Drinking Mother Nature's Milk

Even though Earth Day is technically only celebrated on April 22nd, I've heard more about our planet over the past couple of weeks than any other point in my life time. There are numerous events going on in the St. Louis area that are geared towards cleaning up our environment. I, for one, am a proponent of this to an extent of anal-retentiveness. I always recycle anything I can, and will even bring home items from other places I visit that don't have recycling, such as cardboard boxes from work, bags of wine cooler bottles from my parent's home, or an unwanted newspaper out of the middle of a street. I cringe when I see recyclables thrown in the trash wherever I may be, and speaking of trash, I can't stand it when people litter. When I see a cigarette butt thrown out of a car window, I want to go pick it up and stick it in the cornea of the perpetrator. I have to have lights turned off, we use cloth grocery bags, the oven door needs to be open after we use it, I reuse water glasses and bottles several times, I reuse sandwich bags several times and then use them to clean up my dog's poop on walks, I may wear the same clothes or may not shower for several days during the summer, I sometimes wait two or three times before I flush the toilet....well, you get the idea. But I'm a hypocrite just like everyone else who wants to save the Earth. I don't ride my bike everywhere (actually, hardly anywhere), I eat pigs, I don't plant trees, I don't cool my food in the snow, I don't pee outside, and I don't take sponge baths. But one thing I'm especially proud of, is that I rarely buy new clothes any more. On any given day I'll take a pop quiz with myself and see where I got my pants and shirt and how much they cost me. A lot of the time it's from a thrift store or private sale and equals less than $5. I also have not grown to big for my clothes from the 90's. So as you probably well know, I couldn't let Earth Day pass me by without wearing second-hand vintage clothing. These vibrant, royal blue, Sears Kings Road polyester men's vintage pants complete the three amigos of my red and green ones from previous posts, and the JC Penney Ultressa men's vintage shirt is one of my favorite solid polyester disco shirts that fits me like a glossy glove. I wore this ensemble to a family Easter/Baptism/Birthday/Earth Day celebration in a small town in Illinois, population of about 50 people and one dairy farm right across the street from my sister and her family's house. I felt that with Earth Day approaching I needed to pay a visit to the cow farm. After all, farming is a pretty natural, Earth loving, un-corporate entity, right? We wish. Thank goodness this was not one of those farms where cows are crammed together like sardines and living on mud/feces slicks. The cows I visited weren't exactly roaming in open green fields, however, let alone the younger ones who were chained in over-sized dog houses. On one hand, I'm in love with milk. On the other hand, I don't love most farms and their methods any more. This is my dilemma, my yin and yang, my ebony and ivory, and happens to me in a lot of areas of my life. Do I buy the deeply discounted $10 shoes made by child labor in Bangladesh? Do I dry clean my favorite coat that smells like goat? Do I use weed killer, or get cited by my neighborhood association? I think my heart is in the right place though, or at least going in the right direction. It's kind of like when you were a kid and you made your mother breakfast and a card for Mother's Day and then screamed that you hated her in the afternoon. You still loved her. I dressed for Ma Nature that morning, and then selfishly drank her tainted, bastardized milk that afternoon. But I still love her.