Celebrate Earth Day

Happy Earth Day!

Last year was bitter sweet as I had to cancel an arts event, where several artists donated their service to support environmental efforts as part of Earth Day’s 50th anniversary. The earth continues to need our reverence. Thomas Berry suggests the need to reframe our understanding - that humans are subjects along with all the other evolutionary creatures and elements which we have too often thought of as objects for our use and exploitation.

Even in a pandemic there are ways to celebrate:

• Try the quizzes at the Earth Day 2021 site and see what you know: (I’m doing better on climate change than on climate literacy but I have work to do on both.)

• Watch one of these videos:

  • Life in Color With David Attenborough,” on Netflix,

  • “Secrets of the Whales” the project of an even bigger power player, the filmmaker and deep-sea diver James Cameron.

  • Cher and the Loneliest Elephant,” streaming beginning Thursday on Paramount+ and playing on cable May 19 on the Smithsonian Channel,

  • the three hourlong episodes of “A Year to Change the World,” being shown in succession Thursday night on PBS stations. It follows Thunberg, then 16 and 17, as she travels the world in 2019 and 2020, giving speeches at climate conferences and educating herself — and through the documentary, us — i