By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
It’s been a week of firsts, some of them downright startling. Take the Pope’s resignation, for instance. Anybody see that coming? Sure, we all noted the wobble in the church, Ratzinger’s recent passive-aggressive behavior, the burgeoning list of young sexual abuse victims that seemed never-ending.
While not a first, stepping away from Papal vows for the first time in almost 700 years — certainly, in recent memory — is a first-class deal-breaker. His predecessor, John Paul II, put an exclamation point on service-til-the-bitter-end as he spent his last years listing to one side or the other due to complications of advanced Parkinson’s. John Paul’s only intimate use of an alter boy was to help to prop him up; unfortunately, he left the rest of those responsibilities to his consigliore and ultimate successor, Cardinal John Ratzinger. The faithful appear thunderstruck.
Eric’s brilliant handling of the astrology of that event helped pick much of the meat off this bone, but the shock of it prompts you to take a moment and rethink what you think you know about everything (which is an excellent idea at any time). I suspect folks in Russia had one of those shocking moments as well, when a ten-ton meteor the size of a kitchen table raced across the sky, lighting up the landscape and providing them a sonic boom and eventual explosion over the Ural mountains that shattered glass, collapsed walls and injured over a thousand people. Talk about a heart-clutcher!
The meteor event was not a first — think Tunguska or ask a dinosaur — but the incident was rare, unexpected and apparently coincidental to the arrival of Asteroid 2012 DA 14. DA 14 came closer to the Earth than any since record-keeping began, and that is, indeed, a first.
Coming in at about half the size of a football field, DA 14 passed perilously close to earth while going eight times as fast as a speeding bullet. Only a little more than 17,000 awe-inspiring miles from the planet, it was not expected to cause any difficulties — and did not — although that’s too close for anyone’s comfort.