Quote of the Day (Edward Hoagland, on Secondhand Lives in the Digital Era)

“I appreciate the utility of power in the winter, but many people seldom see a sunrise or sunset nowadays; they’re looking at a screen. What will this do? The Northern Lights, the Big Dipper — are they eclipsed like the multiplication tables? There was a magnetism to aurora borealis or a cradle moon, to spring peepers’ sleigh-bell sound or spindrift surfing toward shore under cumulus clouds, that galvanized delights in us almost Paleolithic.

“Are we stunted if we lose it, a deflation associated with migrating indoors to cyberspace, Facebook instead of faces?” —Essayist-naturalist Edward Hoagland, “Living Life Secondhand,” The New York Times, November 9, 2014