Happy Earth Day!

[Gary Childress]

Would anyone like to share their thoughts on Earth Day, environmentalism or things related?

I remember going to my first Earth Day celebration on the Mall in Washington DC. I think it was in 1991 or 1992. We parked our cars at a local park on the other side of the Potomac near Arlington Cemetery and rode our bikes across Key Bridge. The grassy meadow of the Mall was packed with wall to wall people everywhere. There were celebrity speakers giving inspirational as well as sobering speeches about the environment (I think Hollywood star Tom Cruise was one of them IIRC).

We had a wonderful time and stayed all the way until the end and afterward. As people cleared out from the Mall and the area was vacated, we looked around at the trash cans overflowing with paper and Styrofoam plates and the grass strewn with bits of paper and plastic from candy and plastic straw wrappers. We rode back across Key Bridge, got into our cars. Turned on the gasoline engines and drove back home. It was quite the anti-climax of what had felt like a great day of people coming together for a good cause.