The Man in the Moon is Crying

"He's always smiling

He never looks mean

Even when the sun comes in between

The man in the moon is smiling

'Cause he's in love,

The man in the moon is smiling

'Cause he's in love with the girl in the world."

- From "Heavenly" by Harry Connick, Jr. and Ramsey McLean

My sister and I were sitting at our kitchen table yesterday, brainstorming story ideas with the children, when one of my daughter's comments about the moon sparked her aunt's memory of this Harry Connick tune. Of course, we couldn't remember the title or the lyrics, exactly; what we remembered was, "The man in the moon is crying 'cause he's in love with the girl in the world." A few head-scratching moments and a Google search later, we were in possession of the correct words but yet the image of the man in the moon crying for the girl in the world stuck with me. With the earth bleeding great gushers of oil from its floor in the Gulf of Mexico, wouldn't anyone who loved it be crying?

Later on in the day I received a viral email celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the famous “pale blue dot” photo – Earth as seen from Voyager 1 while on the edge of our solar system (approximately 3,762,136,324 miles from home). The email also recalled the words of astronomer Carl Sagan upon viewing this photo:

"Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known."

I have no insight, no words to add to those of Sagan. I know of no adequate response to the disaster in the Gulf, no amount of tears that will compensate for the loss of entire ecosystems for years to come, and possibly species, forever. I can understand how our reliance on fossil fuels has grown to be an addiction: they have been cheap, easily transportable, and effective. They used to be plentiful, too. But now that we know more about fossil fuels - that they are dirty, that they are not unlimited, that they emit greenhouse gases, that we now buy them largely from unstable regimes, should we not try to do better? The earth is bleeding, living creatures are wounded and dying, and millions of gallons of "cheap fuel" are wasted. Can we not do better?

The man in the moon is crying, 'cause he's in love. The man in the moon is crying 'cause he's in love with the girl in the world.