Going Green

Visiting Strawberry Fields every Dec 8 is so very bittersweet. It reminds me of a tragic and useless death. It reminds me of our brotherhood. I always get to sing my music with like minded people. I leave renewed. Again thank you John.


I am thinking of having my scholars work on a research project that draws in an old Eldridge Cleaver quote: "You're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem" and joins the new change voice of Obama, sparked by coaxing from Thomas Friedman in a missive to Generation X. I will then have them reside on DOT Earth of the NYTimes. I am concerned about this generation. The candidacy of Obama woke them up. Now that we have their attention, I hope we can actually realize a dream. The dream right now is the environment and what we must do to preserve it so we can survive as a species. I'm not concerned with saving the Earth, the Earth will do just fine with or without us. It is about our survival and we seem to be pretty callous and ignorant of what we must do. This is why I have been doing more and more "green" assignments and will be doing more.


I have been reflecting on my own "greenness." I remember visiting my grandparents as a boy and how thier lives were so environmentally sound. My grandma reused paper towels. She recycled food scraps into her compost, feed the birds and other critters. She separated her garbage. She had wet stuff, paper which my grandfather burned every night while enjoying one of his rare Luckies. She had a bin for cans, which she flattened and one for glass. It made little sense to me at that point in my young life. Then we hit the 70's and we got a global reaction to the cost of petro fuels. I was then living in the far north of NY with a young family. I remembered my grandparents and found myself imitating much of what I learned. We recycled the food stuffs. I carted crates of cans and bottles to the dump. I bought a machine to roll my junk mail into logs. I heated our house by wood burned in three wood stoves strategically placed around the house. I used a large wood furnace in the greenhouse to grow all year long. In the ninties, I made another stab at the environment with a paper I wrote in graduate school on the Green History of the World. So here we are once agin in 2008 with Al Gore leading the way. "Green" Consciousness is starting to stick with colleges and communities being more serious and actually doing things to be more "green." Now I want to take another run at this generation and their "green" consciousness. Over the summer I had some luck. One student bought a book bag that had solar cells on it for recharging cell phones and the like. He has since shown me more gadgets he owns and has even recruited another student who subscribes to the greenier life. It is after all more for them than it is for me. Those are always the toughest lessons to teach and to learn.