[History] rushes on, as it always did, with two forces racing toward the future, one splendidly uniformed, the other ragged but inspired.

Decorah sat in the impact crater of an asteroid that had struck the earth hundreds of millions of years ago. One of the extinct giant sea creatures exhumed from its crust — the shrimp-looking Pentecopterus decorahensis — had been named after the town.

I resist seeing Trump as just a fluke or an aberration, because it’s too flattering to ourselves. When people say, “Trump’s not us,” I think, Maybe we need to see how he is us, so we can prevent this from happening again.

The little button lying in my hand brought the violent history of the place to life. For a moment war wasn’t just pictures in textbooks. I could feel the residue of it, the half-life of violence.

Let’s put aside, for the moment, the thought of mass extinction. . . . Even if that is our eventual due, life will first look and feel different. Life as we know it won’t suddenly end, but it will be crimped; in many places, it already is.

In a rational world, we would be devoting every resource to making a difference in the short amount of time we have left. Past a certain point, we won’t be able to.