clorophilla

may someone enlight me? The new showcase is about really exsisting book cover?

chelydra

ah well... file it away for Earth Day 100, maybe?

chelydra

And then there's always the tried-and-true, trusted and traditional "Halloween 2008" ... we could have Halloween 2008 B, Halloween 2008 C, etc etc whenever inspiration wanes just as a new showcase is due...?

chelydra

But Water Rights is pretty cool too, so do what you like.
Thanks for listening ( ? )

chelydra

suggested by Hazer — I don't know if she was thinking of it a showcase, but why not? WATER RIGHTS! The kind of environmentalism that took over after the first Earth Day was mostly about saying no to bad kinds of business practices, consumption, land use, etc etc etc - which all just sort of blended down into a big fat all-purpose NO, which of course has no sales appeal and so the whole movement got deflated and limped along, raising funds to keep its offices open and its salaries paid, while the planet unravelled faster and worser than ever before (since the Great Asteroid that ate the dinosaurs anyway). The environmentalists responses by cranking up their alarmist rhetoric which was a bad idea for at least two reasons (1) it sounded like crying wolf, the shrillness and relentlessness left us jaded, and (2) no amount of hysterical alarmism could ever describe the enormity and the horror of what "we" have done to the earth in just the fifty years since the first Earth Day - exactly fifty years ago this coming week!!! — well..
I was going to say that the idea of water rights is actually much closer to the definition of ecology - since organisms have to defend their right to get what they need out if the natural world, and that element of self-interest needs to get back into the Big Picture... But it's obvious we need to observe Earth Day Fifty, now that I think of it... even if it's more wake than celebration... I always felt Earth Day #1 was the beginning of the end, (it put an end to the very energetic and often brilliant 'ecology movement' that was taking over from 'conservation' ... and then Earth Day exiled us to some never never land called The Environment which was never real, never alive, just a sort of backdrop of painted nature-scenes on a limp curtain... like elevator music, The Environment is all background and no musical heartbeat... which is devoid of that subjective empowering and inspiring notion that every living organism, us included, has to fight like hell to get what we need, and fight like hell against the infantile greedy scum that want to grab and pillage and poison and hoard and enrich themselves at our expense... There is NO fighting spirit in The Environment... Mother Nature had a gender, a personality, tenderness, ferocity, love, bloodthirstiness, passion, excitement, deep wisdom; she could do anything from sending us flowery spring breezes and birdsongs (like blowing kisses, reminding us she loves us) to unleashing hurricanes and volcanos (reminding us she isn't bothered about whether we live or die)...
So... suggestions include so far Water Rights (yay Hazer!), Earth Day Fifty, Mother Nature...but there's another possibility that I personally love more and more as time goes on (and runs out), A New Heaven and A New Earth - from the last page or so of the book of Revelations that closes the Bible... I'm not a believer myself, but it seems to me to be a phrase much like "born-again" which is not about discarding the body you were born with the last time and crawling up inside your mama (dead or alive) to pop out again... the idea that prophecies require the utter devastation and discarding of this living planet makes no sense at all; why not accept it (just like 'born-again') as a powerful truthful metaphor for the same old planet waking up one fine morning with a whole new attitude and whole new sense of who she is and what her life is for...And we, being but particles of earth-stuff animated by sunlight, are of course fully involved and committed participants in that rebirth... But having offered that sermonette in favor of A New Heaven and a New Earth, can't help feeling that Mother Nature might drum up more business.