The Sound of Diamonds

What does living around present-day Puget Sound in western Washington and growing up in New Jersey across the Hudson River from the Big Apple have to do with the latest crop of pictures being beamed down to Earth from the James Webb Space Telescope? Everything, according to the author of The Sound of Diamonds. This book is an anthology of stories by Bill Barker that provides a mix of autobiography, history, and commentary on the issues and complexities of modern-day life—stories that he believes collectively suggest what science seems to be pointing to today: that we are all, in fact, inextricably connected to this universe as far back as we can see into it. This is an old concept, passed down through the ages. Ironically, it was perhaps an early nineteenth-century poet rather than a modern-day physicist who best described this incredible idea. In the words of William Blake (1757–1827):
Each grain of sand,
Every stone in the land,
Each rock and each hill,
Each fountain and rill,
Each herb and each tree,
Mountain, hill, earth, and sea,
Cloud, meteor, and star,
Are men seen afar.