Mother Earth Beckons

 

 

Today is Earth Day, which means it’s time for Baby Boomers to hug your inner tree, at least for those still limber enough for that sort of thing. After all, we started this one.

 

Begun in 1970 at the urging of Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day kicked off with large rallies in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and other cities. The Associated Press, in a year-end review it published then, estimated the city rallies at 25,000 and added that some 10 million school children also participated. The 35-word entry doesn’t mention much more, except to note that the day was to “draw attention to the globe’s environmental problems.”

 

That’s because there wasn’t much more to mention. Some environmentalists worried that the earth was growing too cold, some worried that it was growing too hot, and some thought the earth was just right, but didn’t say so because being just right was very unfashionable then.

 

Others worried that the earth was becoming too populated, ignoring the historical record of wars, plagues and famines that routinely regulate that.

 

Still others noted that April 22 was the 100^th birthday of Vladimir Lenin and wondered if the celebrations were part of the ubiquitous Communist Plot to Overthrow Democracy, probably by boring it to death.

 

And don’t forget that April 22^nd was the birthday of J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska, who founded Arbor Day which became a holiday in 1872, and is still celebrated in Nebraska, where occasions to celebrate anything except leaving the state are few.

 

But most of us who were then alive and young were just glad that Wednesday, April 22, 1970 gave us a chance to stop worrying about wars in Cambodia and Vietnam, Women’s Liberation, Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon, the Chicago 7, school desegregation violence, the My Lai massacre, the Israeli-Arab conflict, the Weather Underground, Mary Jo Kopechne’s fatal ride with Senator Edward Kennedy, and the whisker-close safe return of Apollo 13.

 

All those 1970 worries bubbled before the first Earth Day, and worse would come after, including Kent State and other nightmares, so for all the grand talk about Saving Our Environment, most who lived at the time concentrated on the more immediate task of Saving Our Ass.

 

Which is why except for the annual spasm of we-gotta-fill-the-space-somehow stories, Earth Day isn’t much of a threat to our more robust secular holidays like Mothers Day, Fathers Day or Super Bowl Sunday. In fact, a search on Hallmark’s website turned up zero Earth Day greeting cards and just five Earth Day e-messages.

 

Still, it is observed. President Obama gave an Earth Day address at a wind farm in Newton, Iowa, proving that his administration has risen above petty irony. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi predicts that by Earth Day next year, we’ll be celebrating climate change legislation, although it’s not yet clear who will be charged with getting Mother Nature to fall in line – or what we do if she doesn’t.

 

So if  Baby Boomers are distressed that Earth Day observances are somewhere between filing income taxes and colonoscopy on the scales of enjoyment, they can still take heart.  In spite of everything, everyone on the planet will one day be One With Mother Earth.

 

And the actuarial tables suggest that for most of us, it’s coming sooner than we think.

 

 

###