Two Mothers

. Today's news carried a story from Blue Mound, Texas contributed by the Dallas News. Two 20-something male intruders smashed their way into the Hoehn household while the whole family was home. The Hoehns have two children: a 12-year old son, and daughter age 5. Here is a news excerpt:

"As Mr. Hoehn emerged from the bedroom, Ms. Hoehn grabbed hold of the intruder's shotgun and pointed it upward and away from the children's rooms. "I wasn't going to let them get to my babies," the 34-year-old mom said. "No way in hell." While Mr. Hoehn wrestled with the intruders, Ms. Hoehn reached for a candle – the only heavy object within reach – and threw it at the man with the shotgun."

. Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska and now the Vice Presidential candidate for the Republican Party is also a mother. Her 19-year old son Track joined the Army last year. She has one other son Trig a new-born. Her daughters are Bristol (18), Willow (13), and Piper (7). Trig, was diagnosed prenatally as having Down syndrome. Quoting from the Wall Street Journal:

"She has said she would make abortion illegal in all cases, unless the life of the mother was at risk. Sen. McCain would make exceptions for rape or incest as well. Unlike Sen. McCain, she opposes stem-cell research, which involves destruction of human embryos. And she supports abstinence-until-marriage programs, where teens are taught to refrain from sex until marriage and contraception is discussed only to explain its failings."

. I do not know Kellie Hoehn's opinions on abortion. But I am absolutely sure of her love for her children, proven by her emotion under duress that even at 12 and 5 they are still her "babies." Although the stories seem far apart they each illustrate something in Nature, especially among birds and mammals, that I call the Centrality of Motherhood or the Authority of Mother. In choosing to allow her Down Syndrome fetus to be born Palin was exercising her primal authority.
. Birds are known to salvage what they can of their fledglings in times of short food by selecting the strongest and nourishing them to survival, obviously at the expense of their sibs. Primates, especially humans, have more options because they know they can enlist others to assist in raising weaker offspring.
. However the place of men in making these decisions is questionable. There is no demonstration of similar authority in Nature for them. In a few cases among mammals they may even be a threat to their own offspring. Therefore I am not going to state an opinion. But I will note one weakness in logic for female extreme pro-lifers like Palin. By deduction it appears that they grant the right of any male, even the lowest scum, even by force, to sire a child on any woman, even their own mother. That rankles me as I am definitely for the protection of women. Without something to keep a lid on them, the record of men is not universally good in this respect, witness the infamous treatment of females, even little girls, recently exposed at the Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado, Texas.
. Well, enough dark thoughts. This is intended to point out the central role Nature carves out for Mothers and the reinforcement given by the highest standards from the greatest moralists, purportedly even God, as recorded by Moses in the Fifth Commandment, and even from that time of extreme patriarachy:
* * Honor thy Father AND Mother * *

Meditation on the Galaxy

It was fairly late in the evening and we had reduced the number of lights on in the house, as was customary to help get in the mood for sleep. My wife went out on the deck for a while. I read at the dining room table. A few minutes later she came in smiling and spoke as if she was sharing a great little secret: "Come on outside. I have a surprise for you!"
I could only guess that it was some kind of sky sight, as she knows how much I like astronomy. When I first went out I said "I can't see a thing. It will take a few minutes for my eyes to get dark-adapted." Meanwhile in this oblivious state I mused: aurora? meteors? Slowly, magnitude by magnitude ever fainter stars came into my vision. When it clarified down to the fourth magnitude I saw it: the Milky Way in rare dark-sky splendor.
Once she got me out there, nobody could tear me away. I sat way back in a lounge chair and tried to remember what had attracted me so early in life to the stars.
Lacking any new insight on that topic, I decided to take an imiginary star trip. I felt no particular attraction to any one star, so I tried to imagine the sight before me for what it really was: the foreground stars are like nearby trees, the fainter ones can be imagined as a look into the woods, finally the Milky Way is like the deep forest, a general blur in which individual trees cannot be distinguished. It was not long before I succeeded in perceiving the heavenly sight that way. (The illustration at the left is intended to help visualize stars of farther and farther distances showing as fainter and fainter individuals and finally, the most distant ones blending into the distant general blur.)

What we call the Milky Way is actually a view of our own galaxy seen edge-on, since we are near the outer edge looking in to where the majority of our "neighbor" (astronomically speaking of course!) stars are.
It then recurred to me that every night we are privileged to look out the window of Spaceship Earth. And what a sight it is. It would be easy to assume that everything in the Universe is lined up the same way. But the reality is that the relative angles of planetary orbits in solar system is way off from the plane our Milky Way galaxy. The illustration at left is adapted from an image in a page by blogger Plantigrade. Imagine that you are on the little Earth globe, looking up. The red line represents the Ecliptic, the plane in which everything in the Solar System travels. Our galaxy is tilted about 123º to that plane. That is why our summer view of the Milk Way is over our heads.These nights it is actually running from horizon to horizon passing directly overhead, not at all aligned with the Earth's axis of rotation.

I suppose that if the motion of Earth as the Sun drags us around and around galaxy's center were like a train, then we would be riding sideways in our seats, like guy on the right!