Sad Reflections As Memories Compel Me Once More to Speak

by: Jeanette

Fri May 28, 2010 at 14:53:22 PM AKDT

Tonight I actually felt sick about filling my gas tank.  What can I do to end this addiction to fuel?  I am overwhelmed by my oneness in a nation of millions all slogging down a cultural highway designed by our great grand parents, heralded by our grand parents, perfected by our parents and now laid at the feet of the grand children.  How can a nation built around the American weekend, a concept created by Henry Ford to encourage his plant workers to buy cars in which to travel, make the sort of drastic changes necessary to reduce the use of fossil fuel?  Most of our major cities were designed around the concept of nuclear families commuting from suburbia to the city.

I traveled around Europe.  Those cities grew up long before the advent of the combustion engine.  They actually struggled to accommodate vehicle traffic.  Rearranging their transportation network will be much simpler for them.  The American city looks and functions literally like a human artery, and like that artery feeds the vast network known as the American Dream.  Will Detroit, the once King of the Auto empire, show us the way as the Mayor flattens out suburbia to save the heart of the city?  Could his courage lay the foundation of change for a nation raised on the milk and mythology of the open road?

All the joy of life I profess to cherish interconnects with the creatures struggling through oil laden marshes in Louisiana, Alabama and Florida.  I smell the tarry ooze because I spent three months up to my armpits in the stuff cleaning it off the beaches in Skan Bay, Alaska.  I know how depressing it is to scrape, shovel and heave bag after bag of the stuff into super sacks while you wonder to what destination will the filth be sent, and will that place suffer just as badly?

Can not we humans appreciate the struggle of a mother to raise her children, a father to feed his young?  Can we not grasp in the most basic of creature terms, the essence of the struggle of the animals trying to live in spite of the odds against their doing so?  If we could but grasp this in our bellies, deep in our collective wombs as a fellow species seeking survival, perhaps we might be able to take the baby steps to put us on the path that might save our planet.  Decrying that this is an act of fate is ludicrous.  We humans caused this catastrophe.  We must take responsibility for what we do.  Tonight I will.  I don't know how to change it, but at least I can face my part in the blame squarely, and be willing to at least be willing to change.

There can be no fouler stench than that produced by rancid, congealed oil wrapped around decayed vegetation and animal remains, and it cuts me in two to imagine some animal struggling through it on its way to feed, to tend its nest, to live.  This is my page and I'll cry if I want to, and right now, I want to.   It is just a bit more than I can bare, and I don't buy for one minute that this is some media hype by Greenpeace or a plot by the Obama administration.  I know what 485,000 gallons of Bunker C looks like, and if it can mess up as much of Skan Bay as it did, I have no problem what so ever visualizing the enormity of six million gallons.  This is real, and you'd have worked in it to fully appreciate the power of the devastation to the wildlife and eventually to the humans living in Gulf of Mexico.

It must be possible to cherish and save what we have on earth today.  God created man in His image, therefore it stands to reason we must be capable of carrying out our stewardship of this planet with His grace and dignity, magnanimity and love.   How can we stand idly by to see the fall of animals God tasked man to name each one?  "Thy kingdom come.  They  will be done.  On EARTH as it is in heaven..."

All images courtesy of MSNBC.com