----

Plastic Bags or Brown Paper Bags?

Do we love the earth the way Mauro Morandi loves his pink-sand island? Do we love it enough to give it female pronouns, capitalize it as Earth, call it Gaia and think about the consequences of every action? Do we see the Earth as if it is a burning building, and we need to stop the destruction and save ourselves? Definitely not. I hear and read reports of ice-packs melting in the Antarctic and Arctic, polar sea channels opening, and ancient ice sliding off Greenland; so often these reports are ended with the climate scientist or reporter chuckling about how we need to do something soon.

I remember months of driving with a Nigerian pastor to churches around New Jersey, Lagos, which includes a Maryland, and the Maryland that includes suburbs of Washington DC. To my horror, he threw trash out of the window wherever he was, before and after church, even when he preached. He saw no connection between following Jesus and keeping the environment clean. For him, being a pastor was a way of connecting with community for jobs and gifts. He loved being called a “man of God”, like all the rest of us were men and women not of God? Yes, he was a grifter.

It was interesting to me; seeing an example of man George Fox spoke against in 1652. Pastors, ministers and priests I knew were separate from acquisitions, making sure their congregations knew they were there to help body and soul, not to take away the means to keep them together. Pastor O was very proud of never swearing, never drinking alcohol; he was following a secret code I could not decipher. When I objected to throwing trash on roads, adding to enormous piles of plastic bottles, plastic bags, food wrappers, styrofoam, papers, he told me he was doing God’s work, keeping street cleaners in work, throwing trash out of windows was an act of grace. I rarely saw happily employed street cleaners, only piles and piles of ugliness keeping out the light and air that could be growing trees, flowers, food.

When I first came to Philadelphia in 1978 I was shocked to see customers walking around supermarkets smoking cigarettes and dropping ash on the floors. Smoking in supermarkets was banned in the following ten years, as was indoor cigarette smoking at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. More Americans die from diseases resulting form cigarette smoking now than did in 1964 when the Surgeon General’s report on the link between cancer and cigarette smoking was published. However, we are no longer buying apples in hazes of cigarette smoke and avoiding walking on cigarette ash in the cereal aisle.

In 1978 supermarket customers rarely or never brought shopping bags with them, sturdy brown-paper bags were filled with food and non-food buys. In the 1990s we all started talking about cutting down trees to make paper for offices, and for grocery bags. I was convinced that packing my groceries in plastic bags was better for the environment than packing them in paper bags, so when given the choice, I went for plastic bags, and when emails meant I no longer had to physically post letters, I was pleased that I was preventing trees from being cut down.

I have only become aware of the danger of plastic bags in the last 10 years, they are clogging our oceans, strangling dolphins. In my town we were told to separate our plastic bags from our compostible trash from our paper from our hard plastic. Early in the Trump administration the trade war with China halted that, Chinese companies no longer take our plastic trash which they recycled into I know not what. I understand all my trash now goes into land fills. We are no longer told to separate anything.

I wrap food that I make and transport in aluminum and, if I need it to stay hot, in cloth towels. Aluminum is the most abundant element in the earth, it is completely recyclable. The process is resource-intensive, which bothers me, but part of maintaining our Earth is feeding ourselves, and part of the reason we want to save our Earth is to keep ourselves alive.

Doing what we can to survive is a balance between what is needed to sustain us most efficiently, and what is needed to stop being consumed by fires, winds, rising seas. The Earth does not care. We must.

In 1970 I started my university studies across the road from my mother’s house. The Vietnam war was still ongoing, demonstrations were frighteningly violent, and the first Earth Day was celebrated. I was far too occupied in trying to understand physics and chemistry to protest anything, or even want to: what I do remember about Earth Day is the slogan: “Think globally, act locally”, which has not aged. That is what we must do. Use less stuff, buy food that has not traveled far, be aware of whether what you use can be used again or recycled, do not throw trash onto highways, or pink-sand beaches.

----

Wednesday Meeting for Worship

Every Wednesday aka Fourth Day at 6-6:30pm. Monthly Meeting of Friends of Philadelphia Meeting for Worship. Zoom space open earlier for greetings and chats, afterwards for fellowship. We cover a lot of ground, some amazing discussions, all are welcome.

Join Zoom Meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87526260118

----

Think globally, act locally

Since my car was stolen on Good Friday 2017, in what looked to me like an Act of God, I have reclaimed the land in my driveway with composting leaves that grew 18-inch-long butternut pumpkins last year. I learned that they stay good without refrigeration; I cut and cooked the last one this week, the fourth week in April, and scattered the seeds all over my front and back garden. How wonderful to be able to grow a long-lasting food source.

Water harvesting. I walk, ride buses and trains, bicycle a lot, and I see a lot of gardens, a lot of tiny forests that developers have decided are too hard to build over, a lot of parks. Very few houses and apartment buildings harvest water or even grow food. The norm is to grow flowering bushes next to the house and fill out the property with grass which is watered regularly by town water pushing through rotating sprinklers. Water after a rainstorm is directed by gutters and rain-pipes to run down driveways into the street. I wish this behavior was illegal: I walk by a large apartment complex on the way to Patco, by three open grass-spaces that are each 1-2 acres. I have never seen anyone kicking a ball, having a picnic, growing a tomato. How many people could be employed to grow vegetables, how many people could be fed from these plots?

I have three rain barrels from which I carry water to my fruit trees and vegetables and herbs. Will I ever be self-sustaining? Probably not, but I am getting better at growing food. I shower every day and wash clothes and dishes, and my water bill is the minimum billed for service. If you ask, I am happy to tell you how I keep water usage down inside. Or ask anyone from a country where all water is carried inside from a well, a stream or rain barrels, instead of piped and accessed from faucets that can stay on endlessly.

Is water rationing in the future for New Jersey and Philadelphia? I do not know, but I am ready.

Water has never been rationed in New Jersey and Philadelphia since I arrived here; but it has been elsewhere. Hazleton in Carbon County was under water restrictions in 1980 when I first went there to meet the family of the father of my first and second children, inhabitants were told not to flush toilets unless it was really disgusting. My children’s grandmother, who was the daughter and daughter-in-law of coal miners, collected food scraps for composting, she understood recycling long before few others did. How wonderful.

----

St Vincent and the Grenadines

A tiny nation that has been made smaller by lava flow. The call for donations to help volcano displacements continues.

The United Nations has launched a $29 million appeal, https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/un_global_funding_appeal_-_explosive_eruption_of_la_soufriere_volcano-_saint_vincent_and_the_grenadines.pdf

The Miami Herald interviewed the prime minister and has published a video and information about how to donate: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article250666544.html

----

Mr Henry Okah

Henry Okah had been working in South Africa, and has now spent the better part of 11 years in solitary confinement in Pretoria Central Prison. Amnesty International in South Africa did not make the 20 Congolese prisoners of conscience, nor have they done so with Mr Okah. Fear for their own safety may be at the heart of that, and I understand that. You cannot build a house in the mud when rivers are flowing fast beneath your feet. Amnesty International Philadelphia has independently adopted Mr Okah as a prisoner of conscience.

Mr Okah was accused to blowing up a parade in Nigeria when he was in South Africa. Mr Okah has been denied a fair trial or an appeal; his computers were seized immediately and how easy would it be to plant “evidence” in them. If you are interested in helping him find justice, please let me know.

----