In an effort not to overwhelm
our wayward professor when he returns, I'm (okay, I'll say it) cheating a
bit and borrowing heavily from another recent 99% Housewife post. I'll end with a
few more questions for the prof that I omitted last week.
Good Natured Sustainability
My city and county have declared April, "Sustainability Month." I can see some of you rolling your eyes which is why I think we need to have this little talk.
Let's lay politics aside for a moment.
I have a theory. Maybe it's crazy. I think people like clean. Clean water. Clean air. Clean parks and streets. Clean food. Somewhere along the way though, the left claimed the environmental moral high ground while the right rejected over regulation and claimed to be the friend of small business (yes, yes, Professor I know you dislike those categories). Let's face it. Both sides can get a bit surly defending their positions and the extremists at both ends make me cringe. (I'm defining the extremists here as those on one end who would say we shouldn't kill anything and that humans are a disease the planet is plagued with, and those on the other side who think we should conquer, kill, and destroy at will with no thought of the impact on the natural world or future generations.)
Me? I'm occupying a garden. I'm recycling, reusing, and reducing all I can. I'm keeping backyard chickens and setting up a bee hive.
Do you want to argue about that?
Me either.
We don't have to agree on ideology. Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh both need to eat more salads. Right away, there is something we can all agree on. Wouldn't it be fun to force them to tend a community garden together? (I can only imagine them wondering whether to plant Twinkie or Oreo seeds) So what if we just let the folks who believe Gore drive less because they are afraid of overheating the earth? Let others drive hybrids so we are less beholden to foreign oil producing nations. Let church groups and religious organizations clean up the city park because they want to show love to the community, or recycle because they want to be good stewards of all they've been given. Let some plant backyard gardens and keep chickens for the economic value or just for the fun of it. Let others visit the local farmer's market to help out local small businesses or set up backyard compost bins because they hate waste. Heck, don't even bash anyone for doing any of those things because they are trendy. We can all move in the same direction for different reasons. (I know; this is becoming my mantra.)
Who knows? Maybe arguing less and working more would keep a lot of unnecessary hot air from being released into the atmosphere.
And THAT is good for all of us.
How very 99%.
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Professor J,
"History not used is nothing, for all intellectual life is action, like practical life, and if you don't use the stuff well, it might as well be dead." Arnold Toynbee
Why don't we learn from history? Why don't we learn to cooperate?
"A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times."~Lord Acton
Acton's quote goes along with my question last time about what you imagine Toynbee might say we should be doing NOW? What things might he (or you) say that time has run out on? What do you envision us trying to do "at last" that we should have tackled already?
Welcome back Answer Man! I had a lot more questions but thought I'd take it easy on you. ;)
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