It all began 38 years ago, and look where we’ve come.

Back in 1970, I was a college freshman in North Carolina, and I don’t recall any big events. Unless I got it confused with a peace march.

But in 1990, I wrote a 20-year retrospective for the Inquirer. People recalled how flower children gathered on the steps of the Art Museum and played “This Land is Your Land” on kazoos. They frolicked up East River Drive. They wore gas masks and carried signs: “To breathe or not to breathe.” Ian McHarg bellowed into the microphone, “You have no future.” Allen Ginsberg chanted, “Merrily, merrily, we welcome, we welcome the end of the earth.” It must have been wild!

Nothing like that this year. The air’s cleaner. The water’s cleaner. The Cuyahoga isn’t burning.  We have catalytic converters, energy-efficient appliances, Priuses and more. We have the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act.

And yet, we also have the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issuing dire warnings about global warming and carbon dioxide. And yet, we have mercury in our fish and concerns about bisphenol A in our baby bottles. 

So we still haven’t come up with all the answers, have we?

Seems like this year you can hardly toss a clod of good brown earth without hitting an Earth Day event.  My inbox has all but crashed several times with an influx of info.  Schools are holding programs, companies are heralding their newly-green buildings and policies, solar installations are being dedicated. The Philadelphia headquarters of SCA, a paper products company, is donating 1,700 copies of the book, “Earth Day – Hooray” to elementary schools across Philadelphia.  Cherry Hill Township is holding a “GoNeutral Boot Camp.”  Merrily, merrily we take another load to the recycling bin.

But my inbox is also crammed with marketing pitches, as if Earth Day is just one more shopping opportunity. “It’s Earth Day! Won’t you write about our (fill in blank with consumer item of your choice).”  We all need things. We all buy things. But somehow, the sheer deluge has saddened me.

Today, I’ll be voting in the Pennsylvania primary, of course.  I thought about telecommuting to work, but I really should be there. Phooey. When I come home, though, the evening will be warm and lovely.  I’ll garden for a bit (weed and water the peas, most likely), let the chickens out for a bug snack in the grass, and sit on the front porch.  A robin insists on building a nest on a ledge near the ceiling, so we need to work out how to coexist. The moon is just past full. The toads in a nearby pond have started to sing. A spice bush in the front yard casts its heady scent into the wind.

All in all, a pretty good earth to protect.