With no Saints to honor, we note that today is Earth Day, a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s environment. Responding to widespread environmental degradation, Senator Gaylord Nelson (died 2005) from Wisconsin called for an environmental teach-in, or Earth Day, to be held on April 22, 1970. Senator Nelson chose the date in order to maximize participation on college campuses for what he conceived as an “environmental teach-in.” He determined the week of April 19–25 was the best bet; it did not fall during exams or spring breaks, did not conflict with religious holidays such as Easter or Passover, and was late enough in spring to have decent weather. More students were likely to be in class, and there would be less competition with other mid-week events — so he chose Wednesday, April 22. Earth Day proved popular in the United States and around the world. The first Earth Day had participants and celebrants in two thousand colleges and universities, roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities across the United States. Senator Nelson stated that Earth Day “worked” because of the response at the grassroots level. Twenty-million demonstrators and thousands of schools and local communities participated. He directly credited the first Earth Day with persuading U.S. politicians that environmental legislation had a substantial, lasting constituency. April 22, 1970 was also the 100th birthday of Vladimir Lenin. Time reported that some suspected the date was not a coincidence, but a clue that the event was “a Communist trick,” and quoted a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution as saying, “Subversive elements plan to make American children live in an environment that is good for them.” The observance of Earth Day is now observed in 175 countries and coordinated by the nonprofit Earth Day Network, according to whom Earth Day is now “the largest secular holiday in the world, celebrated by more than a half billion people every year.” Environmental groups have sought to make Earth Day into a day of action which changes human behavior and provokes policy changes. Today is also the birthday of my brother Mike in Seattle, whose birth predates Earth Day (1955).
For some reason (he says it was not because I accidentally whacked him in the mouth while we were in bed asleep), Richard woke up at 4:00 am, and stayed up. I asked him later if he had seen any Lyrid meteors outside; he said that no, every time he went outside, the fog was dropping lower and lower. I unfortunately did not get out of bed until 9:30 am, at which time I ate my breakfast toast and read the morning paper. Our Local Paper, in with all the other items in the Police Call Log, had these two items: “8:56 p.m. Possum under barbeque pit”, followed by “8:58 p.m. Possum gone from carport.” I then spent an hour or two working on my weblog.
At 11:00 am Richard and I headed out into town; along the way, we saw our neighbors from two doors down who are in the process of moving out and across town (they are the parents of several of the Assembled). They invited us to a crawfish boil at their new place tomorrow evening, if it does not rain, and on Saturday if it does rain. Richard and I then ate lunch at the Sports Bar / Steakhouse; they were a little surprised there to see me not there on my own on a Thursday lunch. We then went to Wal-Mart, where we got Dr. Scholl’s® Insoles for our work shoes, my salad supplies, and some other groceries (but forgot the bread). When we got home at 2:15 pm, I started my laundry, then did the TV scheduling. I did not need to set the DVR, because there is nothing coming on that I wish to record between now and Sunday. I then peeled my hard-boiled eggs for my breakfasts for tomorrow and Saturday, and made my lunch salads for tomorrow and Sunday. While I was doing that, I called my pharmacy, and was told that my psychiatrist’s office did call to authorize my prescription, and that it is ready to be picked up. I then finished my laundry, ironed my casino shirts, and cut my pair of Dr. Scholl’s® Insoles to fit in my work shoes. (Richard is lucky, in that he does not have to worry about cutting his out; his shoe size is the default size already.)
I am now eating leftover pizza from last night (still good) and contemplating what I did not do today that I kind of wanted to do. I had wanted to write a letter to my son Matthew in South Carolina, I had wanted to try on those shirts Liz Ellen sent me (part of her continuing project to make me look better than I normally do), and I did not have a chance to watch anything from the DVR. However, I have done my Advance Daily Update drafts through Sunday, so that is a good thing, I think.
Tomorrow is our Monday at work (boo, hiss), and on my breaks I would like to write a letter to someone (whoever is next on the list of people I write to). In the afternoon I would like to watch one hour of Previously Recorded Television, and do the Advance Daily Update draft for next Monday; unfortunately, I can’t do both at the same time. Assuming the weather does not turn nasty (the weather predictions for tomorrow afternoon and Saturday are rather dire, calling for thunderstorms), I will do my Daily Update for tomorrow before Richard and I go off to the crawfish boil at our former neighbor’s new house across town, and then head straight for bed once we arrive home.
On this Earth Day our Parting Quote comes to us from Philip Morrison, Physics professor. Born in 1915 in Somerville, New Jersey, he grew up in Pittsburgh and graduated from its public schools. He earned his B.S. in 1936 at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and in 1940 he earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of J. Robert Oppenheimer. In 1942 he joined the Manhattan Project as group leader and physicist at the laboratories of the University of Chicago and Los Alamos. He was also an eyewitness to the Trinity test, and helped to transport its plutonium core to the test site. After surveying the destruction left by the use of the atom bomb in Hiroshima, Morrison became a champion of nuclear nonproliferation. He helped found the Federation of American Scientists, wrote for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and helped to found the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies. He was also a vocal critic of the Strategic Defense Initiative. In May 1953 he testified before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act. When asked if he had ever been a member of the Communist Party (CPUSA), he replied: “I joined the Young Communist League when I was 18, and when I was 21 (1936) I did become a member of the Communist party in Berkeley. I don’t remember precisely which branch.” Morrison joined the physics faculty at Cornell University in 1946 and would move on to MIT in 1964, where he eventually became Institute Professor Emeritus and Professor of Physics Emeritus. . In 1959, Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi published a paper proposing the potential of microwaves in the search for interstellar communications, a component of the modern SETI program. Morrison was also known for his numerous books and television programs, including Powers of Ten (1968) and the 1987 PBS series The Ring of Truth: An Inquiry into How We Know What We Know, which he also hosted. In addition, he was a reviewer of books on science for Scientific American starting in 1965. He was a fellow of the American Physical Society and chairman of the Federation of American Scientists from 1973 to 1976. He was also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the International Astronomical Union, the American Association of Physics Teachers, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific gave him the Klumpke-Roberts Award in 1992 (died 2005): “Neither our oceans nor our radar nor our fighters can keep us intact through another major war.”
From The Recamier 