Category: Environmental Awareness

The answer is, of course – “As many divisions as the woodcutter and the saw can create.” There are so many sure fire ways to divide and conquer, in order to break any strong coalition of forces sharing the same objective. In this case, the forces of nature and environment coalesced to make the Oak tree ‘mighty’, long before the woodcutter made plans to reduce it to sawdust. To stay with the tree analogy for a bit longer, one might also ask – “How many divisions does it take to turn a forest of trees into marketable consumer paper products?” Obviously, there is no realistic answer to this question, unless we have been provided with reliable data concerning the quantified statistics of each tree, the entire forest, the consumable pulp per-acre of land, and each individual sawdust granule. Unfortunately, trees are unable to speak for themselves, so they can raise no objections when the lumber industry comes to their forest to divide and conquer. Or maybe they are speaking, and we just aren’t hearing them. Whatever the case, we humans continue the wholesale disintegration (the dividing up) of old-growth forests and jungles, seemingly without sensible consideration to the impact this divisiveness has on the overall health of the planetary environment, and furthermore, the continuation of the human race.

 “Black, White, and Blue Memorial”

Much like the forests, human societies are susceptible, indeed quite vulnerable to, divisive strategies designed by corrupt powers in an effort to conquer and divide the people. Presumably, there is commonality within every community – we connect with others in our community through common interests, attitudes and values. There is also unity within every community – where sharing these commonalities becomes the impetus for unification. To put it simply – We human beings have created communities because we want to belong to a group of others that share our personal perspectives. The disintegration of community, begins with divisiveness. When one or more people within the community disagree with personal perspectives shared by the rest, they are seen as a threat to unity and commonality. This is also how the crowd mentality can quickly turn a previously gentle person toward violent aggression. How can communities become less susceptible to the disintegration caused by divisiveness? Interactive communication restores unity. Open mindedness restores commonality. Yes, I realize just how simple minded, and positively naive those two suggestions sound, but I’ve notoriously held a penchant for simplicity, so I will not elaborate further on this subject… at least for now.

Mission work on “The Hope House” (girls orphanage) in Haiti, August, 2001

It seems like so long ago, and yet only yesterday, that I made a trip to Haiti to help with the construction of “The Hope House”. As I recall it now, the most difficult hurdle in terms of working with Haitian construction workers on this project, was the language barrier. Most workers speak Haitian Creole, which is a long way off from my blue-collar Yankee dialect. In hindsight I can see that the language barrier was a subset of broader, more divisive difficulties caused by the obvious hurdle of cultural commonality. For the entire nine days that I spent in Haiti, I felt like I was in a completely different world, where all of my Western Cultural understandings were stood on their heads, and therefore useless. And yet, still the local Haitians and our group of missionary workers managed to create unity. We found the common ground we shared by being human.

Christopher Moore, Mordechay Ramos and Fred McKenna – Masters of the Superheros on Parade production. At Moore Art Expressions we kept the focus on similarities rather than differences, in the art, and in the teamwork. A great model for creative communities!

There are so many different ways to promote unity instead of division in our lives. The more cohesive our communal bonds become, the stronger this human race will grow, to face the challenges ahead. The healing begins at home, within our own hearts. We must be willing to be selfless on occasion, conceding our own self-interests to the common interests of the group. When a community works in concert to remedy a communal problem, the whole group and each individual within the group, comes out stronger.

We joined forces to help mend the leg of this bronze Olympian. As you can see, without Christopher under the table ‘twisting his nut’, Fred and I, might have easily lost control of this 300 lb, one legged, discus thrower.

Thank you for reading this entry to the “Grand Providentia United, Online Journal. Please join me again on Sunday 3/15 for another ‘outlandishly delicious word buffet!’

The adults know what they’re doing. They have a plan, and the plan is progressive. Surely, they wouldn’t do anything to endanger their own children. They’ve taught us that it’s safety first. If you get cut on a rusty tin can, make sure to get a tetanus shot so you don’t get lock jaw . Clean up the kitchen counter before the bacteria has a chance to spread. Personal hygiene is very important. Clean behind your ears. Brush your teeth. Oh yeah, by the way, don’t play tag around the chemical dump or you’ll end up with cancer.

Growing up in the mill town of Hope, Rhode Island, I witnessed the effects of corporate environmental irresponsibility on a daily basis. During the summer, when school was out, I would set forth each morning with an adventurous spirit and a curious mind. I could hardly wait to see what color the river would be that day! Will it be powder blue? As a seven year old boy, I think powder blue was my favorite, because it made the river look “happy”, more like the River of Oz. It was happy powder blue on special days, but more often than not it was an “unhappy” color, like burnt orange, navy blue/bordering on black, or dark green with masses of snot-like cloud formations in the yellowish-green shades of pea soup. Yes, unfortunately, this is a true story. During my childhood, the Hope Mill was still a functioning lace factory. Sadly enough, the river wasn’t magical; its water didn’t change color each day, based on the wishes of a little boy and his hopes to see powder blue; no, the color was in fact, directly related to the order of lace being manufactured that day. When the mill workers would finish dipping each lot of lace in the dye vat, someone was apparently charged with the directive to open the valve and discharge the contents of said vat into the “first river”. The first river was the canal that cut through the mill and came out the back, the second river was the Pawtuxet River, where the first river would bleed off its dying colors. As a child, it all made sense. In hindsight, I can perceive it only as madness. Eventually the Environmental Protection Agency must have stepped in, because sometime during my early teens, the mill owners dug massive pits between the first and second rivers and proceeded to pump their waste dye into these holding ponds. No more colorful river, just nasty colored poison lakes. Then, one fine day, the bulldozers came and filled in the dye pits with the soil they had previously bulldozed out. So, the problem was solved, because we could no longer see the bold colors of criminal environmental destruction.

I realize that today’s journal post is focused on an extremely negative subject. No one wants to face up to, and take responsibility for, our forefather’s indiscriminate selfishness and greed. However, I am convinced that we must start the healing of our planet and ourselves, by first owning the mistakes of the past and working toward a better future by learning from those mistakes. Our physical health is dependent on environmental health. If the Earth is sick, so are we.