On April 22, 1970, I was seven years old. Mrs Kwartowitz, my first grade teacher, wore a brown suede poncho and hoop earrings big enough to shoot a basketball through. Her husband (Mr. Kwartowitz) looked a lot like Allen Ginsberg, and made it his job to tie-dye the jeans of every one of his wife’s students who provided him with a pair. (Gaga, my mother’s mother, thought it was a fabulous idea and ran to Alexander’s on Queens Boulevard, where she bought me a pair of Wrangler bell bottoms that were so stiff they stood up by themselves.) In preparation for the inaugural Earth Day celebration, which Mrs. Kwartowitz said was a very big deal, the entire first grade at P.S. 174 took up Save Mother Earth collections in little green UNESCO boxes; I have no recollection of where they were sent, only that mine was bursting at the seams like a small hippie Tzedekah box. Mrs. Watkins, a gorgeous Angela Davis-lookalike who taught the class next door to Mrs. Kwartowitz’s, showed us how to grow an avocado tree using an avocado pit and two toothpicks. But at home, my grandmother still used toxic Noxon on the silver; we drank Tab and Hawaiian Punch almost every day, and blithely tossed the empties out along with our voluminous industrial meat scraps down the incinerator shoot, which belched enormous black mushroom clouds of pollution into the sky above 98-05 67th Avenue. I begged my mother to get us some house plants — Mrs. Kwartowitz said they purified the air naturally — which she did: a Ficus tree that died when our Schnauzer repeatedly mistook it for a fire hydrant; and a Wandering Jew, which clung to life until the start of second grade, when my mother forgot to water it and it dried up like California.
Fast forward forty-five years and Earth Day (which seemed to be such a positive, tree-hugging thing to get people involved in back in 1970) sometimes feels depressing and aggravatingly futile, as if those of us who care about the planet are attempting to put out a forest fire with a thimble of water. I can’t quite remember who it was who first said that the planet is a living, breathing, sentient organism with a pulse and a temperature — like a hospital patient — and that if we essentially do to it what my Schnauzer did to my Ficus, it will die a protracted, painful death, which can be avoided (or at least slowed) by doing, among many, many others, two things: 1) Addressing in a serious way what appears to be the uniquely human propensity for entitlement on both the personal and public scale; and 2) Redirecting breathtakingly vast subsidies away from industrial monoculture and genetic modification geared to profit above all else, and pointing them instead toward food production and organic farming and permaculture practices that conserve resources, reduce water consumption, and ultimately, respect and heal the planet while feeding its inhabitants. This is an old, old story; point number 2 is self-evident. Point number 1 can best be described this way: We believe ourselves to be an entitled animal. We somehow feel a God-given right to manipulate everything and everyone around us, because we have thumbs and we have resources; if we don’t like it or it cramps our style or it doesn’t impact us directly, we change it or politicize it or kill it. Or, if we don’t want to discuss it at all, we simply pretend it doesn’t exist, like the elephant in the room: we’ll only talk about it if it serves our purpose, or if we want it for its tusks.
So, on the forty-fifth anniversary of my attempting to grow an avocado tree in a jar using toothpicks, I’m not feeling particularly sanguine about the health of the planet, or the inclination of its inhabitants to actually band together to do something about it. We’d rather argue and call each other names, which is often the most politically expedient thing to do, especially as we head into an election season here in the States.
My response has been decidedly more personal; over the last few months, I’ve taken to reading, listening to, and cooking from works that give me hope, energy, and no small amount of faith and stability when I find myself suffering from environmental ennui. To loosely paraphrase the great Terry Tempest Williams in her conversation with Krista Tippett, this is a time for people on opposite sides of the fence to sit down and figure out how to move forward together with the safety of the planet and our human community in mind.
Here are my greatest Earth Day inspirations:
To Listen
Terry Tempest Williams, On Being
Deborah Madison on Food Farmer Earth
Nikki Henderson at EdibleSchoolyard.org
Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman, On Being
To Read
Krista Tippett: Einstein’s God
Peter Matthiessen: The Snow Leopard
Wallace Stegner: Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs
Terry Tempest Williams: Finding Beauty in a Broken World
Terry Tempest Williams: When Women Were Birds
Gary Snyder: The Paris Review Interview
Gary Snyder: The Man in the Clearing
Mas Masumoto: Epitaph for a Peach
David Gessner: All That Remains
Barbara Kingsolver: High Tide in Tucson
Elizabeth Kolbert: Field Notes from a Catastrophe
Richard Payne: How Much Is Enough?
To Cook
Deborah Madison: Vegetable Literacy
Deborah Madison: Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
Heidi Swanson: Super Natural Every Day
Viana La Place: The Unplugged Kitchen
Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall: The River Cottage Cookbook
Paul Bertolli: Cooking By Hand
My mother still has my avocado tree that I grew with toothpicks in a jar, c 1974. At some point it was transferred to a large plant pot where something else had recently died, and 41 years later it just…won’t die! It’s a tall skinny tree, with big green leaves. Lives on my mom’s sun porch, has never produced a single avocado, of course, and reminds me of my own bell bottoms and tie-dyed t-shirt whenever I see it. So while I in no way am feeling sanguine about the health of the planet and our guilt in the damage it has suffered…well, the tenacity of my avocado tree gives me hope. As does your lush and evocative writing, every time.
Sharon, let’s hear it for sunny Zone 7!
Elissa,
Thank you for the beautiful writing and for sharing your “inspirations” with us. You included some of my favorite authors and programs, but you also have introduced me to more I cannot wait to read or listen to – I am very grateful and will pass this on. One drop produces many ripples.
I hear you, Elissa. The news is so, so discouraging, but even Bill McKibben had a flash of hope today (see http://www.350@350.org). At least Earth Day can be a kind of measuring stick once a year, if nothing more. I love that your tried to grow an avocado tree, an agricultural experiment not forgotten. I thank you also for that inspiring list of books, especially for including Wolf Willow and Finding Beauty in a Broken World, two books that are truly inspiring for understanding and embracing change.
An unrelated note, but I just finished reading your book (which I ordered promptly after reading your previous post “Infrequent Potatoes”), and to say I loved your writing is an understatement. There’s a quality to it that can’t be defined, because it seems to exceed all interpretation (in the study of film – my field – it is sometimes called ‘excess’). It’s hard to explain, but I just wanted to register my appreciation. I’m excited to file it next to other food writing and cookbooks that I love.
I am so deeply grateful for your kind note, Sara.
Ah, Elissa, thank you. Your post serendiptously came just when I needed it. (Recovering from a several weeks’ visit from stomach flu.). For me, personally, what is always wonderful about 04-22, no matter what, is that my youngest daughter was born on Earth Day. Your post added that much- needed “oomph” of hope and inspiration, to nudge me out of the quicksand of the flu bog.
Hi Elissa, thank you for writing about this issue and being so honest about where we are headed. For me, your post and earh day inspire me to think about what I choices I need to make to take responsibility for me impact on the earth. I hope others see that too and stop waiting for “something” to happen. Each of us is responsible, not just companies or our politicians. I hope you get that avocado tree going!