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EARTH DAY


TODAY I kept noticing the beauty of the earth in my little section of it,


which contains an abundance of splendid scenes and vistas.




I also grieved the atrocities visited upon Earth in order to service our society's collective greed. In honor of this day, I've been attempting for the past month to reduce the truckloads of unsolicited, unwelcome, unwanted junk paper mail that the USPS drives to our house six days a week. Recycling it is only second-best, and besides, it's work I feel I should not have to do.

I've emailed or phoned the non-profits, the mail order catalogs, the car dealerships, the credit card companies, the alma maters...tried to put a halt to the neighborhood newspaper (just because it's free, do I have to have it?!), the plastic wrapped quasi-catalogs from the local department stores, the advertisement-laden publications that try to masquerade as magazines of interest. All of it is what Bill McKibben calls "stuff-porn" in the latest issue of Mother Jones. Actually, his article, "Waste Not, Want Not"* was enough to make me feel a little nauseous and to realize how tiny in the overall scheme of things is my attempt to staunch the flow of mutilated forests to my doorstep. I could be an ant, I think, volunteering to help stop a million elephants from stampeding.

So since today was Earth Day, I added another resolution to my list: No more plastic water bottles. EVER! And then I celebrated by going up the road to my orchard, admiring my little trees that are taking nourishment from Earth every day...and being grateful.






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*www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/05/waste-not-want-not