The “pause,” as the governor of Mister Boomer’s state labelled the multiple-month home sheltering during COVID, caused many to examine a myriad of things. One is, the fact that the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day was celebrated then (in April 2020) without crowds of young people yelling at the Establishment to “do something now,” was something sorely missed by Mister Boomer.
The anniversary reminded Mister B of his Earth Day experience in April of 1970. Mister B has told the story before, how he and his sister made an Earth Day flag of green and white stripes with a Greek Theta symbol in the area that holds the stars on the national flag. It was something he saw somewhere, and wanted to copy the design, because the following day — the first Earth Day — he was to lead a bicycle parade for two miles to his high school.The flag worked well enough, suspended on the makeshift pole that he carried throughout the route.
Along the way, cars would honk at the parade of a few dozen teens on bikes, flag waving in the breeze, but it is still unclear to Mister B if they were honking in solidarity for this new national day of awareness, or honking to get the group out of the way. Possibly a little of each.
Once the parade reached the high school, students, teachers and the principal were outside the school to greet them. Bikes put away, students and teachers made their way into the awaiting classes. At 11 am, there was a scheduled school assembly outside in front of the building. Students filed out and sat on the grass to hear from some environmentally-minded science and art teachers. The principal came over and asked Mister B if he wanted to run the flag he and his sister made up the flagpole. The grommets he had hammered in the night before were perfect receptors for the clips of the flagpole. In a quick minute Mister B’s handmade Earth Day flag was waving under Old Glory.
It may seem a very liberal thing for a school to do back then, but history as well as personal memory tells us the mood of the country had changed significantly since Rachel Carson’s publishing of Silent Spring in 1962. Living in an industrial city, every person in the school experienced air and water pollution on a daily basis, so it was a topic of great interest. The area was dotted with factories that spewed waste water, odor and debris that fell on car windshields and laundry hanging to dry in backyards, alike. Plus, at Mister B’s parochial school, the stewardship aims of the environmental movement were in direct harmony with religious teaching.
The Covid pandemic shutdown made us stop and look out at what was happening on the other side of the windows. What was immediately evident was there were fewer cars on the roads, and many more birds were chirping all through the day. Yet, despite awareness to the issue of pollution being raised for more than fifty years, and the fact that reports indicated a thirty percent drop in nitrous dioxide pollution in the United States a little more than a month into the shelter-in-place orders, clearly we still have a long way to go to protect ourselves and our environment.
What memories do you have of the first Earth Day, boomers?
Please note: This edited post was originally published by Mister Boomer on April 26, 2020.