March Creation Corner Column
Events, Anniversaries, Wildlife Conservation, Books
Events
Turn Off Your Lights for Earth Hour, Saturday March 28, 2020, 8:30 p.m., info at worldwildlife.org/eh20
2020 Soil and Water Stewardship Week and Sunday theme is "Where Would We BEE Without Pollinators?" from the National Association of Conservation Districts. Education materials available.
Anniversaries
10th anniversary of the publication of the Bill McKibben book, EAARTH: Making Life on a Tough New Planet.
50th anniversary of the founding of Friends of the Earth (FOE) International 1969.
Quotes for "Earth Day at 50" (April 22), from the Sierra Magazine cover story article of March/April:
"Earth Day should be, among other things, a festival for those who wish to remind everyone that we should let other living things be just because they are alive."
"Earth Day as usual, a polite exercise of stewardship, is wholly inadequate considering the scope and urgency of the climate emergency."
"We are asking the world to transition. But as a movement, are we willing to change?"
It Must Be True, I Read it in the Comics! (re: Wildlife conservation)
From the January 26, 2020 Sunday syndicated comic strip "Mark Trail" by James Allen, comes a 7-panel graphic noting the Global Wildlife Conservation organization (GWC) compilation of a 25 "most wanted" lost species list that includes 10 mammals, one crustacean, two amphibians, three reptiles, three birds, three fish, one insect, one plant, and one coral. GWC has a "search for lost species" campaign in an attempt to conserve
the diversity of life on our planet.
Also of related interest:
Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace. Carl Safina.
The Birds of Pandemonium: Life Among the Exotic and the Endangered. Michelle Raffin.
End of the Megafauna: The Fate of the World's Hugest, Fiercest, and Strangest Animals. Ross D.E. MacPhee.
Extinct: An Illustrated Exploration of Animals That Have Disappeared. Lucas Riera (for children/youth).
The Hunt for the Golden Mole: All Creatures Great and Small and Why They Matter. Richard Girling.
Last Chance to See. Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine.
Tamed: Ten Species that Changed our World. Alice Roberts.
FILMS OF NOTICE
1. Environmental Film Festival, March 12-22, 2020 in Washington D.C. Visit DCEFF.ORG
2. Sundance Film Festival 2020, see sundance.org/program
3. Film and web site on the 100+ uncontacted tribes around the world, see
survivalinternational.org/uncontacted
Books
101 Ways to go Zero Waste. Kathryn Kellogg.
Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution. Peter Kalmus.
The Earth is Not for Sale: A Path out of Fossil Capitalism to the Other World that is still Possible. David and Peter Schwartzman.
From Disposable Culture to Disposable People: The Unintended Consequences of Plastics. Sasha Adkins.
Here: Poems for the Planet. Elizabeth J. Coleman, ed., foreword by the Dalai Lama.
Plastic-Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too. Beth Terry (also a TED talk).
Projects. Andy Goldsworthy (land art).
The Secret Life of Flies. Erica McAlister.
Shamrocks and Oil Slicks: A People's Uprising Against Shell Oil in County Mayo, Ireland. Fred A. Wilcox.
Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States. United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice. 1987.
Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty. United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice. 2007.
Water, Wind, Earth and Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements. Christine Valters Painter.
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Mike Ochs finds common ground between religion and politics in his concern for the environment.
Politically he self-published the first "Greens Bibliography" of the English-language literature on the international Green Party movement (1989), the project for his Master of Liberal Arts in International Studies degree at Lock Haven (PA) University. He also helped plant the seeds for the Green Party of PA at that time, and remains a cyber-activist with it.
For a monthly newsletter of the ecumenical United Churches of Lycoming County (PA), he has written the "Creation Corner Column" since 1997. It became a blog in 2011 at
He received a B.A. degree from Gettysburg College in 1965.
