It’s Earth Day. Today.
Its also take your kid to work day. How did they get the two on one day? And who is they anyway? Like who allocates them? Mother’s day and Father’s day and Valentine’s day and Secretary’s day and Ocean day? My mother used to say, before my father ran off with her best friend, “every day is father’s day”. Personally I think every day should be Mother’s day. And Earth day and Earth Mother’s day and Mother Earth’s day. Really! We have, like, ozone holes and vanishing rainforests and melting ice, and oil spills and mountain top removal and fracking and extinct species, and air pollution and clean water shortage and now all that plastic in the oceans that kills everything from whales to birds to fish and eventually us, and all we have is ONE day! Only one day a year that is Earth day….
What bullshit!
One Day To Feel Good About Ourselves and the Environment Day is what today should be called, so tomorrow we can go back to our old ways of buying bottled Evian, forgetting to bring cloth bags to the market, leaving the lights on, driving instead of taking our bike or walking.
BUT
Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe its arrogant to assume that we, as just another, be it rather pernicious species, have to assume the position of “saving the planet” when its only us who’s making the mess in the first place. Its a bit like beating your wife and then helping her with the ice packs and band-aids. Take a look at the last tsunami, the earthquakes, the volcano just last week and its easy to see that we the people, are, after all, pretty powerless, and that Mother Earth may just have her own plans to save herself.
And I don’t think she calls it “Human Species Day”.
What WE need is a Human Species Day. Atonement Day. Reflect humbly on who and what we are and correct our ways to save ourselves and each other.
(All of above said in the words of Michael Jackson: with the love…with the love…)
plover eggs and beach plastic
here he comes again. i cant stand it anymore. i’m gonna cut his gas line. since nine this morning, there have been outside my window the following: man worker with noisy gas powered bush clipper cutting to shreds a perfectly lovely bush, half an hour later same worker with noisy gas powered lawn mower mowing 1″ high grass, half an hour later same worker with noisy gas powered weed whacker whacking 3/4″ grass, and an hour later another worker with noisy gas powered leaf blower blowing one visible and several microscopic leaves across the pavement. this process of curbing and preening nature takes at least two square inches out of the ozone layer, and therefore shortening the survival chances of nature by several what? Minutes? Hours? Years? but. this is what I find. some in miami think green is just a color. GREEN as a movement for sustainablity is not a prevailing concept. its a color that you cut and mow and whack and blow. hummers are STILL the car of choice for the rich and richer. recycling at my condo means separating your garbage and then having it all thrown together again by waste management so why bother. at publix, the local supermarket monopoly, the baggers give me a foul look when i bring my reusable set. i’m scared of those baggers. they yell at each other, so surely they’ll yell at me. the beach gets cleaned every day, morning and afternoon, by giant scoopers. this does not make anyone responsible for the crap thats left behind. THEY, a force which is not generally seen as another human, cleans it up and as a result waste is left where it was used in its process. parks, streets and shoulders are littered before THEY clean them up and what doesn’t get picked up in time ends up blown into the ocean or the canals, like floating publix bags, styrofoam cups, coke bottles, halloween candy wrappers, tide containers and so on. the city itself makes an enormous effort to keep miami clean, and it’s a beautiful city, but this process of constant cleaning and controlling of litter seems wasteful and doesn’t motivate individuals to take responsibility in creating a sustainable lifestyle. one that uses less and recycles and reuses more. this is my observation after six weeks, i’d love to be proven wrong, and will join any local group that is working to teach greener policies…
Barbi Does Miami 