Earth Day 1970 Memories. Earth Day 2020 Realities.

April 22, 2020 is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.

What I had imagined this anniversary to be is quite different given COVID 19.  Kindred spirits will not gather physically to celebrate the steps forward in environmental stewardship that these decades represent.  Nor will we be able to collectively mourn the too frequent and recent steps backwards especially under the current administration that values nothing but the dollar.

1970
I was 8 years old in 1970.   Only recently I realized that the Kent State murders happened weeks following the first Earth Day and that college campuses were consumed by war protests more so than environmental awakenings.

My 15-year-old sister, somehow, got the message that the first Earth Day was a thing.   I recently learned that she has no memory of this, which is ironic given that she holds the corporate memory of the family and too often recalls in detail what the rest of us wish was forgotten.  I was her prop for an Earth Day educational event at Gilbert Linkous Elementary in Blacksburg, Virginia.  She dressed me in yellow cardboard wings tied to my arms, a yellow cardboard tail tied to my waist, and crumpled yellow tissue paper pasted all over to simulate feathers.  I remember there being a red bird too, similarly feathered.

Perhaps the memory is seared in my brain because of the humiliation I experienced in my 8-year-old self in a classroom full of ferocious fourth graders.  Turning between the aisles of desks, my cardboard tail knocked over a row of Dixie cups spilling the soil and seeds of the Earth Day activity across the carpeted floor.  I was ushered out, feeling exposed as a clumsy bird.   But bigger than the embarrassment of the moment, I remember feeling deeply that I was a part of history.

Much later, I learned that it was months after Earth Day that Nixon established the US Environmental Protection Agency to begin enforcement of newly emerging environmental regulations and ethos stemming from 1970's National Environmental Policy Act.  By 1972, the Clean Water Act was in place, a compass for so much of the work I've undertaken throughout my lifetime.

Return to Harrison Lake National Fish Hatchery 40 years later.

By 1977, I was widely proclaiming that my purpose in life was to pursue an environmental vocation.  That summer, I joined a group of 16 teenagers to work and live at Harrison Lake National Fish Hatchery in Charles City, Virginia, as members of the US Department of Interior's Youth Conservation Corps.  We blazed trails, cleaned fish hatchery lagoons, and restored historic and natural areas. The composition of our YCC group included a handful of kids who, like me, felt a call to environmental work, intermixed with more reality grounded kids, who valued 32 H/week pay and three square meals a day for the summer, and for a few, a last ditch opportunity to avoid the juvenile delinquent system.

Though I grew up in Virginia, I always felt that my family was more connected to other parts of the country, like Pennsylvania and New Jersey.  Yet when I worked on one of the historic areas our YCC team restored, Drewry Bluff, I remember sensing a sacred connection to that ground. Years later, from Civil War era 1860s love letters, I learned that my great, great grandfather Philander, a Union soldier from Pennsylvania, had kept watch over the James River from Drewry's Bluff, referring to it as he wrote home and courted my great, great grandmother, Hattie.

1980
For the 10-year anniversary of Earth Day, my senior class at Blacksburg High School likely commemorated it, but I have no memories to share.  Instead, I remember that spring of track and field, dancing with friends, and wearing cowboy hats at graduation while "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys" blared.

It was also the spring that I received word from the Izaak Walton League that I would be a fellow in their young conservationist program, assigned to the US Fish & Wildlife Services Leetown National Hatchery in West Virginia for the summer prior to starting college.   My essay in the national competition for the fellowship stated that I wanted to be an environmental journalist. I can still see in my mind's eye the misspelled words in that essay, thickly blotted over with whited-out, and a retyped correction over it.

It was my father who was the fisherman. I spent a lot of time in the boat, watching him and my brothers fish.  For years, every family picture was taken under the Muskie mounted above the fireplace, a fishing prize from the early 1970s when he won the Smith Mountain Lake fishing tournament.

Dad, Mom & my sons fishing, Pandapas Pond, c. 1995.

I had little interest in fish, but enormous interest in water quality.  Being immersed in the science and research underway at Leetown was thrilling even with the bulk of my job focused on cleaning of fish raceways and spawning tanks.  That summer of 1980, President Jimmy Carter was flown in by helicopter to fish the coldwater streams that laced throughout the secured complex.  A prolific trout population had somehow escaped the cultured for the wild, providing a fly fisherman's paradise.   After his visit, I found a Fanta can on the grounds that I kept for years, thinking that the President of the US had consumed it.  A newly registered voter in the fall 1980 presidential election, I threw away my vote on John Anderson.  To this day, I regret not voting for a faithful, trustworthy public servant like Jimmy Carter.

1990

I remember well the 20th anniversary of Earth Day.  It was my coming of age of sorts.   Then Senator Al Gore, son of Tennessee, brought to Nashville where I lived and worked, a faith-based invitation to environmental stewardship.  By this time, I had worked post college for six years in regional environmental planning and then environmental consulting.  I was an emerging, early career environmental professional.  The concept of integrating my faith and spirituality (which were important to me) with my professional pursuits seemed like a church-state clash and mismatch.

Through this faith-based environmental stewardship training, I began to understand the dualism I had imposed upon self.  Until then, I understood myself as 1) a science-based environmental professional and 2) a spiritual being, essentially two separate people instead of an integration of one.  Yet, these two parts of me had always been intertwined, from childhood excursions into the streams and woods, through ecological studies, fieldwork, and even in the office.  I simply had not claimed it for myself.

Summiting Katahdin at the start of my son's SOBO thru hike.

I recall time growing up, family camping, countless trail miles with loved ones, summiting the Peaks of Otter, Katahdin, Colorado Rockies, and the inevitable spiritual high when I sucked in the cool air at the top of a mountain.  Earth Day 1990 freed me to integrate love of creation, love for science and wholeness of spirit.  As a new wife and mother, Senator Gore's outreach to the faith community gave me a fresh way of recognizing that my work, no less than my divinity school-bound spouse, was a call to vocation.  Our first born son was named "Clay", of the Earth.

A few years later, the US EPA actually issued a memorandum encouraging its regional offices to connect with faith communities to improve place-based environmental protection.  When I received that notification, I thought to myself, our world is changing and for the better.

2000

One of Jim McClure's many witty environmental cartoons.

I don't remember the 30th anniversary of Earth Day.   I hope I planted trees with ClearWater Conservancy in Central Pennsylvania, took three little boys to Penn State's EcoAction's events on the lawn of the HUB, and spent the rest of the day flipping rocks in creeks to look at macroinvertebrates together, as we often did.  I recall fondly my interactions with Jim McClure, one of ClearWater Conservancy's founders, who shared with me that he had been a keynote speaker at Penn State's 1970 Earth Day event.   The quintessential political artist, Jim had penned many environmentally provocative messages that have fostered thought, sometimes anger by the powers to be, but always with humor and deep intelligence. Jim and other leaders of ClearWater Conservancy, inspired me to recognize the importance of elderhood in the environmental movement, and mentoring the upcoming generation of environmental leaders.

2010
The 40th anniversary of Earth Day was marked by an environmental movement that seemed, well, ubiquitous.  If you weren't already calculating your carbon footprint, planting trees to offset your own consumptive actions, and cleaning up watersheds, then you weren't paying attention. 

Penn State brought amazing science mentors into my life.

That spring, I gave a talk at Penn State's Environmental Forum titled “Improving Lives, Protecting Resources: The Challenge of Environmental Justice".  By this time, we were two decades out from Robert Bullard's damning call in "Toxic Waste and Race", and the burden of harmful environmental exposures continued to impact communities of color far more than any other people in the US.  Even knowing that environmental racism existed, I was unaware of some of its worst manifestations.  For example, how could I not have known that the mass incarceration of young, African American men in the 1980s-2000s correlated so closely with the lead exposures of children growing up in our cities in the 1960s and 1970s?  What an immense loss to humanity we incurred through poisoning of children by the unnecessary infusion of lead into gasoline, paints, and other materials.  Countless people were imprisoned for behaviors fueled by lead-poisoning, playing into the hands of a wicked system dependent upon populating new prisons with free [enslaved] labor.  The irony, I later learned, was that many of our higher education institutions benefit from imprisoned labor to furnish classrooms, perhaps even the very place where I gave a talk on  "the challenge of environmental justice".

2020

A view of the James from my stay-in-place window.

And here we are at the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, April 2020.  From my stay-in-place window at this moment, I see the James River flowing from the west  across the fall line from whitewater in Piedmont to the slow, wide movement through Tidewater.  The James River is a poster child of the environmental movement.   A survivor of vast deforestation imposed by energy and industry hungry European forefathers, the up-welling of urban-river bound populations and unbridled wastewater discharges including the dumping of kepone and other toxic chemicals, the James River is in recovery.  As it traverses through the heart of Virginia, the evidence of its recovery is visible with the return of migratory fish like shad and sturgeon and the food haven for the prolific community waterfowl and birds of prey, enjoying their feast on myriad fish and shellfish populations.

In the recent weeks of reduced traffic, my husband noted that spring smells different this year.  It is a seductive smell fostered by the current reprieve from higher vehicle emissions.  A reduction of particulate matter, carbon monoxide, NOX, the things that drive the higher incidence of asthma and other respiratory ailments is a silver lining for city dwellers at this moment. And with the transportation sector contributing nearly 30% of the US's global warming emissions, who knew that a pandemic would counter slightly the irresponsible action of a president who withdraws from a sacred promise (climate treaty) to the Earth's nations and people?

And as we seek to protect one another through this critical time of stay-in-place, the president of the United States is immorally, systematically, and, I believe, criminally, disassembling the very programs that have helped heal rivers, improve air quality, and provided a path forward to combat climate change.  Ten short years ago, I would have strongly asserted that at least the foundation for our work is in place, a vision planted on Earth Day 1970.  In real time, at this 50th anniversary of Earth Day, I fear that the foundation has never been more threatened than it is at this moment.

And then there is this.   John Phillip Newell, former warden of the Iona Community, softly, gently recalling the voice of John Muir.

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to the universe"

In this, I hear the voice of my 28-year-old self speaking to the woman at this 50th anniversary of Earth Day.  Integrate.  Integrate your science self, your yellow bird self - unafraid to turn boldly in the aisles even if it means tipping a Dixie cup or two-,  and your sacred spirit self.  Integrate and know deeply and always, that hope for our Earth, the world, the Universe, is the human way.

Friday, January 6, the snow began.  Saturday, January 7, a beautiful accumulation of nearly 8" frosted Richmond Hill.  And the city shut down.

Not entirely so.  A wedding took place on Saturday, a beautiful affair.  On Sunday sledding down the steep slopes behind Richmond Hill that lead down to Shockoe bottom took place - on kitchen trays and cardboard.  Big kids who've been around for many decades alongside little ones, all looking to make the fastest, longest, least injurious route down that amazing hill, including the cobble-stoned street adjacent to Richmond Hill that was closed to traffic due to snow.

I scrambled to remove snow on the sidewalks, realizing that we'd waited too long in the bitter cold and that it had already begun to thicken and ice.  I also realized that we have two city blocks of sidewalks that people use frequently and that we'd be at risk for fines for not removing the snow within a specified amount of time.  Then in walking through the neighborhood I realized 1) if there is an ordinance to remove sidewalk snow, clearly no one is adhering to it and 2) possibly, many do not have snow shovels.

Then on Monday, I noticed that the numbered streets of the city had not been plowed.  Later that day, I saw an old plow truck, 1970s vintage maybe, barely more than a pick-up truck, with a tiny sized plow affixed to the front, rolling down the center of Grace.  Four days following Saturday's snow, I have yet to see the numbered streets plowed and I've been told that to the north of me, where the public housing lies, even less plowing has occurred.  Today the temperature reaches sixty degrees, but schools remain closed.

Corner of Marshall & 27th Street, Mon., Jan 9, 2017 - 3 days after the snow bega (which ended mid-day on Sat, Jan 7)  Marshall appears to be plowed down the center, but not 27th St.

It occurs to me that with climate change, the variability in weather could amount to more frequent, sporadic snow falls in Richmond and that adapting to these changes will require some ingenuity.  Will schools need to start earlier and close later to accommodate the irregularity and verocity of storms in a new climate reality?  Possibly year-round school?  Will people even better ways to work from home when they can't get to the office?  In RVA, in addition to no plows, the public transit is lacking in both coverage and access.

Indeed, it's a different world that I live in from where I came in central Pennsylvania.  I vacillate between marveling and admiring this place and feeling utterly confused and disoriented by it.

White and learning

What year was it that my friends Kim and Kristen accompanied me to what I'd described to them as the most wonderful, Africa-centered experience I'd had to date in State College? It must've been 2003, or 2004, or maybe 2005?

I'd invited them to accompany me to the Touch of Africa event at the Penn Stater, an experience I'd cherished since 1999, when my friend Edem was president of the African Student Alliance and had introduced me to the event.  At the 1999 event, I'd bought raffle tickets, one in the name of each of my 8 year old twin sons who were with me that night, mostly to support Edem's sheer excitement for Air Afrique's gift of a round trip ticket to the mother continent.    I'll never forget the sight of our friend Jokoo, with raffle ticket in hand, waving it at me the next morning at church exclaiming "Andy won! Andy won!"  I'd left the event to take two little boys home for bedtime, and handed the raffle ticket to Jokoo as we walked out the door, saying "Jokoo, if these are winning tickets, the trip is yours."  By the time we got around to letting Jokoo and his wife Thelma, Ghanians by birth, Americans by choice, and Edem, a Togolese educator pursuing a PhD in the US know that we wanted them to use the ticket, they informed us "we've already told our families that you are coming to visit Ghana/Togo."  At that time, I had no appreciation for the 20 year relationship of learning and loving the continent this raffle ticket launched for my entire family.  First for me in Ghana and Togo.  Then all five of us in these amazing places.  Then Burkina Faso, then Ethiopia.  To this day, when I catch a scent of Africa in the US - hibiscus and mango, smoke and street foods with a certain blend of savory seasonings, city-stank from the heat of day mixed with market animals and unsewered wastes - my heart lurches with longing. 

All of this I held in bringing my two white girlfriends to a Touch of Africa, both of whom also longed for Africa in their hearts, one as a soul-centric learner, the other a masters and PhD candidate geographer.  Sometime in the 2000s, one of those years, we entered the large ballroom, round tables for the guests, anticipating an evening of incredibly prepared and seasoned foods, music, drumming, and dancing.  I led us into the room and found a table with a couple already seated, about my age at the time, possibly a little older, African American, and sat down with them.  I sat down in the seat next to the woman, her male companion to the other side of her, my girlfriends to the other side of me.  In my mind's eye, I think that I would've asked whether the seats were available before claiming them.  And in my truest heart's conversation, I recognize that there were many places that we could have sat without entering so closely into their personal space, including across the large round tables instead of next to.  But I was being intentional about not simply sitting at an open table where we may not have had the opportunity to meet new people or people who were other-than-white.  Was my rush to this space calculated?  Probably.  Did I have friends of color at that time who were Americans?  No.  Not in State College.  I had many friends who were African, students or spouses of students who had settled in State College for the period of their studies.  But no friends who were people of color who were Americans.  I remember hearing a local principal in the school district, a leader in the community, and a woman of color saying at a race dialogue in the 1990s in State College that most whites in State College were more likely to have friends who they'd invited to their dinner tables who were Africans then they were African Americans.  Guilty.  It spoke to me as this was most certainly the case in my own household.  I wanted friends who were also African American, but had not easily connected or found them in my mostly white- and international community.

My memory of this approximate 2004 moment is clear, mostly because it was painful and the recalling of it for years caused me deep embarrassment.  I was trying to connect to the woman sitting next to me.  She was increasingly agitated, as I could sense through her body language.  In that moment, I thought "I am clearly not being understood", which in my mind meant, try harder to connect.  The more I tried, the more agitated she became.  What had I said?  I'm pretty sure I'd started with "where are you from", a question that in my college town where all people are transient, I would have asked anyone. But in asking it of this woman of color, I'd clearly crossed a line. She had replied that she was an American.  Oh, I had been misunderstood, as I had not intended to suggest that she were not an American.  I don't think I said this, but I certainly felt it, and so what did I do?  I tried harder to connect.  Find out more about her upbringing.  Her family. Her reasons for coming to State College.  Her interests.  All the connective work of 'fact finding' that to this point had been a reasonably easy way for me to find connection with another.  Why wasn't it working now?  Why was I being met with increasingly heightened resistance? Why?

She finally turned to me and explained with what I experienced as animosity, no, indignation and measured anger that surely I must know that I represented danger to her.  That my questions of her hearkened her to a time that her people had felt that sharing information with a white person was dangerous.  Gave away what little they could hold as their own.  That I was a threat.  How could I not understand that my trying to learn about her was a threat and harm to her very existence?  And to the existence of those who had come before her.  I was shocked.  I was hurt.  I felt so misunderstood.  And I was completely inside of my own head and heart in the experience, unable to hear her pain and recognize the deeply held trigger I represented.  

How many times through the years have I returned to this moment and thought what did I do?  What happened?  How did we get to this place when all I wanted/needed/tried to do was connect?  

How indeed. For the first time, I shared this specific story with friends around the table in my intentional community one day in late 2018.  Women of color.  Women of white culture.  And for the first time, I shared it for the learning that I have received through the years of recollecting the interation.  Learning that has taken me years to distill and perhaps will continue to require my attention to learn even more.  In the few years that I've lived in Richmond and finally taken up the yoke of learning what 'waking up white' means for me and mine, I've peeled away one onion layer after another in learning about the power of race culture in my own life and the lives of those around me.  

When I listened years after this incident to the audio book "Waking Up White in America", I was finally given the words to describe what happened (and continues to happen, albeit with increasing self awareness, I hope).  The author spelled out for me the difference between "intent" versus "impact".  My intent in sitting with this woman was to meet someone new.  Someone who was not white-like-me.  Someone who lived in my community and with whom I wanted to connect.  The impact of my sitting with this woman and working so hard to connect with her despite her clear signals to me that my intent and approach was neither welcomed nor wanted, was an avalanche of white cultural crap being dumped on her by my need for something that wasn't mine to claim.  Only hers to give and only if she chose to do so.  And she was clear with me, she did not choose to do so.  I was wrong to initiate much less continue the white culture "interview" of getting to know you, pushing for my needs over recognizing and honoring her needs.  I had devolved to a place of entering conversations with the "other" as transactional, meeting my own needs for information without consideration for how my own actions came across as hostile or dangerous.  How much was my interaction reminiscent of those who were dangerous or hostile to her or her ancestors for the purpose of hurting or containing them through many inhumane and unjust actions?

And not to defend nor criticize it, but without a doubt, I had grown up in a culture where information was and is power and I had failed to recognize this in myself.  Who are your parents?  Where are you from? What do you do?  Where did you go to school? What church do you go to?  Who are your friends?  What associations do you have?  For years, I truly believed that these interviews or fact finding missions were about making connections.  And perhaps, some times, connections were made.  But they were based on the premise that the information gathered was the foundation for the relationship, requiring connection at some of these fairly superficial factual points. 

At Richmond Hill, I've learned that the question for connecting is never, "what do you do?" or "where are you from?".   These are questions of curiosity and serve neither the person who I wish to connect with or me.  Instead, I'm learning to ask "how was your day?" or "what did you learn today?", a place of new beginnings that can lead us anywhere as we forge places to connect with one another.

I'm grateful that in my conversation with fellow residents at Richmond Hill that I can now recall the story of the confrontation I had with this woman years ago without tearing up or feeling short of breath, as it has for many years.   In fact, it was very empowering today to hear myself share the story without feeling the angst of "oh how I was misunderstood" - and instead, I could feel the window of "oh how much I have to learn".  With the grace of Godde and the Universe and the empathetic and understanding of others surrounding me, may my learning only continue to unfold that I can hold space and the beautiful potential for connection for all in this amazing place and creation. 

Thoughts ahead of departure.

I found some writing that I did a year ago.  Before our move to RVA.  Each requiring further work and development.  And each, I leave here unfinished.

About my kitchen

I grieve for the kitchen.

The heart of my home

The place that young children came first to find me.

The place that I looked first for my mother when I was hurt

Warm light, good smells.

About returning to Virginia

My Virginia-born fourth grade scrapbook describes the Civil War era as a time that the states had differences and that, when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, a tear fell down his cheek as he realized that he had let down his sweet home state.  There was zero, and I do mean zero reference to human trafficking.  To oppression.  To the soul of what the south believed to be worth fighting for.

30 years after leaving Virginia, I’m headed home to her.  How do I rewrite the biases of my beginnings there and …..

Forgetting to pray

I’ve spent the darkest days of winter prayer-less.  It occurred to me this past week – that I’ve not asked God to help change me from the inside out around this move.  That there is a need, no hunger that I have, that I’ve not asked for help from the great power in my life.  In fact, is there a great power in my life?  Even asking the question shows how far I’ve drifted from the center of wisdom in my life.

Jan 28, 2016

Looking out the bathroom window

At night, the moon casts long shadows of the oaks, rippling across the rock wall towards where I stand.  How many times have I risen early to see this?  I want to lock in every angle of this view in my brain.

Starting where I am.

(written 3/2016).  As I've transitioned from life in the beautiful Ridge & Valley ecoprovince of Central Pennsylvania to living at this urban ledge at the falls of the James River, where the rolling Piedmont flattens into the Tidewater zone of Virginia, a kind colleague commented, "you really should be blogging".  When she said this, I thought, "by all means, yes, I should be sharing this with others."  I now realize it is for my own sake, perhaps my emotional existence, that I need to be writing - to dig in  deeper and find voice and agency.

Falls on the James River. Belle Island to the left.

Writing has been important to me, but I've pathologically avoided it for personal reflection  for too long and with ever mounting angst.  My avoidance is due partly to the piles of professional writing that I've allowed to grow for so long.  How do I justify the time to blog when I've not made the professional writing a priority?  The other part of avoidance?  Possibly fear.  Fear of vulnerability and revelation of depths I'm not ready to whisper, much less convert into B&W evidence.

I'm not going to live at this congested crossroad any longer.  I am now choosing to write this story as it unfolds and explore these learnings.  I hope to do so with increasing honesty as I let go of the urge to communicate as if I have already gained a clear lens for understanding.  The tea bag tab wisdom, "Read to learn.  Write to understand.  Teach to master" comes to mind.  So to understand means that I write it, and I glean understanding through the process.  I've learned more about what it means to be a white woman in the last three months than possibly the 53 years and 11 months that proceeded it.  But I sure don't understand it.  It's the drilling down to understand and embrace and truly embody what I'm learning that I struggle with. 

A few nights ago, I dreamed that I was surrounded by many fully pregnant people.  I looked down to discover I too was pregnant -  only to realize that somehow, I had come to term without once asking myself "why haven't I felt the baby move?"  This transition to Richmond Hill has been wrought with soul-wrenching change, but is the baby moving?

On the Pennsylvania side, the leaving has been hard and long, beginning with the goodbyes with a beloved faith community in fall 2015.  My partner reminds me, "remember, you felt this sense of loss when we left Nashville 22 years ago."  I can't recall that this is a pattern of letting go.  I do know that we've said goodbye to: 

• amazing humans, friends who helped raise our children and nurture our marriage,
• a beloved home where the compost pile holds the archeological layers of our lives, tiny matchbox cars and sand from 1990s era playtime, garlic mustard eradication from the early 2000s, vegetable and fruit peelings from the Village Acres CSA years... all these rich, organic gifts of my adult life as a mother-partner-planter-friend are piled and  decomposing, there in the compost in Pennsylvania; 
• deciduous forests, limestone streams, ancient trails traversing ancient mountains, Scotia Barrens, night sounds of migrating amphibians.  

On the RVA side, we have been welcomed, embraced.  Kindness abounds as we shift from the conventional living of a single-family household to community-based living, that holds gifts and challenges that I'm not prepared to enumerate at this sitting.

Wait.  Starting where I am.  This is what I must do. Perhaps I'll notice the baby moving.