Thursday, April 22, 2010

Happy 40th Birthday, Earth Day!

Earth Day began in 1970, founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson as a way to inspire awareness and appreciation for our environment. Though we need to be thinking like that EVERY day, it's nice to set aside a special day for that reason. I remember being a real little kid and seeing this commercial with the Native American canoeing through a filthy city, and the solitary tear coursing down his face was enough to make me never dream of littering.



They need to re-run this one now-a-days, that's for sure. Maybe if enough people re-watch it, they'll think twice about tossing their trash around in a place where it winds up in the Ocean. This very morning I nearly stepped on the top of a Jack Daniels bottle, broken off as if to shank someone in a bar fight. A few feet from where the waves lapped the shore. Who does that?! (And if I would've stepped on it, I was going to take it as a sign that Jack and I have to break up for good. But I didn't.) Balloons litter the shore, all sad and shriveled, but deadly to fish all the same. Cigarette butts are scattered about as if the gorgeous beach is a bus station ashtray. Even if you're in the middle of Hollywood and toss your own suicide device out the window, it winds up in the storm drain that spews out into the Pacific. How can you do that, honestly? Just please PLEASE stop it!

In a beautiful sign that our Oceans are still fighting back, a few dolphins broke the surface right when we looked up from our Earth Day reverie walking. They constantly make everyone's day, and the excitement of seeing a dolphin arc through the water never goes away. They deserve better than they're getting from us. Look!



We're going. Tonight. For our own awareness and appreciation celebration of those majestic - and endangered - waters. Maybe if kids today (of all ages) see the new Oceans movie (opening today from Disney), they'll recognize ... and never litter again. It really is the very least we can do.

Happy Birthday, Earth Day!

1 comment:

  1. A very important message to remind us how easy it can be to keep our earth beautiful. I haven't thrown away a ciggarette but for nine years. I just put them in my back pocket. And then put them in a bin! Fancy that.

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