Happy New Year to all living beings! Live long and prosper.

It’s been a troublesome and unpredictable 2016 — not that the clump of 365 consecutive days has any particular significance, but since we measure our strangeness in trips around the sun, let’s just say it: 2016 was a bloody pain in the arse.

Too many good people are gone, and too many rotten ones are left. The lists of inspiring people who passed away is just too long. When you think about it, what the hell kind of Universe takes away Anton Yelchin at age 27, and yet provides a second heart to keep an evil bastard like Dick Cheney going?

What a seriously messed up agency is responsible for this kind of sadistic continuum? That is: if you are going to attribute agency to a Mad Universe. But what we can observe of our entire cosmos is only an agglomeration of dissipating thermodynamic energy. On the other hand, if you are an atheist or a pantheist, you need not worry about a Mad or Malevolent Universe. Lucky day! Things just are the way they are, and no evil deity is punishing you. Even luckier for the pantheist, I should say: it’s all happening, it’s all real, and it’s all blessed by the Great Spirit.

Well, count me lucky! I became a pantheist at some point in the summer haze of the 1960s. The rocks and stones, the waters flowing, the rushing air that sustains us, that is the good stuff! We need to work on the sacred water, air, earth; sustainable soils and organic farms forever.

There really is no Planet B. Screwing up our planet and running away, like bad campers evacuating a trash-strewn latrine is not an option. Let’s calm down and focus. Terra is not a distant dream. It’s right here and we can save it.