The Heron

I really wish I could get a photo of this guy. He's so tall and dramatic looking - like a beaky man in a long white tux. He stands perfectly still and beautiful next to the water of the pond that's slowly receding from last week's floods.

Problem is, I only ever pass by his pond at 45 mph on the way to work. There isn't really an acceptable pull-off spot on the road near there, and even if there were, I don't think he'd hang around. They tend to fly off when they suspect someone might attack with a digital camera.

But these birds weren't here 40 years ago when I was a kid. We never saw hawks or herons or even those pretty little yellow and black birds that I don't know their names. RARELY we would see a Cardinal (the State Bird!) and more often just a few house sparrows and robins. Now there are hordes of mourning doves and BIG BLACK crows/ravens - and these magnificent white herons.

40 years ago these birds didn't live here. The skies around Gary were brown and red and filled with a stench from the factories that stained the clouds and hurt the throat as we drove past on our way to Clear Lake or the Warren Dunes.

40 years ago there was more cornfield, more forest, and fewer birds. Fewer deer too. The American Bald Eagle was almost extinct. The Cuyahoga River caught fire every summer, and Lake Erie was dead.

While it is fashionable to wring one's hands and cry about the horrors of "Global Warming" and agonize over one's "carbon footprint", the reality is that in many ways we have pulled back from that "brink" and FIXED things that had been done wrong. Of course we have not fixed them all. Of course there is much, much more to be fixed. But hand wringing and agonizing, fingerpointing and name-calling arent' the way to accomplish them.

"Global Warming" is too big of an issue. While it IS a huge issue, it is too big, and the majority of people won't see it as something they can personally affect, either positively or negatively - and so they will do nothing.

On the other hand, there are lots of small ways that people can clean up their own communities, and turn them into cleaner, more efficient, less polluting areas. Plant some trees to help offset those being murdered in the Amazon, perhaps.

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Now... here's a thought. If the so-called "Palestinians" (There is not now, nor has there EVER BEEN a country called "Palestine" - just FYI), and the Iraqis and the Saudis, would all band together under Allah and work toward turning the middle-east into this "paradise" that they would like - wouldn't that just be about the same amount of area that the morons in Brazil are burning out of the rainforest? Imagine shifting the Air-Filter properties of trees and plants into those (currently) desert areas - thereby making things nicer for the people, making habitat for animals, and bringing tourists, ....

Takes a bit of effort to do that though. You couldn't do it while at the same time being suicide bombers and dancing in the streets and marching around in your pajamas screaming anti-american slogans.

Yes, I'm babbling. It's my blog. I can!

508 days