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Show Eddie Albert Looks at Our Earth: “Why I’m Mad, How I Fight Back”, ssie sine: “Our priority today, as I seeit, is not just conservation but survival. Not the moon or Mars or even Vietnam, but keeping ourselvesalive” I don’t think of myself as the angry sort. It takes a lot of pushing to get me worked up. But lately, it seems each morning I wake up there's a piece of news more unsettling than yesterday’s. It gives me the panicky sensation of a man trapped in his house and watching it cracking and falling down around him. I don’t like it. In fact, I'm sick to death of feeling helpless! That’s why last year after shooting “Green Acres”for three days a week, I hauled myself off to 20 cities, traveled 100,000 miles, talked to countless business and social organizations and had 60 interviews with major newspapers to alert just about anybody who'dlisten, In my small way, like most people, I've always been very involved in protecting the environment. Even way back as a boy growing up in Minnesota, I joined a Boy Scout conservationist movement. How I used to love to watch birds! And then, on cool summer nights after soda-jerking till one, I would walk home, listening to whippoorwills calling and owls hooting. You don’t forget those things. But it wasn’t until last year, when I I went out with Dr. Robert Riseborough, a Berkeley molecular geologist friend of mine, to Anacapa Island, up near Santa Barbara, that I began ‘o feel the urgency, the desperation of it all. I guess that’s whenI got’ mad, really fighting mad. Wesailed out there to watch the pelicans nesting. The sea was serene, and above there was the palest of sky blues. We climbed the bluff to where the pelicans have flown since time began. There were thousands of nests in a rookery that ordinarily produces more than 10,000 chicks every spring. What an awful sight it was! The eggs were there, but they were all collapsed. Ten thousand and more of them! The shells were thin, broken, running: they wouldn’t hold. What had happened was that fish had consumed the DDT Only two pelican eggs maue it there last spring. Two! Out of all those thousands and thousands. What I saw that day is happening not only to the pelicans but also to cormorant eggs, seagull eggs; it’s happening to the osprey, the petrel and on land to peregrine falcons and eagles, hawks . . . I could go on. And whatit all spells out is extinction. The end of that blows quite gently out from the farms, ranches andfields all over Western America and downinto the Pacific. the line. Horrifying? Yes. Our priority today, as I see it, is not just conservation but The birds in their turn had been feed- survival. Not the moon or Mars or even ing on those fish. Those weak-shelled eggs with their dead and rotting embryos were the result of the upset to the calcium metabolism of the mother bird. And when she sat on her eggs, the eggs simply couldn’t support her weight. Vietnam but keeping ourselves alive. Which means keeping the world around us alive, too. Am I being too hysterical? I don’t think so. I am convinced the human race is in real danger. How can you Want to Make Your Own Contribution to Ecology? Try Organic Gardening As a Hobby For somereason, store-bought corn never tastes the way fresh-picked corn does—and fresh-picked nevertastes so good as when it’s grown by a completely natural process, without the aid ofartificial fertilizer and chemicals. This is one of the reasons I’ve taken up organic gardening as a hobby. Not only doesit give me a chance to get outside and feel “close to nature,” it is also something that my family and I can do together. Organic gardening is a time-consuming—but rewarding—activity. Once a compost heap is concocted you have to wait until it is ready: You have to turn the soil, and you see and smell and feel how it becomes increasingly alive, and you have to wait. In some way the waiting adds to the eventual excitement of planting your seeds. The sun has to warm the seeds. The rain has to freshen the earth. You have to turn the soil, and you have to wait until the compost is ready. But, to me, it’s worth it. Have you ever sat down to dinner knowing that when you finish your soup you can runto the vegetable garden, snap the succulent corn from its stalk, rush in, peel back the spring-green husks and delicate corn silk and fling the object of beauty into the waiting, bubbling kettle? Have you ever waited the three or four minutes thatit takes to bring it to perfection— tender, yet crisp—then taken it out of the water, put it on a hot plate and brought it steaming to your table? What ridiculous joy and pride one feels upon hearing the ooo’s and aaah’s and slurps of the assembled company as they take the first crunchy bite, and their mouths are invaded by the delicious juices of corn-on-the-cob thai is not only in season but was picked six minutes before! One of the deeply important events of my life was mecting Dr. Albert Schweitzer at Lamberene. I spent days and evenings with him and was moved at finding that his phrase, “reverence forlife,” was not just words he put together very well, but was, in fact, a concept whichillumined every minute of his day and night. He respected thelittle stream of ants that traveled across the papers on his desk, and he considered a garden a miracle. When I saw mywife creating an arrangement for our table from the zucchini, carrots, cauliflower and par‘sley from our garden, I remembered the phrase “reverence for life.” The beauty of the form and color of the fruits of the earth, which are ours every day, struck me as a blessing we take too much forgranted. Myorganic garden has not only been sourceof delicious, healthful eating for my family and me, but a joy and aninspiration. Try it! It may be the most fun you've ever had. —Eddie Albert “In my small way, I've always been involved in protecting the environment. But it wasn't until last year that | began to see the urgency.” |