Today, April 22nd, is Earth Day.
What does that even mean anymore?
As a kid in elementary school, that meant coloring in handouts with trees on them (ironically wasting paper in the process), learning about the three R’s (Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle), and playing with an Earth Ball in gym class.
Now, though, Earth Day seems to have fallen out of fashion. CNN.com offers election coverage, and some peripherally “green” content, like “Smog can kill you, report says.” ABCNews is equally disappointing, though on their homepage you’ll learn about a cat with 9 lives and six legs (which is more disappointing).
The positive way to look at this is that we’ve evolved from celebrating the Earth once a year to recognizing (and respecting) our relationship to it year round. Documentaries, websites, TV programs, magazines, blogs, and the like have been dedicated to the preservation of our planet, so it’s very possible that we just no longer feel the need celebrate on one particular day our love for our home.
However, as a Hallmark culture, we celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, religious rites of passage, Pagan holidays, holidays named after Saints, Presidents (and/or others that have been shot), veterans (living and dead), mothers, fathers, love, death, “just because,” bringing syphilis to the Indians, the birth someone that may or may not have existed (and his resurrection, via colored eggs and chocolate bunnies), and the start of another arbitrarily defined period of time. Our life-sustaining celestial body certainly warrants something more than a kitschy Google banner, no?
I’m calling for the recycling of Earth Day. Let’s make it a day where we enjoy the Earth’s splendors, rather than focusing so fearfully on our depletions, emissions, extrusions, erosions, corrosions, and radiations.
And playing with an Earth Ball wouldn’t be too bad of an idea, either…
jackie for amp3pr.com
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