Earth Day

Today is Earth Day, and I began it with a tour of the garden. Last night's rain promoted the fledgling plants to a new level of greenness. There are several clusters of daffodils blooming, and some of the spinach planted last fall could be eaten, if I wanted to pluck its baby-sized leaves (which I do not).

The cats followed me around the yard, Sami carefully picking her way among the mud puddles. 

Jupiter showed off for us by climbing the ash tree, stopping every few feet to make sure we were watching and admiring his prowess.

Jupiter samples some chives.

After we came inside, I Googled "Earth Day" and read a little of its history. According to on-line sources, Earth Day is designed to inspire awareness and appreciation [and, I would hope, a sense of responsibility] for the Earth's environment. The first official Earth Day in the U.S. began when Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin proposed a nationwide teach-in day on the environment in a speech to a fledgling conservation group in Seattle on September 20, 1969, and then again six days later in Atlantic City to a meeting of the United Auto Workers. Senator Nelson hoped that a grassroots outcry about environmental issues might prove to Washington, D.C. just how distressed Americans were in every constituency.

The Earth Day movement proved to be autonomous with no central governing body. It worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. The first Earth Day celebration on April 22, 1970, marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement. Approximately 20 million Americans participated. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage and toxic dumps, pesticides, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.

More interesting, to me, is the Equinox Earth Day. The equinoctial Earth Day is celebrated on the March equinox (around March 20) to mark the precise moment of astronomical mid-spring in the Northern Hemisphere and of astronomical mid-autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. [An equinox in astronomy is that moment in time (not a whole day) when the center of the Sun can be observed to be directly "above" the Earth's equator, occurring around March 20 and September 23 each year.] 

I also learned that the first Earth Day proclamation was issued by San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto on March 21, 1970. Celebrations were held in cities such as San Francisco and Davis, California, with multi-day street parties. On February 16, 1971, UN Secretary-General U Thant signed a proclamation, saying, "May there be only peaceful and cheerful Earth Days to come for our beautiful Spaceship Earth [seems like a very '70s kind of term to use] as it continues to spin and circle in frigid space with its warm and fragile cargo of animate life," and the United Nations Earth Day ceremony has continued each year since on the day of the March equinox. 

My little pagan heart sang when I read Margaret Mead's 1978 declaration of support for the equinox Earth Day: "Earth Day is the first holy day which transcends all national borders, yet preserves all geographical integrities, spans mountains and oceans and time belts, and yet brings people all over the world into one resonating accord, is devoted to the preservation of the harmony in nature and yet draws upon the triumphs of technology, the measurement of time, and instantaneous communication through space. Earth Day draws on astronomical phenomena in a new way – which is also the most ancient way – by using the vernal Equinox, the time when the Sun crosses the equator making the length of night and day equal in all parts of the Earth. To this point in the annual calendar, Earth Day attaches no local or divisive set of symbols, no statement of the truth or superiority of one way of life over another. But the selection of the March Equinox makes planetary observance of a shared event possible, and a flag which shows the Earth, as seen from space, appropriate."

However/whenever you choose to celebrate Earth Day, I hope you take the celebration beyond "awareness and appreciation," into action that lasts the year 'round.