Here’s how I began my Earth Day: Wanting to kill a bird.

A woodpecker, more specifically. He has grown very comfortable on our roof, and greets the (near) dawn with his rat-a-tat-tat on the metal vent stack rising from our bathroom.

Not the brightest woodpecker, I’m guessing. But even though “Dick” (so named by me because he’s a real pecker) may not be damaging our wood, he still is sending me around the bend.

No need to worry, though. I understand that no harm can (intentionally) befall Dick. Because he is a migratory bird, he is protected from foul play by the likes of me under the auspices of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. Good thing for Dick I’m a law-abiding man.

And that’s just one way that the law interacts with the densest of the Solar System’s terrestrial planets, also known as our blue marble named Earth.

Reading the history of Earth Day, you unearth (get it?) all kinds of tidbits. For instance, according to Wikipedia (the un-Shepardized version of all learning):

  • April 22 is also the birthday of actor Eddie Albert of Green Acres, who was a staunch environmentalist and spokesperson for the National Arbor Day Foundation. Albert spoke at the inaugural Earth Day ceremony in 1970.
  • April 22 is the birthday of Vladimir Lenin.

Smile, Comrade, it's Earth Day

That last may be the funniest factoid of all, due to all the fallout that ensued. By selecting April 22 as Earth Day, the progressives irked a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, who  said, “Subversive elements plan to make American children live in an environment that is good for them.”

So there.

The Wikipedia entry adds that Lenin was never noted as an environmentalist.

"Comrade Lenin Cleanses the Earth"

Really? I guess they’re not counting ethnic and other cleansing, as evidenced in at least one poster from his time.

 

And while I was meandering on the Earth Day/lawyer nexis, I came across one other person: Kathleen Rogers.

Kathleen, whom you may not know, is the President of Earth Day Network … and a lawyer who went to the law school at the University of California–Davis (Go, UC!).

More to the point, she previously held the position of … wait for it —

Chief Wildlife Counsel for the National Audubon Society

Kathleen Rogers

Holy scat, that’s a great title. I mean, who among us hasn’t had to herd a few cats. But “Wildlife Counsel”? That’s ridiculous. 

 

And if Earth Day isn’t about aspiring to a job with a cool title, what is it about? To say otherwise is simply pessimistic, political ideology.

So happy birthday, Vlad … I mean, Gaia. You may be a mother, but you’re our mother.

 

(For more on the environment/socialism/degrading Western values connection, you really should read a 2009 editorial in The Washington Times. The authors compared Arbor Day to Earth Day. Arbor Day, they claimed, is a happy, non-political celebration of trees. Earth Day? That’s a pessimistic, political ideology that portrays humans in a negative light. Hate that.)