Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Earth Day

Strange how we talk of "saving" the planet. Don't we know that the planet will no doubt continue spinning around the sun a long time after it's completely inhabitable? Save the ability for life to exist on earth, is more like it. I've also noticed a lot of media attention on the subject and am distressed at the optimistic spin they try to put on the whole thing. "Well, we've woken up just in time!" "Now that everyone's on board, we can start to make progress."

I hate to pop anyone's balloon, but it's already so late.

And population control still seems to be The Big Taboo. No one wants to go there, but with the human population growing at this alarming rate, nothing we do will matter.

How did we celebrate Earth Day 2008? By driving down the coast of California, once again, of course! Polluting the air with our pick-up truck, buying $3.89/gallon gas, even getting a fast food burger on the way!

We'd actually left Arcata yesterday, pulling a small U-Haul trailer stuffed with some furniture, paintings and books that Big Dog had kept in the Victorian for decades. I'm not sure what we accomplished by making this trip now, but it had to be done at some point and the thought was consuming Big Dog.

Once again, rambling through the string of tie-dye towns, each with smiling girls in long skirts and boys in dreads trying to hitch a ride. We would have gladly picked them up if there was any room in our truck.

We stopped for the night at the Motel 6 in Ukiah. For years, we avoided these franchises and stayed in rickety little motels, all of which were operated by East Indians. I think the Indian motels are actually one big franchise. They just give each one a different name to confuse us.

The people in the next room were coughing all night. Hack, hack, hack. Gee, I hope their germs don't seep through the walls... After a while, though, I began picturing a couple of kids with a huge bag of pot rather than old folks with emphysema.

"They're kids!" Big Dog confirmed for me this morning as he brought in two small styrofoam cups of coffee from the office. Yappari! Just as I thought.

As I set my cup of coffee on the night stand, I noticed that there were bits of un-vacuumed green stuff littering the floor between the bed and night stand.

Labels: , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home