The traveling travesty
This week in Utah, four thousand eared grebes crash landed in a Wal*Mart parking lot. They say that there was bad weather and that the birds were trying to make a night-time landing. In the vastness of night, the wet pavement looked like a lake. At 40 miles per hour, their glide would have been far more graceful had they hit water rather than asphalt.
It seems that this is just the price that we pay for paving over the world. Fifteen hundred dead and a couple thousand injured for what? There still aren't enough spaces for everyone rushing to finish their holiday shopping. We commemorate the arrival of the Messiah with imported plastic goods stamped "Made in China" at every day low prices. We cut down countless trees in our pine-pocalypse, and bedeck them with shiny silver strands of tinsel. 'Tis the season, after all. And a month later when the season has passed, we put them to the curb where the last shimmering bits draw the attention of animals and tangle in their guts.
As we approach the shortest day of the year, what we really need is more love. Something to get us through the cold dark despair of winter. We've forgotten how to love though, so we try to fill the void with consumption. We want more and we want it now. We build our holiday traditions on exploitation and death, but we ignore the real costs until they slap us in the face.
Until we're confronted with thousands of broken birds on pavement.
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It seems that this is just the price that we pay for paving over the world. Fifteen hundred dead and a couple thousand injured for what? There still aren't enough spaces for everyone rushing to finish their holiday shopping. We commemorate the arrival of the Messiah with imported plastic goods stamped "Made in China" at every day low prices. We cut down countless trees in our pine-pocalypse, and bedeck them with shiny silver strands of tinsel. 'Tis the season, after all. And a month later when the season has passed, we put them to the curb where the last shimmering bits draw the attention of animals and tangle in their guts.
As we approach the shortest day of the year, what we really need is more love. Something to get us through the cold dark despair of winter. We've forgotten how to love though, so we try to fill the void with consumption. We want more and we want it now. We build our holiday traditions on exploitation and death, but we ignore the real costs until they slap us in the face.
Until we're confronted with thousands of broken birds on pavement.
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