Today the Earth rotated 360 degrees around her axis. She completed ~1/365th of her journey around the Sun, a trip which she has completed ~4.54 billion times before. Humankind also went about business as usual, though less gracefully than the cosmos. Wars were fought. Horrors were wrought. Marriages were held. Vows were made. Some were broken. Babies were born. A marginal increase in the global atmospheric carbon gave some people cause for concern. Some of us died. Some of us learned to live anew. The Earth laughed at us for our follies, wept with us for our tragedies, and frequently she did both, since the two so often coincide.

And at night we lay in the arms of lovers, or alone, or some with their children, atop spring mattresses, or padded mats, or the gum-stained sidewalk in the recessed doorways of stores, and some slept fitfully, or hardly at all, but sleep they did at last and succumbed to the realm of dreams and repose where everybody goes alike until tomorrow comes...