This year, I went a little cosmic with my holiday card. These are two experiments that didn't make the cut since I went a slightly different direction, but I thought I would share them here.

Like a lot of people, I've been saddened by the violence I've seen on the news lately in the US and abroad, and by the extreme political rhetoric it's prompted. So I wanted my card to be a reminder that the universe is a big place, and we're just a tiny piece of it. We're all from different places, and believe different things, but we're all made up of star stuff, here for a short time. As Neil DeGrasse Tyson so eloquently says:

“Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.”

We're all connected. Peace on Earth, good will towards men.