Our home, a cosmic speck

Re “We’re in a crowded universe, but Earth is still precious,” Personal Note, July 14, and “Just look up,” photo, July 14

Thanks to editorial writer Tony Barboza for his personal note with a reminder of our responsibility as Earthlings to fight for our one and only home.

The James Webb Space Telescope is providing glimpses into a cosmic past for our edification, awe and wonder. But unless we do more to address humancaused climate change, our fragile Earth will not survive for future generations to sustain life.

And thanks to Times staff photographer Carolyn Cole for capturing the full Buck Moon as it rose over the Port of Los Angeles. Though we are but specks in the cosmos, it is a joy to behold the wonder around and above us. Starflower Thomson

Joshua Tree

Barboza mentioned other iconic space photos. One of those was the “Pale Blue Dot” photo by Voyager 1, which was taken only after Carl Sagan fought hard for it to be. When NASA finally relented, we got that amazing photo, which graced the cover of Sagan’s final book, “Pale Blue Dot.”

Many years after Sagan’s death, I was playing a music gig at a bookstore in San Luis Obispo. I asked the workers if they carried the book, which I had lost years earlier. I missed that beautiful photo. When they finally brought me the book, it had a blank white cover.

The moral of the story seems to be there are forces in our society that would hide from us such a perspective of our place in the cosmos.

Joseph John Racano Los Osos