Underwriting support from:
The 1970 activist celebrated a birthday on Thursday. April 22ND marked the 40TH Anniversary of Earth Day. Originally the brain-child of the esteemed Senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day has grown from a grassroots national teach-in involving just our country in 1970 to a globally coordinated environmental love-fest organized in over 150 countries today. Participation in Earth Day, initially in the tens of millions, now boasts hundreds of millions.
Celebrating right here in Grand Rapids, and culminating their month-long Spring Sustainability Series: “Visioning the Change,” Grand Rapids Community College students joined the Grand Rapids Public Museum for a “Celebration of Earth & Sky.” The Friday, April 23RD event featured a performance of GRCC student work in the Meijer Theatre.
A “Quilt of Words” was the result of GRCC Associate Professor Maryann Lesert’s open call to the Arts and Communications Department at the college.
Music students, Martin Kinchen on guitar and vocals, and Theodore “Teddy” Ndawillie II on concert grand piano framed the quilt with a presentation of their original compositions.
Jim Keating, Art Department faculty member and his students created a digital backdrop of images projected behind the quilt with additional printed work displayed on the mezzanine level of the museum.
The “Quilt of Words” itself came from student submissions, culled and organized by Lesert’s creative writing class.
Ian Hilgendorf, Gavin Hollemans, Brooke Verville, Jacqueline Prins, Ken Tamke, and Dave Mascho wove nature poetry, Haiku, confessions, criticisms, desperate pleas, and environmentalist reflections, surrounding it all with a border of wishes for our planet.
With Lesert’s guidance the pieces and patterns were assembled, each student giving voice: Hilgendorf to nature, Verville to despair, Tamke to the environmentalist, Hollemans to criticism, Prins and Mascho to the border of wishes, and even Lesert to confessions.
The overall message GRCC’s Sustainability Series delivered, and echoed in a “Quilt of Words” is not a pleasant one to hear (or read). On a scale of unconcerned to panic, we as a people should be positioned more towards the latter than the former regarding the state of, and ability to, save our planet.
As two documentary films screened in the series, “Food, Inc” and “What a Way To Go: Life at the End of Empire” suggest, we may already be too late.
Therein seems to lie the problem. Despite the dire situation our planet is in we remain stuck at the wrong end of that scale.
Said environmental author, Alan Durning, “Measured in constant dollars, the world’s people have consumed as many goods and services since 1950 as all previous generations put together. Americans alone have used up as large a share of earth’s mineral resources as did everyone before them combined. Yet this historical epoch of titanic consumption appears to have failed to make the consumer class any happier.”
Durning seems to more accurately reflect where Americans stand. We’ve turned a blind eye. We think that somebody, somewhere has our back, science, our government, who? Ultimately, it is up to each of us.
The Way We Do Things
If you humble yourself, maybe we can be friends
There are plenty of places you could make your amends
How can I, but one, assist tendencies to move
When my ideas, I fret, are not in tune with the groove
I love your body, but I hate your mind
Wish we could discuss some things to refine
I cast my vote to no avail
My voice unheard, the ship’s set sail
You are too proud and make me angry
But I am you, and you are me
The well-oiled machine has lost a screw
In God we trust, and I in you
Forget your sorrows, for we are the best
There is nothing you need to get off your chest
-Gavin Hollemans
The Rapidian, a program of the 501(c)3 nonprofit Community Media Center, relies on the community’s support to help cover the cost of training reporters and publishing content.
We need your help.
If each of our readers and content creators who values this community platform help support its creation and maintenance, The Rapidian can continue to educate and facilitate a conversation around issues for years to come.
Please support The Rapidian and make a contribution today.
Comments, like all content, are held to The Rapidian standards of civility and open identity as outlined in our Terms of Use and Values Statement. We reserve the right to remove any content that does not hold to these standards.