Even the closest star system, Alpha Centauri, is 4.6 light years away. If you could see it tonight, that single beam of light has been traveling to your retina since the Spring of 2019, when someone else was president and we had energy independence.

It will have traveled 27.6 Trillion miles to get there. And that's the closest.

Makes me feel small and insignificant on the scale of the universe. A humility that might improve the attitudes of some of the more prominent public figures strutting about our public stages.

I bring this subject up because it's so depressing to contemplate what earthly matters are going on down here this year. Some of you know what I'm talking about. You too have tuned out some or much of the day's news. It's just so overwhelming and seems awful.

Not all of it is, of course. So, I opted to talk this week about an alternate subject, impressive U.S. space explorations.

Most of us have probably heard about the Osiris spacecraft that spent the last few years traveling from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to a distant asteroid called Bennu, checking it out, landing on it, scooping up some of the loose debris, and bringing it back toward Earth.

In September, it dropped off the debris container, which landed in the Utah desert.

But few of us realized at the time that 20 minutes after dropping off its package, that same Osiris spacecraft then launched itself on a five-and-a-half-year journey to catch up with more remains of the Big Bang.

It will track the immense space debris during a close pass-by of Earth on its eternal space odyssey. By "close," I mean space close -- only 20,000 miles. The Moon is 12 times farther away.

My brief thoughts are here:

The most recent audio commentary examined a rather unusual and intriguing poll. It showed how very unpopular both of our major political parties are. And yet the policies of and confidence in one of them is much better than the other. Here it is.

This week's column was also something of a diversion from current events in our national swamp. It looked at the impressive Taylor Swift phenomenon and the clever way she built it. An All-American success story that likely will bring her more than $4 billion.

I've not been a fan of hers — just barely aware of her. But the career she's carefully constructed and protected over many years is impressive, especially given some of the less successful endeavors going on nowadays.

I guess it's to be expected in today's United States, but that success and this column prompted a lot of unhappy people to share their opinion that she is awful, her music is trash, and they're tired of hearing about her. All civil comments are welcome here.

Since clicking on these Malcolm on the Right posts is voluntary, I'm pleased they still chose to read it.

I also posted another of my Memories columns the other day. The latest one recalled a fascinating day I spent years ago with Hal Holbrook, the actor perhaps best known for his Mark Twain performances.

He was quite friendly and approachable and taught me much about drama and acting. Read how it went.