Science more than matters

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It was raining, but gallant they marched undaunted.

I take my soggy wet Pacific Northwest hat off to my dear East Tennessee friends who attended the soggy wet March for Science in Washington DC while I was across the country in the state also named in honor of our first president. (Does anyone honestly think there will be anything named in honor of our current ineffectual president? They are actually taking his name off buildings in his home state.)

I am hugely proud of two of the young marchers who have attended so many of my "ology" classes—many more than once—at Ijams Nature Center that they could step in and teach them. Proud of you, Asha who knows her owls and Judah, a future wetland ecologist, who caught a record 25 red-spotted newts at my last Froggy-ology.

And to all of our befuddled elected legislators from Tennessee who somehow think this ire is going to go away, you are sadly mistaken. President of an university where science is taught, what were we thinking?

Yes. Science more than matters. It is the one thing that is testable. Provable. Concrete. And as Newton's Third Law of Physics clearly states, "For every action, there is an equal (in force) and opposite (in direction) reaction."

And science is the only thing that can save this Pale Blue Dot* we call home.

* My homage to my science hero Carl Edward Sagan.

Notice the red-spotted newt in Judah's poster! His homage to me. 

"The oceans are rising and so are we!" Indeed.

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