Coming Soon: Earth Day: A Pat on the Head

Then business as usual.

cosmicEgg480

Spaceship Earth’s crew squanders its last remaining necessities (topsoil, drinking water, untainted food) and jettisons its cargo of damaged, destitute and displaced humans and any animals or plants we can’t eat. We persist in disregarding fatal threats we should have seen through systems navigation rushing towards our vessel since 1970 and well before.

Those looming threats have been and apparently will remain invisible to us. Meanwhile, we travel under heavy sedation  watching reality politics and celebrity bowling  24-7 in the Holodeck.

Adlai Stevenson, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, in his last major speech, to that body’s Economic and Social Council, in Geneva, July 9, 1965, said this:

“We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave–to the ancient enemies of man–half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.”

While They Were Shouting – A Botanist’s Lament About Presidential Politics – The New York Times 

Mixed metaphor apologies; Spaceship Cosmic Egg doodle using iPad app Procreate.

Share this with your friends!
fred
fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

Articles: 3007

One comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.