hope & hoopoe

A dispatch from Rhode Island, where anything bearing the name of Roger Williams gives me reason to hope, and that includes the tiny but awesomeful Natural History Museum here, where you can view a presentation called "Cosmic Collisions." As dire as it sounds, one somehow leaves the planetarium with reason to hope, largely do to the show's visceral display of how the earth's magnetic field assiduously shields the planet from the searing heat of unrelenting solar winds. It's just one facet of the many factors that allow life on earth, and one I've been largely ignorant of. All of which causes me to want to cry Upupa! like the Hoopoe.