Earth Day

It's just over three weeks until Earth Day 2008. To celebrate, we are planning to beat on garbage can drums, eat local foods from compostable disposable dishes, make suncatchers from recycled objects, and install a sculpture made from scrap metal at our local recycling center. We are going to offer programs for school children, their parents, and anyone with a bicycle or a computer that they have been intending all winter to recycle. When I say "we," I mean our collaborating partner Midland Volunteers for Recycling, we of Creative Spirit Center, our funding partner Midland Area Community Foundation, and everyone who decides to come to the party -- our Earth Day Celebration.

I have a hidden motive in writing about Earth Day in this blog, which has heretofore focused on personal reflections and recollections. I want to encourage others to post a message to the blog and make the blog's name "Creative Connections" a little truer than it has been. Alden B. Dow, Midland architect and philosopher, wrote that it is through creativity that human beings will find what their hearts desire. His actual words are, "Creativity provides the human expressions that can aid the progress and welfare of mankind. The products of creativity help satisfy man's ever-increasing needs."

If there was ever a domain of ever-increasing needs, it is our need to find better ways to live in harmony with the planet. "Earth Day" brings faded memories of granola, Birkenstocks, and tie-dye for some of us. To others, the phrase conjures awareness of very real threats to our environment, our economy, our health, and the preservation of life on earth in all its splendid glory.

In June, Creative Spirit Center and Chippewa Nature Center are jointly hosting a tour to the Harvest Wind Farm in Pigeon MI, where we will visit the installation of thirty-two 500-foot windmills that are generating energy for more than 15,000 people in the Michigan Thumb. We are excited about the application of creativity to solving the real problems that make life a struggle for many of our neighbors and many of the plant and animal species that bring such a high quality of life to Michigan.

I'd like to take this blog from solipsism to engagement. At another time, if you wish, we might discuss solipsism as a philosophy, but here let's make Creative Connections.

Will you post your thoughts about how creativity can help to alleviate the stress on our planet and ourselves caused by the perfect storm in which we live, made of enormous disposable income, global warming, separation from natural processes, and technological change moving at warp speed? Send something in. Let other people know your ideas. I'm asking you to expose yourself a little; but really blogging is a great venue for shy people. Try it! I'll be looking for your ideas. It is the need of the day that calls forth the messenger. You might be the person with the next right answer.

Happy Earth Day, Sarah