Carbon

In phase 8 of the universal creation, Creator summoned all the Elements together in order to give them purpose and function. Hydrogen stepped up quickly, so Creator designated him as #1. Then Helium came in and obtained #2. Lithium stepped up for the #3 spot; then Beryllium took #4, and Boron #5. The #6 spot was assigned to Carbon, and the rest is elementary history. Hundreds of thousands of years later, probably millions later, a certain writer, Carey, noticed some interesting characteristics about Carbon that he thought might be worthy of mention in the world wide web of information. . . interesting stuff to ponder. His early ventures into the wikiwatchee wild world of wonders brought him to an understanding that all the elements, all 103 of them, were grouped into catagories of valence. Valence is the power of any particular element to combine with other elements and entities. As luck and numbers would have it, carbon came in at the top of Group 14 in the elemental pecking order. Not a bad place to be, actually. . . as the great mandela of life and death on earth whirled through the ages, carbon was an activist, repeatedly getting involved all kinds of creational and evolutionary projects. Later when men started to figure stuff out, they found that carbon had played a highly constructive role in all kinds of projects. The evidence of carbon’s activism was left behind in limestone, dolomite, graphite, even diamonds!. Organic projects brought forth peat, methane, coal, natural gas, oil. . . did somebody say oil? Well, that’s the big one— the one that humans made best use for awhile, for a very long time. Initially, after discovery of oil’s many uses, they used it for fires to stay warm, later to heat up metals, such as copper and iron, silver and gold, for tools and precious trinkets. . . jewelry, religious ceremonies, all kinds of uses for carboniferous substances. A couple of centuries ago, men started using carboniferous fuels to power motors for industrial development, power generation and transportation.

What we later found out was that a lot of those carbon emissions from oil, gas and coal were wafting up into our atmosphere and wandering around with nothing to do except make trouble. They began to protest their degenerated lot in life, even though they had ended up at the highest levels. Together, they constituted a kind of atmospheric shield that tended to trap heat in the earth atmosphere instead of letting it escape into space where it belonged. Long about the year 2000, a vice president of the United States ran for president, but he lost. I won’t go into all the gorey details, but let’s just say. . . hanging chads and a scaliafied high court diverted his destiny from the white house to the high position of operating as counsel for the defense of the Planet and all the People and critters who live therein. Then a wide array of citizens’ activism opened up on behalf of the people and the planet, and those folks have been a good influence. The auto-manufactures figured out that we need catalytic converters to minimize those carbon atoms from wafting up into our atmosphere. And I think—at least I hope—that some of the power companies and co-ops have made efforts to minimize their carbon emissions. Now I haven’t really heard much about this lately, but I was practicing my ABC’s that I had learned in kindergaten, which I do every day when I read anything. . . and I thought about carbon, because. . . I don’t know, maybe because my name and “carbon” have the same three letters. At age 75, I’m closer now than I was before to that moment when my soul ascends upward

past earth, past the atmosphere, into the eternal realm where the Creator, the Lord, came down in His human identity. . . and suffered death so that he could overcome it, thereby demonstrating that you and I could overcome it if. . . if we are willing to go with Him. All will be well when I get past this earth and the carbons are all settled back down in the earth where they belong. Just sayin’. Glass half-Full