{"id":98548,"date":"2018-12-26T23:28:38","date_gmt":"2018-12-27T04:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=98548"},"modified":"2018-12-26T14:35:47","modified_gmt":"2018-12-26T19:35:47","slug":"column-the-musings-of-a-simple-country-man%ef%bb%bf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=98548","title":{"rendered":"COLUMN: The Musings of a Simple Country Man\ufeff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Hobie Morris<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Reaching for the Stars at Christmas<\/em>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Hobie Morris<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earth: a beautiful blue orb flying through the universe. I often wonder what we must look like to other beings watching from deep space\u2026what does the light emitting from earth show today? When people see our past will we be proud of what they are shown?<\/em><\/strong> – Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a\nbitterly cold, black central New York winter night. The Brookfield hills are\nsnow covered and silent. Starlight makes intricate shadows on the barren\nlandscape. Warmly dressed, my beautiful wife Lois and I stand in deep snow\nawesomely staring up at countless millions of flickering stars. Our Milky Way\nis like a flowing river of soft lights with its billions of stars. How can two\nsimple country people living in these remote hills possible comprehend, let\nalone articulate in words, what we are seeing? All we can do is thank God for\nthis amazing and majestic glimpse into the visible universe. We earthlings on\nour tiny speck of the universe are seemingly so small and insignificant in the\ncosmological scheme of the known universe. The Greek philosopher Aristotle was,\nhowever, wrong. The universe has not existed forever as he claimed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cBig\nBang\u201d that created the universe occurred about 13.7 billion years ago. If we\nlook far enough above the handle of the Big Dipper, we can still see the most\ndistant galaxy whose light has taken over 13 billion years to reach earth. Amazingly\nawesome with light traveling at over 186,000 miles per second. Europe\u2019s Planck\nSpace Mission supports a dramatic faster than light expansion of the universe\nimmediately after the Big Bang. In less time than blinking your eye the\nuniverse inflated in volume one hundred trillion times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the\nfact that 20 percent of Americans believe that the sun revolves around earth,\nwhen we feel sunlight on our faces it has taken a little more than eight\nminutes to travel 93 million miles and reach earth. We are seeing the sun as it\nwas eight minutes ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five billion\nyears ago, our sun was just an embryonic patch of drifting gas waiting to\ncollapse to a central core and burst forth with light. In another five billion\nyears our planet will disintegrate in the outer layers of the red giant star\nthat the sun will become. When this end comes, the brief story of humans on\nearth will have come and gone. Our time on earth has only been a few brief\nseconds in its 10 billion year life span.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From space,\nearth is so majestic and beautiful. There are no wars, borders, boundaries, or\nkilling. Our tiny orb is so peaceful and lonely. We are all space travelers as\nour tiny home pivots on its axis and speeds through space. Sadly, how much\nlonger will man sustain life on this planet. Cave man aggression and modern\ntechnology are putting the entire human race and all life on earth at grave\nrisk. Behavior, that through much of our planetary history, appears not\ncalculated for the survival of our species. We must begin to use our\nintelligence to plan for our collective future both here on earth and possibly\ntowards distant stars. We must all come together to preserve and expand the\nboundaries of our civilization for the first time since Columbus. We have the\nintelligence and resources but do we have the will to protect our endangered\nhome as well as taking the giant steps of journeying to distant stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My lovely\nwife and I, two simple country people, think about such things as we gaze into\nthe universe. Tears of happiness freeze on our cold cheeks. It\u2019s time to warm\nup by the wood fire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christmas\nprovides the perfect time to think – and wonder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editor\u2019s note: Hobie Morris is a\nBrookfield resident and simple country man.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reaching for the Stars at Christmas By Hobie Morris Earth: a beautiful blue orb flying through the universe. I often wonder what we must look like to other beings watching from deep space\u2026what does the light emitting from earth show today? When people see our past will we be proud of what they are shown? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23677,23808,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion","category-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}