July - On&Off Earth

July 2025

On & Off Earth

If we expand our minds and time traveling back 249 years, we’d find a like-minded collection of men gathered in Philadelphia. Each arrived to represent their ‘colony’ (or state or commonwealth) in a wild, new experiment in governance. Their opinions on important topics ranged widely but their like-mindedness was strong in their dislike of the capricious whims, edicts and taxes coming from a distant king. They signed their names in a unified declaration of independence from that far-off monarchy.

Much has changed during the 249 solar orbits since that, now celebrated, day. Frontiers were opened and wave after wave of immigrants arrived to fill those expanses. America’s unbridled freedom and open door became a cauldron for experimentation and exploration that lead to advances in science creating technologies unimagined in human history. Our melting pot transformed the world.

With all changes, new challenges arise. Those unwilling to adapt to the changes, on a world with now limited migration options, will, and do, struggle. My original goal for this column, to get people outside to take a look at our ‘still lovely little planet’, has crashed into the reality that venturing out in, no longer rural, Louisa is fraught with far more perils than it was five and a half years ago.

The thought of a bike ride down my once rural road is out of the question. Most drives into town these days involves my drifting onto the shoulder to dodge an oncoming vehicle, in my lane, the encroaching driver staring at a phone. Countywide, a new house with another driveway seems always under construction and now, against almost unanimous opposition, our county ‘leaders’, ever drooling over tax dollars, have signed away any hope of a rural future, completing our rapid descent into data center hell.

A walk in July, even in the relatively cool forest, has always presented challenges. Pause for a moment and flies and mosquitoes buzz in for a taste of blood. My eyes are constantly darting about for a lounging, well camouflaged copperhead (black snakes always a delight). As a native Virginian, the heat and humidity can be gross but it’s just part of the July scene and I’d really rather sweat than shiver. That said, on an already rapidly warming planet, bringing in buildings pumping the excessive heat created by data manipulation into the already hot atmosphere, and clearing cooling trees to do so, may make me regret that sentiment.

In the limited July darkness, Venus still rules as the Morning Star, its monthly waning crescent moon visits pre-dawn on the 21st and 22nd. The Full Buck Moon, stags in velvet these days, will rule the night on the 10th. Dim, reddish Mars is visited by the now waxing crescent moon on the 28th. Earth reaches Aphelion, at 94.5 million miles from the sun, on the 3rd. Our orbit moves the sun from Gemini into Cancer on the 22nd.

On Earth, 249 years is barely a tick on the 4.5 billion year clock but during that time 700 million humans have exploded to over 8 billion and we have transformed the planet. For better or worse can be argued but we have been the driving force for most of the changes we are now dealing with on Earth. It seems unlikely improvements to life on Earth, for all lifeforms, will spring forth from more humans, more bickering or more data centers. Our founders came together and made many wise choices 249 years ago. If we wish to celebrate our 250th birthday we would be wise to come together and follow their lead.

With the morons and idiots ruling, as kings, at all levels of our current government, anything WISE seems extremely unlikely..as storms spin up and heat rules..Today On Earth