I will put this as gently as possible: We no longer have the luxury to be innocent. By innocent I mean that by this time it is rather unconscionable to live like we did in the '60s and the early '70s. Back then we did things like pour paint down the drain, have unprotected sex with strangers, take Sunday drives to nowhere, and puncture bags full of garbage and throw them over the side of our boats with ease.
There has to be a paradigm shift or else all of the fabulous cartoons I've been creating of late will have no history to go down in! That will really tick me off! One shift needs to happen around nostalgia. Childhood plastic Easter baskets, plastic fill-able eggs that unscrew (technically known as 'hinged' eggs), and plastic green filler grass are items that symbolized spring, joy, family and love back in the day. But now that our planet organism is at the breaking point, nostalgia must go the way of the dinosaur. If it doesn't, innocence shifts imperceptibly to ignorance.
Nixing innocence and having to gird ourselves against the seductive sirens of nostalgia and cheap Easter trinkets is a drag, possibly the drag of all drags! In order to help us I propose a collective, worldwide pillow hitting session. Place a thick pillow in front of you and with every word you shout pound on your pillow: I...AM...SO...ANGRY...THAT
...I...CAN...NO...LONGER...BE... INNOCENT! Perfect. Now get over it.
Easter will be a great time to take on the mantle of being more conscious. There are many ways to have a greener Easter and we don't have to be all "woo-woo" about it. After all, it takes a real man to be green!
Easter tips:
• Bring back those molded, hard sugar eggs whose halves are spackled together with industrial frosting. This is where nostalgia can work for us. These big, biodegradable eggs have a hole in one end with which to see little scenarios built inside - perhaps of a miniature beach littered with tiny garbage!
• Make decorative eggs by gently piercing each end of a raw egg with something needle sharp. Then shake out the raw egg into a bowl and blow through the egg to get everything out. Remember: do not suck out the egg! Then make omelets.
• Dye hard-boiled eggs with the kids and enjoy fluffy egg salad sandwiches for days.
• Use hay or a piece of grass sod in the bottom of your recycled, thrift-store bought, cane basket instead of green plastic 'grass'. Or, use shredded-up tax papers from the office.
• Recycle your hinged, plastic eggs every year. Don't let the dog chew and crack them, because...
Do you know where your hinged eggs are? The ones we were given as kids? They might very well be at the eye of the gyre in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a trash stew that is 80 percent plastic and weighs more than 3.5 million tons and floats between Hawaii and San Francisco. (How I would love to hear Pat Sajak on Wheel of Fortune say, "Congratulations! You have won a trip for two to Garbage Island!")
In a 2007 United Press International article Chris Parry with the California Coastal Commission in San Francisco said, "At this point, cleaning it up isn't an option. It's just going to get bigger as our reliance on plastics continues."
The plastics break into pellets, sea animals swallow them, and the chemicals in the plastics make their way to our tables and change the ecosystem. Yum!
Thomas Hayden, in a 2004 article for U.S. News & World Report wrote, "Researchers have also watched in horror as hungry turtles wolf down jellyfish-like plastic bags and seabirds mistake old lighters and toothbrushes for fish, choking when they try to regurgitate the trash for their starving chicks."
Be a good egg. Take on the effort to shift perceptions (and maybe take heat for it, too). Whereas plastic items during the holidays once signified love, now their absence does.
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