Two Words - © Kent Fletcher
May 6, 2008
Green. Diverse. Tiresome, tiresome words. Used, abused, rode hard and put-up-wet-words. Useless words except to the purveyors of the new age of experience. I am so tired of hearing them and they will never return to their original meanings.
Green comes about not as a color per se, but as a movement among the environmentalists, the tree-huggers, the water-huggers, the pacifists who worry more about a snail darter's demise somewhere than the continuance of human life, itself. Green has invaded everyday speech ad nauseam from recycling aluminum to giant windmills, as if those two extremes were not already on the map. And yet, while a community may be suffering because food supplies cannot be garnered in a timely manner, these same environmentalists will stop at nothing to prohibit exploration of new areas of attainment of energy-producing products. While the community is aching for suitable housing - a roof over their heads, a bit of warmth in cool weather, a bit of cool in warm weather, a dry spot in a flood - the environmentalists, the Greens will prohibit the cutting and processing of old-growth forests for the sake of their grandchildren, who indeed may be the ones aching in the future, if not now.
I would hope that more people, at least more adults care more about their surroundings than the general public realizes. I remember driving down a road outside New Orleans and seeing McDonalds wrappers flying willy-nilly out the windows as a family drove somewhere. It disgusted me, but being a newbie to the area, I said nothing. Knowing remotely of the populace in that area, I could have been shot for my concerns. Where I live now, in Texas, I keep the right-of-way on the property I rent as free of trash as I can, going beyond the property line and picking up styrofoam cups, plastic cups, beer cans or bottles, food wrappers, flyers, advertisement sheets from newspapers, sticks of size, whatever out of a sense of pride, if nothing else, for my corner of the world. But today's society is such a throw-away society with a give-a-hoot attitude, it's a wonder there is a clean spot anywhere in the world. Shrink-wrap, plastic bottles and plates and knives and forks and spoons litter the landscape like new-fallen snow at times. Companies have been formed and are quite profitable, hiring unskilled labor (and maybe even skilled labor, too) to walk the highways and byways of this nation to pick up others' trash, and charge the government - city, county, state, federal - for the services. Local governments such as cities or counties have their own readily-available work crews - those incarcerated for trivial reasons, yet sentenced to confinement at the taxpayers' expense nonetheless - out in the hot, hot summertime clearing out ditches of brush and vines. With that I agree wholeheartedly. Reminds me of "Cool Hand Luke", should be more, far more utilization of inmates across the board. What's wrong with a chain-gang, anyway? I know I'll get flack for that, so I say, bring it on.
Diverse means what, not-the-same-old, same old, does it not? From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), 1. Different; unlike; dissimilar; distinct; separate; 2. Capable of various forms; multiform.
I look around the Internet on a daily basis and find countless websites wherein folks are looking for diversity when they move. Tell it like it is, folks, why don't you? If you want to find a neighborhood that has both reaches of the wealth spectrum - lower income to higher income, just state as such. If you want to live among those folks who don't have a lot, so that you can feel better about yourself, say so. If you want to live in a gated community, where the riff-raff cannot easily get in, say so. If you want to live in an integrated neighborhood where most everyone is on equal footing, say so. Go for it. But please, give me a break!
If you want to go "green", please, do so, but don't beat me around my head and shoulders about what you want. I've got my own problems to deal with. If you want diversity, open your eyes, go find it for yourself, just don't talk my ear off about it. It's a wide-open world out there, all for your taking! Go live your life for yourself without taking any prisoners!
