c/o The United Nations

The Blue Marble

• NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Image by Reto Stöckli (land surface, shallow water, clouds). Enhancements by Robert Simmon (ocean color, compositing, 3D globes, animation). Data and technical support: MODIS Land Group; MODIS Science Data Support Team; MODIS Atmosphere Group; MODIS Ocean Group Additional data: USGS EROS Data Center (topography); USGS Terrestrial Remote Sensing Flagstaff Field Center (Antarctica); Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (city lights).

What's new, you ask, in the world
of advocacy and global diplomacy?
Well, the Old Girl has a new admirer,
defender, one to staunchly vouch
for her pre-eminence royally
vested in the serene mantle, crown,
scepter and orb of the
Universal Mother.

The mother indeed, of all she surveys,
and she has a long, wide, gaze.
Mother Nature may feel
complacently that her domain
is securely hers, absent the occasional
irritating presumption of humankind,
like stubbornly wayward children,
interfering, making of themselves
intolerable nuisances
she generally ignores.

But the conscience of original
people of the Earth and its
mountainous terrain has been piqued
in shame at what she majestically endures
through her palpable surrender to
noblesse oblige. Bolivia has now
petitioned the world body of the
United Nations to ride to her rescue!

And that noble lady sighs.