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On the road again:
Because of the coronavirus, Cyndy and I have rented a house in this lovely, quiet, peaceful, and apparently healthy 55+ retirement community.
Our lease is on a month-by-month basis. Our intention is to stay here until it’s safe to travel again.
The house is 1,700 square feet, which is about ten times the size of our 168 square foot (8 feet by 21 feet) Jayco travel trailer that we’ve been living in and towing around the country for the past 12 months.
Let me put those numbers into perspective.
If we had 10 travel trailers of that size, we could park all of them in the same footprint as this one house.
In the trailer, we have one dining table that is suitable for two or maybe four slender people. There are five dining tables in the house, including one on the rear patio and one outside the front entryway.
In the trailer, we can get from the kitchen to the dining table in two steps. Here, our favorite table, on the rear patio, is 28 steps from the kitchen.
In the trailer, four steps will take us from the kitchen to the bed. Here, we walk 22 steps.
“Getting our steps in,” without going outside, feels strange. Although we do get out for a walk or a bike ride every morning before the temps climb into the 80s and 90s.
The house is completely furnished, including a full complement of kitchen, bath, and bedroom accessories. So all we brought from the trailer were our clothes, food, and personnel items, including our bicycles.
And on the patio, we have a collection of cacti and other arid desert vegetation, including a
saguaro cactus that is about 12 feet tall and might be 80 years of age.
Most of all, we are very blessed to be here.
Normally, this house would rent for three times the amount we’re paying. But COVID-19 restrictions are keeping the owners at their other home in Minnesota, and potential renters who might be here in “normal times” are also staying put elsewhere.
Today's Story ...
Today is April 22, a day that has become popularly known as “Earth Day.”
Please note that I keystroked those keywords within quotation marks. That’s because the real Earth Day is on the spring equinox, March 20 or 21.
The story of these two days—“Earth Day” and Earth Day—is a bit complex. But the skinny is this:
In 1968, a man named
John McConnell came up with the concept of Earth Day as a
global holiday that would
celebrate unity among all people on the planet. He announced plans for Earth Day at a United Nations conference in October 1969.
At the same time,
Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, began to organize an Environmental Teach-In as a means to
protest environmental pollution in the United States.
With a target audience of communities, churches, and college campuses, Nelson chose April 22 for its practicality and to maximize participation.
Both events premiered in 1970.
During the following decade, the “Earth Day” Teach-In faltered, giving the impression that it was a one-hit wonder. Meanwhile, McConnell’s Earth Day grew in popularity and included ringing of a peace bell at the United Nations by Secretaries-General and other international dignitaries.
Through a series of events starting in 1970 and culminating in 1990, the Environmental Teach-In people usurped the “Earth Day” name and, over time, had enough public relations personnel, financial resources, and political clout to claim the name as their own.
This was a huge disappointment to John McConnell. But in many other ways, he is worthy of great tribute and respect.
He is the originator of the Earth Flag. Today, this flag, still the only flag that represents all people of all nations, consists of a full-color image of Earth from outer space.
But John’s original creation was a simple silkscreen of a dark blue field adorned with a light blue orb, partially covered with wisps of white. These design elements represent Earth’s waters and clouds, environmental components shared by everyone.
The absence of green or brown to represent continents was John’s way of saying that nations and borders are artificial conventions that hinder us from remembering we are
one global people of the
one human race.
Through the
Earth Society Foundation, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that he founded, John established an Earth Trustees program, of which everyone—including you and me—is inherently a member and which operates on his primary principle of “peace, justice, care of Earth.”
He avowed: “Peace is not the absence of war. Peace comes from an honest understanding of another person’s point of view. Thus, we need to come together where we agree and leave room for our differences.
“Justice is not an eye for an eye; that’s legalized revenge. True justice is an equitable sharing of all the world’s resources by all the world’s people.
“Without peace through understanding and social justice, the environmental movement is a one-legged stool.”
These words of wisdom were relevant during John’s lifetime (1915 – 2012), and they are relevant today—on this “Earth Day”—and every day.
~~~~~ ~~~~~
Bob Henson, a meteorologist and weather/ climate writer for The Weather Company and Weather Underground, has written
a well-balanced article for The Weather Channel about Nelson and McConnell and “the two Earth Days.”
~~~~~ ~~~~~
In 2006, I published a biography of John and his lovely, loving wife, Anna. The title is
Peace, Justice, Care of Earth: The biography of John McConnell, founder of Earth Day.
It’s available on Amazon.
Relatedly, another of John McConnell’s colleagues, Dr. John Munday, created a compendium of McConnell’s tireless advocacy for world peace, including his Minute for Peace program. That book,
Earth Day: Visions of Peace, Justice, and Earth Care: My Life and Thought at Age 96, was published one year before John McConnell passed from this life.
It's also available on Amazon.
~~~~~ ~~~~~
PS: The
saguaro cacti are protected in Arizona. Killing or stealing these desert icons is a felony. Yet, contractors working on the United States’ southern border wall have deliberately uprooted and destroyed at least a dozen saguaros—some 30 feet tall and 200 years of age—within the Organ Pipe National Monument, 150 miles west of Green Valley.
On February 26 of this year, the
Los Angeles Times ran
a comprehensive article on this intentional and unprosecuted destruction by our federal government.
As Earth Trustees as well as American citizens, we have a right and responsibility to protest these actions—both the building of a senseless border wall and the destruction of a much-revered natural resource. Please contact your federal legislators about this.
~~~~~ ~~~~~
Thank you for caring. Thank you for reading my stories.
God blesses everyone ... no exceptions.
Robert (Bob) Weir
