeat by the mist.
Rabindranath Tagore
This planet is not terra firma. It is a delicate flower and it must be cared for. It's lonely. It's small. It's isolated, and there is no resupply. And we are mistreating it.
Scott Carpenter, astronaut
The earth laughs at him who calls a place his own.
Hindustani Saying
Hear that?
thepoetryman
That’s all I’ve got on my Belated Earth Day post. Say good night, muse...
OBAMA!
Oh! Yes! One last thing…
The following piece is my MoveOn.org BARACK OBAMA Video Contest entry. If you like it please follow this link and vote. While you're at it, and while you're on the vote page, you will see the video html emed code and the link code, please place the link code on your site for your visitors and if they are inclined to vote for it they can do so via the page that follows and it will count extra toward my video's chances of winning. There are 1,100 videos entered in the contest! Yikes! By the way... the incredible artwork you see in the video was rendered by none other than my dear friend and associate, Ben Heine.
