Not giving up

Tourism trade impacted.

Collapse of fishing industry.

Environmental disaster.

Extinction level event.

I'm no more optimistic now than when I wrote my blog entry on May 2 that the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has a solution, or that it ain't as bad as we all thought. From all the chatter I heard on KBOO and NPR this week, it is precisely as bad as I read and imagined, and then some.

The difference is that now I feeling less "sucker-punched" than I was, and I am not ready to give up on all efforts and hope to fight for Earth.

Friends Tyler and Karly and Ink all recently visited our family. It was a pleasure to see them and to touch base with these like-minded individuals. In an email to me about my feelings of despair and of wanting to give up, Tyler's words were helpful in restoring the strength to keep speaking up for our planet. He said, in part,

"I am just one red blood cell in a body so large I can't even understand the way the whole thing works, but I will continue to serve the larger body until I'm suffocated or dried up by the shutting down of the body's pump. As long as I am still able to take in food and oxygen this community of life is not so dead that it can't provide for my needs and I am not so dead that I can't do my best to provide for the needs of the community of life which is still alive enough to feed me what I need to survive.

When I can no longer breathe the air, that is when I will know it's too late. Until then, even if the majority of the Earth turns to moonscape I will cling to and fight for my little corner of the community of life in hopes of preserving it and encouraging her spread."

As long as we have breath to draw, fight for life.