Earth Day - April 22, 2015
by Jim Gerrish
4/16/15 - I have checked the East Orange City
Websites and calendars for some mention of an Earth Day
celebration this year, but even the library is not mentioning it.
It seems that I will be all alone in the city on Earth Day once
again, trying to get people to spend a few moments thinking about
their relationship with the planet that gives them life, and a
place to pursue happiness and seek liberty.
My own ability to get around on my sun-powered
electric tricycle is becoming more difficult, but I will try to
be at my usual spot in the Clock Garden at the intersection of
Evergreen/Sanford St and Central Avenue at 12:00 noon on
Wednesday, 4/22/15. If I'm not right under the clock, I will be
nearby, easily spotted by my flag waving tricycle. As usual, my
mission will be to pick up as much litter as I can from these
three small park gardens that the City seems to neglect, even
though their location gives visitors their first (and often last)
impression of East Orange.
On this image captured from Google maps on
4/18/15 I have numbered the three small park gardens. #1 is what
I call the Clock Garden, #2 is divided into two parts, one with
trees and one without, and would make a great place to play ball
or have a picnic if it weren't so littered with bottles and
trash, and # 3 has only one tree but a variety of different
hidden wild flowers that make it special.
In Park #2, between Sanford Street and Cambridge
Street, there are four trees covered with blossoms on this sunny
April 18th, 2015. They are probably not as nice as the Japanese Cherry trees in Branch Brook Park, but
they are all ours and I can ride my tricycle or walk to see them
from where I live. I can see that I will have a lot of work to do
picking up the bottles and litter. Why do I do it? Because no one
else will.
This year I will be trading giant sunflower
plants for bags of litter picked up from the city streets. The
sunflower plants were grown from heritage seeds that have made
the world trip to Russia and back as described in our brochure
below. These are supposed to be especially tall - growing up to
12 feet high, if one can believe the source.
4/20/15 - This just in from The Alternative Press (TAP) - The Jersey Explorer Children’s Museum on Dodd
Street (in the Franklin Library Building adjacent to Watsessing
Park) will be having - get this - a GO GREEN Earth Day
celebration - not on Earth Day, but on Saturday, April 25th. It
is really just a hyped-up promotional event for NJ Jet's
D’Brickashaw Ferguson to give away free copies of his 2012
book "Brick's Way: Go Green!" promoting himself, the NY
Jets and some environmentalist fantasy that desperately wants to
believe Earth Day has something to do with the color green - as
in green football uniforms and money. I challenge you to find a
review of the book on-line. It has been out three years and in
all that time has been given away free by the thousands, without
a single review showing up on Amazon or any of the other
booksellers who can't seem to sell copies of a book that everyone
else can get for free. So instead of picking up the litter in
Watsessing Park so the green grass can be seen litter-free, the
Museum will be filled with children listening to
D’Brickashaw Ferguson read his book to them, saving them the
trouble of reading it for themselves. This insanity passes as an
Earth Day event in East Orange.
Please NOTE: The Jersey Explorer
Children’s Museum
makes no mention of this event, neither on its own Web site nor
on its Facebook Page. Also, the Bridge of Books Foundation, cited in the TAP article, makes no
mention of the event on its Web site. It seems TAP doesn't check its own sources of
information before publishing.
April 22, 2015
- Earth Day
In spite of
"gloom and doom" predictions of disasterous weather
from the usual sources (which I ignore and get my weather truth from
the local radar station)
it is a beautiful Spring morning when I arrive at the Clock
Tower, ready for work. If it had been pouring rain, I would still
be here, because rain is something it does on earth. Besides,
"April Showers Bring May Flowers" according to the old
adage.
It seems that
"someone" noticed the photo of Park #2 and cleaned out
all the litter before I got there. That was a pleasant surprise,
but it was also no surprise that no clean-up had been done at
Park 1 or 3, and even the abandoned building behind Park 2 has
piles of litter on the steps and in the alley. No, this was just
a cosmetic clean up because "someone" was embarrassed
by the photo, and they completely ignored the other litter spots
all around Park #2.
For example, Park
#1, just behind the clock, looked like this before I
started cleaning it up. I am happy to report the daylillies are
unharmed and are getting ready to appear as soon as the weather
gets a little warmer. I noted that the same bricks are falling
out of line along the front of the garden, and the same damaged
metal thingee is leaning the same way it was last year, so I
won't bother photographing them again. You can go back to Earth Day 2014 and see what they still look
like today, without the
rat holes.
After cleaning
Park #1, I moved on to Park #3. It was well littered, but also
covered with the tiny blue and white Corn Speedwell (veronica
arvensis) flowers I first noticed last year (see inset). Yellow
dandilions are also beginning to appear. Both these wild flowers
are called "weeds" by ignorant gardeners who ignore the
medicinal uses of Corn Speedwell on the one hand, and the delicious and
beneficial uses of Dandilion Wine on the other. I have no idea what the
hairy clumps are on each side of the tree. They may have been
annuals planted there on purpose and will need to be removed or
replaced by a city gardener.
Last year, I
foolishly thought that just mentioning
a serious problem with
legal ramifications (think lawsuit just waiting to
happen!) would be enough to get the city maintenance workers out
to take care of it. It has been a whole year with nothing
happening, so here is the photograph I should have taken last
year to embarrass someone who works and gets paid by the city to
handle such problems. Maybe it will be fixed by next
year. Really, people, the bricks were a nice idea, but this is a
place where paving is obviously needed rather than loose bricks.
Especially when no one has a contingency plan for what
to do when the bricks begin to migrate. And if you are not going
to replace whatever was being held in place by those upright
bolts, get rid of the bolts.
Park #3 has been
cleaned (except for sweeping up cigarette butts and filters from
around the outside edges - but I don't have a broom for that). I
have some time left over from not having to take care of Park #2.
That's when I noticed the left side of Park #3.
This left side of
the brick paved walkway is part of the city's responsibility for
cleaning. Last year, the large apartment building was still under
construction and not yet occupied, but this year, the rich people
have moved into their luxury apartments and the other side of the
fence is twice as littered as "our side." If rich
people can let their rich "projects" slide into slums,
it is no wonder that poor people live in such appalling
conditions that they have created for themselves. It has nothing
whatever to do with poverty, and everything to do with ignorance
and laziness. Since no one else is going to clean the city side
of this rich penal colony's fence, I guess I had better do it. So
I did. Please note that the side of the fence outside St. Paul's
Church parking area (where there are two convenient trash cans on
each side of the driveway) was completely litter free. Only the
rich people who live in the luxury apartments have chosen to let
their building become a slum.
This is our brochure for 2015.
Click on the Brochure to
get a printable pdf file.
You'll be happy
to know that not one single East Orange resident bothered to ask
me for a brochure, and no one bothered to help me fill a plastic
shopping bag with litter, so once again, I gave away no sunflower
plants (I also had some bonus morning glory plants to grow up the
side of the giant sunflower if anyone asked for them). Lots of
people watched what I was doing, some came to laugh and point,
but no one came to help and improve. Good luck, East Orange. I'll
be back again next year on Earth Day.
Arbor Day follows on Friday, April 24th, 2015
After last year's rejection, I have given up on
including the city on my celebration of this
"forgotten" day and will spend it working on
my own apple, cherry and pear trees at home.