We’re celebrating Earth Day with our 100% recycled and biodegradable seed paper kippah in the Jewish Museum collection made by Circles of Life. When exposed to soil and water, this kippah is recycled into a flower garden.
Today, please take a moment to remember that there is still so much beauty and complexity and amazing, inexplicable wonder in the world. We are not lost. The Earth is not lost. There is still so much worth fighting for.
“The climate crisis is ongoing. And, also, a bird is building a nest in the eaves outside my window. Come spring, there will be new birth. In shaky hands, I hold these two truths together.”
Gentle reminder to take care of our planet not just today but every day. Let every day be a call to action to save our home and continue to push for a sustainable future.
Have a wonderful Friyay and Earth Day beautiful souls.
In a dramatic flourish, Hallerman strapped on a gas mask that he believes his mother, Edith, had saved from her service with the Red Cross during World War II. (Though gas masks were a common Earth Day accessory, this long-snouted beast looked particularly awful.) The AP photographer posed Hallerman in front of a blossoming magnolia tree, then changed his mind. “Try leaning over and smelling those flowers,” Hallerman recalls the photographer saying. Hallerman bent his six-foot frame over a short fence surrounding the tree so that the mask’s proboscis touched the pink-white blossoms. The photographer snapped his shot, and Hallerman thought nothing more of it.
It’s been 50 years since the first Earth Day gave voice to growing concern about the global effects of pollution, and the destruction of habitat and wildlife. This year, VCU Libraries looked at how changes in our nation’s environmental awareness may be seen through comic books. It’s been a long trek as we learned to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
The discussion has changed, but efforts to educate and encourage responsible stewardship of the planet and its resources continue. These comics reveal some of the conversation during the late 1960s through the 1990s.
