I found comfort for our current mess at a natural history museum. [View All]

[Arugula Latte]

Last week my family visited relatives in the Denver area. We spent one afternoon at that city's wonderful natural history museum. There is an exhibit on the origins of life on Earth which put things into perspective for me. For billions of years after the Earth was formed, there was no life -- not even simple one-celled organisms. When the amino acids finally did line up to form living creatures, these extremely primitive beings constituted life on Earth for another, oh, billion or more years (I'm a little fuzzy on the exact time frame). If you compress the history of life on the planet into a one-year calendar, life doesn't move onto land until very late in the year. It's not until December 10 that dinosaurs make their appearance. Humans do not come into the picture until the last minute of the last hour of the last day of the year.

All we are is dust in the wind. George W. "Ozymandius" Bush is dust in the wind. Karl Rove is dust in the wind. James Dobson is dust in the wind. So are all the corporate fascists. So are the PsychoChristians. So are all the members of all the governments on Earth.

I find that comforting.