The Stars We Could Reach

Terry Jacks' song, Seasons in the Sun, was one of my favorites in 1974. That's not too surprising since the lyrics were by my favorite poet at the time, Rod McKuen.
It was a sad song about saying goodbye to a loved one. One refrain was:
"We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun, but the hills that we climbed were just seasons out of time."

Another was: "We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun, but the stars we could reach, were just starfish on the beach."

This is the photo responsible for me thinking about the song. It was on my internet home page this morning with the caption: "Tens of thousands of dead sea creatures wash up on British beach."  I can't even imagine going down for a walk on the beach and finding such a catastrophe.

The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, which is a wildlife conservation charity, reported similar scenes on beaches down the coast. Here is the quote which really caught my attention: "There was a three degree drop in sea temperature last week which will have caused animals to hunker down and reduce their activity levels," Bex Lynam, North Sea marine advocacy officer for Yorkshire Wildlife Trust said in a statement provided to Fox News.

The Lynam surname is the 66,478th most common in the world. In other words, it isn't very common, which is why when I do see it in a news story, I am intrigued. "Are we related?" was my first thought. The second was, "I wonder what name Bex is short for?" "Bexter?" like Baxter, but not quite. I was assuming it was a man's name. So I was surprised when I Googled it to find Bex is Rebecca and she has a Twitter account with more pictures of the disaster and its clean up by volunteers. I've added her to follow on Twitter.

Perhaps I will find out if we are related either through the Lynam's or the Hull's and Edward's who came from Yorkshire.

"But the stars we could reach, were just starfish on the beach."  😢