Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [43]
There’s an old adage that states that the smaller the deed, the greater its effect. At least I think it’s an old adage. It certainly sounds like one. At any rate, I’m not an expert at proselytizing, but I have a few sins to compensate for, so I’m making good on my promise to change the heart of one voter—in fact, I even know which one. There have been way too many close votes in my lifetime, and I’ll be darned if I’ll add personal voter apathy to my list of failings. The same, alas, should go for you, too.
If there’s anything you take away from this little rant, please make it that this is a great nation, with great people, a great history, and great potential for the future no matter what it brings; and that good citizenship mandates not giving up hope for the institutions that have done so much good in the past. That, and that all sinners—like me—have futures.
Eric Rubury lives in Redding, Connecticut, with his spouse, Leslie Cohen-Rubury. He is currently Chief Financial Officer for OceanConnect, which, among other business lines, includes the promotion of renewable bio-fuels and personal carbon credits. They have three children and a future daughter-in-law. He’s lead guitarist in the local rock band Stuntfish. He has worked and traveled extensively in Central America, South America, and West Africa.
One Piece of Paper
KRISTINE ALACH
We stood and stared at each other blankly. The rotted smell of decaying lunches rose up from our recycling bins. Straggling students wandered past on their way home for the weekend. Teachers trudged by, and some woke from their tired trance to acknowledge us before walking outside. Even though the work and school day had ended for some, our work had just begun.
In fact, the work that led to a recycling project at Oliver Ames High School in Easton, Massachusetts, had started about two years earlier. My best friend Lydia and I always had a thing for the environment. She liked learning about it; I liked rolling in it. We both would rant about the importance of conserving energy and protecting the earth. Any new information we gleaned from school, magazines, newspapers, the Internet, billboards, or television shows was quickly catalogued and became artillery for our environmental debates with any willing party.
We talked about the need for change at school. Mostly the school staff just talked, so we began our own private recycling. We started with our own bottles and eventually we accepted donations from friends. Lydia would bring the bottles home to recycle. However, it got to a point when we were sitting on the floor of the hallway trying to find some secret pocket that could possibly hold just one more bottle, since our bags were already stuffed full of plastic. It was then that we realized that if no one else was going to make the change at school, we had to.
We soon discovered that many people wanted the school to recycle, but none wanted to invest the effort to make it happen. There is something to be said about the philosophers who go about prophesying and weighing all the pros and cons of every given situation. However, sometimes you have to attack a situation head first, holding onto your passion and goals. If no one had ever taken the initiative to improve our world, we would still be picking bugs from our hair around a campfire dressed in loincloths. Part of being human is being compulsively curious about new ways to improve the improvements of yesterday. In this spirit we set out to lessen our school’s eco-impact.
We dodged political bullets, ducked under red tape, wove through obstacles, danced through countless phone calls, and tap-danced along trouble. Through the year we brainstormed ways to organize the people power (work force) we would need to manage our collections. No amount of preparing could have made us ready for the challenges we would face.
Previously our school had thrown