Wow!  Where did the year go?  It simply zoomed by with all its good, bad, and ugly.  I am ready to leave a lot of it behind.  So onward to 2019.

Recently I was listening to an article on the Apollo 8 astronauts and their historic trip orbiting the moon on Christmas Eve fifty years ago.  I guess I was a little bit of a space nerd with the silly childhood dreams of flying into the vastness of the universe. And, then, reality jettisoned from fantasy when I saw how tiny the vehicles were that encapsulated the select few as they spun around in space.  I realized that my claustrophobia would have never allowed it (even if I could have) …space was appealing…crunched up in a tiny little orb…wasn’t.

But, I digress…the story focused on James Lovell, William Anders, and Frank Borman, who read from the Book of Genesis while orbiting the moon….”In the beginning….” It seemed to be the appropriate choice for the time and nothing else had been planned.  William Anders, the astronaut delegated to photograph the moon as it was orbited made history by snapping an unplanned photo as he happened to look away from the moon’s surface just in time to see the earth rise.  There wasn’t time to plan the shot…just time to make a lot of stabs at getting this remarkable image. A remarkable image is what he got.  You have all seen it.  It was on a stamp.  It is an icon for the environmental movement.

The image was an orb, dappled blue and green surrounded by space in all its blackness…a quarter of a mile away.  Anders comment, “That’s a pretty, little planet” (or something close to that quote) resonated with me.  It was such an understatement seeped with such profoundness, and I can’t get it out of my mind.

We do, indeed, live on a pretty, little planet.

On a regular basis, now, I ask myself what I am doing to keep it “a pretty little planet”.  It is a personal goal of mine.  It is also an innate goal of Liberty Wildlife’s exhibited by all that we do for wildlife, for conservation, for education and to support the maintenance and sustainability of this “pretty, little planet”.  We strive to maintain the balance.

Now I ask you, what part are you going to play in the brand, new year in keeping this “a pretty, little planet”?  I am not saying “Make a resolution”.  They are mostly left to languish half of the way through February.  I am asking you to get up every morning (one day at a time) and ask yourself what you are going to do to keep this “a pretty, little planet”.  It is so easy to find something good to do that it shouldn’t be a problem.  It doesn’t have to be huge.  It doesn’t have to be hard.  It can be personal, or for another.  It could be for some part of the home, city, state, country, world.

It just needs to be positive, practical, pure… and ultimately for the betterment of our pretty little planet.

Happy New Year to each of you!