The limits of our earth on this day
Earth Day is coming up this weekend. This week, we have a column about Earth Day from Delores Savas as well as a small article about one of the Earth Day activities in our news section. There are also events in Ballyhoo.
But most of us do not pay attention to Earth Day as an event, a thing. And that is perfectly O.K., as many of us are thinking about these issues all the time. At the Boca Beacon, the creatures that inhabit the land and waters, and their habits, are fodder for our news stories each week. An injured ibis! Owlets by the high school. Send a reporter! Mail us a photo! It’s Earth Day every day here.
The idea of Earth Day was always about teaching and instruction, so that is a useful term for such a broad idea, and not so much a “holiday.” But it is not new to have such a type of didactic environmental event after Easter. In the old European church, there were Rogation Days, where the people of the church prayed for the soil.
Rogation Day apparently followed the tradition of the Roman holiday of Robigalia, where a poor dog was sacrificed for the prevention of crop diseases, and wheat rust. That sort of event was about what scholars called a “malignant deity” that sort of had to be satisfied, or else. But that sort of tradition would not do for Christians, and what substituted were events during “Rogationtide” such as the Beating of the Bounds or praying for the fields in the boundaries of the parish. The Rogation Procession involved banners and a sort of parade, while the soil was blessed.
Not a bad idea, as the only blessing our soils seem to get around here are potent sprayings of chemicals. A note that last week, we reported on the work of Rick Joyce, who spoke to the Garden Club about landscaping and our island Bike Trail, much of which thrives without irrigation, or fertilizer. Back in the 1970s, there was no such thing as a chemical truck, and the only fertilizer was from under the septic tank, or so said Good Morning America essayist, Erma Bombeck, writer of “The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank.”
This year the demon focus for Earth Day is plastic; perhaps that is our “malignant deity” to kill, at least for a day. But it is all symbolic. There is so much plastic in our lives, at every moment, that the challenge seems beyond us. The fish had mercury, and now microplastics, and now we have not only all of that hidden in our water, but pharma waste too, with Xanax fish. Benjamin Braddock, you and Mike Nichols warned us back in 1967!
What is useful about being here, in this land of islands and mangrove, built on sands, and on top of limestone aquifers, is that there are limits to what we can do. This week, we have a short story on access to the “Bridgeless Islands” of Charlotte County. The county is in the middle of a study to ensure residents are heard. One thing that came through was the desire not to have a bridge. The residents want limits, some kind of limits, and are willing to live within those limits. Another issue that came up is where to take trash?
The logistics of such a place are daily and impose limits. But we all have a dream for such a place, where one can walk out in the morning, see only nature and exist in peace.
Those who want to think about limits would well go back to the writing of Wendell Barry, the Kentucky writer who makes it possible to think about living within limits in a useful, and spiritual way. He addressed it in 1990, in his essay Waste.
“Much of our waste problem is to be accounted for by the intentional flimsiness and un-repairability of the 1abor-saving devices and gadgets that we have become addicted to. Of course, my sometimes impression that we live on the receiving end of this problem is false, for country people contribute their full share….we are living our lives in the midst of a ubiquitous damned mess of which we are at once the victims and the perpetrators.”
Yikes!
This Tuesday, at the Honor Flight at Punta Gorda airport, a Burnt Store resident brought a 1967 Jeep. It was a Red Cross version, with a stretcher in back. What was stunning about it, other than its handsome good looks, was its sturdiness. The owner who brought it wanted folks to sit in it, and touch it. The steering wheel was unbreakable; the instrument panel was analog. In a hurricane, it would do fine, but a battery car, with all of its complexity, would not survive.
That M*A*S*H-style Jeep will be around at the Apocalypse and will be available to those not taken up in the rapture. That cannot be said for the gorgeous, and luxurious Jeep Grand Wagoneer, seen so often here, filled with more computers than the entire Apollo space program.
There is no going back.
But we can consider some limits for ourselves that benefit each of us, in time and speed.
Garland Pollard is the editor of the Boca Beacon. Email editor@bocabeacon.com.
