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I love Earth Day.
My dad was a teenager in 1968. That was a rough year. He told me stories about the Tet Offensive. MLK and Bobby Kennedy. The Civil Rights Act. A nation in chaos. Then he’d grin and say: “But hey, that was the same messy year that Apollo 8 carried three astronauts beyond the arms of Mother Earth’s orbit for the first time. Think of that, kiddo. We went to the moon!" Those three brave travelers were Jim Lovell, Frank Borman, and William Anders. On December 24, 1968, they made their fourth orbit around the moon. The first humans to see the dark side of our billion-year-old neighbor. Put yourself in their space shoes. The moon blocked out the universe like a black hole. They lost starlight. Lost communication with Earth. Gliding through deeper darkness and silence than anyone in history has ever experienced. Frank Borman said, “The moon is a vast, lonely, expanse of nothing.” Jim Lovell added, “Space is black. Black. Ink black.” Now imagine emerging from that blackness... and over the dark rim of the moon, the earth rises like a blue and green sun. As they cleared the moon, they saw Earth suspended in the starry infinity. Half in light, half in shadow. In all that colorless void, one circle of life: us. Jim said, “The Earth is a grand oasis in the big vastness of space." Anders grabbed the camera, and swapped the black and white film for color. In 1/250th of a second, he snapped an image that changed our civilization. The photo was named “Earthrise.” Humans had never seen Earth so honestly and objectively isolated in space. That photo tilted our consciousness. Scientists called it the “Overview Effect” because that view changes how you see Earth (and yourself). Some said it showed how insignificant we were. Others said it proved how precious we were. I side with the latter. I think anyone with a kid might lean the same way. That photo inspired the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. 20 million Americans marched to celebrate our planet. That was 10% of the population! When was the last time 10% of the nation rallied for one cause? But they did more than celebrate. They demanded clean air, clean water, and protected lands. They were so loud that the government had to shut up and listen. That photo, that momentum, that unified voice gave birth to the environmental movement and the Environmental Protection Agency. I love that story. I love that photo. I don’t know if there’s any image that could unite us today like “Earthrise” did. Consumerism, technology, and social media have created a dark side of the moon right here on earth. But maybe. Maybe we can reach the other side. Maybe we can come through and see, on the rim of all these distractions, something real: the earth rising. Maybe our consciousness will tilt again, and we’ll gather again, and march again, and protect our home again. Mark your calendars. Earth Day is next Wednesday, April 22, 2026. 
"Earthrise." December 24, 1968,
Comments 
Media Jean: There’s a photo of earth on your living room. Is that “Earthrise”? 
Chip: Yeah. Every Christmas Eve, we stand in front of the photo and read the first 10 verses from the book of Genesis. That’s what the Apollo 8 astronauts did on their Christmas Eve broadcast from space way back on December 24, 1968.
Media Jean: That’s kind of a funny tradition.
Chip: Dad likes how God kept looking at Earth, and kept saying that Earth is good.
Media Jean: Well, duh.
Chip: Ha ha. God says, “Earth is good” and you say “duh”?
Media Jean: Ha ha. Maybe that can be our Earth Day T-Shirt. A picture of Earthrise and the words, “Earth Day. Duh.”
Chip: Ha ha. It is super obvious. I mean, Earth is our home, and we’re not taking very good care of it.
Media Jean: We could do a series of Earth day posters too. Like, “Earth Day. Clean Water. Duh.”
Chip: “Earth Day. Clean Air. Duh.”
Media Jean: “Earth Day. Plant Trees. Duh.” 
Johnny: This is a great idea!
Media Jean: Look who’s here. The Lurker.
Johnny: Monitoring is not the same as lurking, okay? Let’s focus on these posters and t-shirts. Causes like environmentalism, they’re a goldmine!
Media Jean: “Earth Day. Buy Less. Duh.”
Johnny: Hey!
Chip: “Earth Day. Reduce and Reuse. Duh.”
Johnny: Stop that!
Media Jean: “Earth Day. Save, Don’t Spend. Duh.”
Johnny: That’s sacrilege! We’re capitalists!
Chip: “Earth Day. Go Small. Duh.”
Johnny: How dare you insult consumer culter!
Media Jean: “Earth Day. Log Off and Go for a Walk. Duh.”
Johnny: Fine! If you’re going to be like that, I’m leaving! Just throw away another money-making idea! Go ahead, see if I care!
Media Jean: Did he log off?
Chip: No, he’s still on the network.
Media Jean: This one’s just for you, Johnny. “Earth Day. Cut CEO Salaries. Duh.”
Johnny: ARRGGHH!
Chip: Yup. Now he’s logged out.
Media Jean: Ha ha. Are all capitalists so touchy? Hey, I just looked it up on EarthDay.com. The 2026 theme is “Our Power, Our Planet.”
Chip: I'm on the website now. They have a manifesto!
Media Jean: And they have activities!
Chip: I bet my dad has all kinds of ways to get involved.
Media Jean: I’m on my way over!
I keep trying to tell my life’s story here. But looking back over these pages, I don’t see a lot of story. I see a lot of life, but not much story.
I’ve been too distracted by Today to give Yesterday its due. I suppose it’s just the age-old puzzle: how do you do something with your life while you're also living it? That was certainly my dad’s dilemma. As a kid, he dreamed of being an ornithological painter like Audubon. He filled notebooks with awkward pencil sketches of every bird in town. He sometimes used grass and flowers and berries and dirt for paint. The faded pictures have a strange beauty even now, like smudged portraits by Mother Nature herself. Dad gave all that up when he discovered engines. He found mechanical beauty under the hood that almost rivaled anything he saw in nature—and it paid a lot better. So he put down the paintbrush and picked up the socket wrench. Yet, as always happens with our passions, he never forgot. Something inside him held onto the brush, year after year. And one day, not long after I was born, he started painting again. Not birds this time, but landscapes. His hero was the 19th-century painter Thomas Moran. Dad wanted to travel around the country like Moran and paint those landscapes he felt were too big for a camera. Don’t get me wrong. Dad stood in awe of the national park photos of Ansel Adams. “I love to look through his eyes,” Dad told Mom. “He shows me the land’s secrets. He shows me what it is. But only paint can show me how it feels.” I have all 24 of dad’s landscapes. Most are small oils, 2’ by 2’ or 2’ by 4’. But one life-changing May, while mom and I hiked around Yosemite Valley, dad spent ten days in camp, trying to capture Half Dome on a 10’ wide by 12’ tall canvas. He could see it right there, through a gap in the trees. Right there, close enough to touch. But he couldn’t capture the feeling, not to his satisfaction. How could he, with so little practice? He grew so frustrated that he threw the brushes into the campfire that night. The next morning, he was back at the canvas again, but this time armed only with a palette knife. That's all he had left. Mom and I woke to a gentle scraping sound. We climbed out of our sleeping bags and just stood in the pre-dawn light, watching dad push long streaks of gray and white and light blue across the canvas until the paint looked like liquid rock, until dad was, for that moment, not painting Half Dome but creating Half Dome. As the sun rose, as the warm colors climbed that rock, dad stepped away from the canvas. Like a man in a daze, he stepped back... until he bumped into mom. And this I remember, because a son always remembers when he sees his dad cry. I remember tears streaming down his unshaven face. I remember his eyes, never closing, wide, wet shining eyes, staring not at the thing itself, not at Half Dome illuminated in the new day’s sun, but at his Half Dome, Half Dome in the pre-dawn cool, Half Dome Dreaming. He touched, for one moment, who he might have been in another life. From that day on, Dad painted every chance he got, which really only amounted to a few hours on the weekends. He never found his way back to that transcendent moment, not even when we visited Yosemite the following year, but then most artists rarely do. How many times did Bob Dylan make it farther down Highway 61? There were so many transcendent moments (Tangled Up In Blue, Shelter from the Storm, Sara, Series of Dreams)—but no one lives that free or true or connected the time. I think Dad was, in the end, happy with his paintings. But there was always that ache, that question: Could I have been ...? But to follow that question to an answer, he would have had to discount everything that came before, including my mom and me. And he would never do that. Several of his paintings hang in my office. Most look like a beginner’s passionate attempts at something great, like a middle-aged man writing his first love poems. But one painting, the one I call Half Dome Dreaming, hangs alone on the wall opposite my desk. I stare at it every day, and I wonder about my own life. My own unfulfilled dreams. What transcendences am I searching for? What dreams still walk through the marrow of my bones, urging me to move? Comments
Media Jean: Are all grown ups so confused?
Chip: What do you mean?
Media Jean: Your dad has so many dreams! He wants to live in the wild like Thoreau, walk across national parks with just a loaf of bread in his pocket like John Muir, write his great American novel--
Chip: He calls it his “small humble version of Moby Dick.”
Media Jean: Right. And that’s just for starters!
Chip: That’s true. He’s full of big dreams.
Media Jean: He wants to be an architect who designs low cost, zero-carbon-footprint houses.
Chip: He wants to be a folk singer, a little like Bob Dylan and a lot like Woody Guthrie.
Media Jean: Ha ha! Remember when we recorded him singing in the shower?
Chip: And it went viral, too. Good thing he doesn’t watch YouTube.
Media Jean: He wants to be an adventurer, the kind of guy who climbs Everest, visits rain forests, and follows in the steps of Darwin.
Chip: He still dreams about living a life of service. Helping Habitat for Humanity build houses, traveling with Doctors Without Borders.
Media Jean: Those are all great dreams. But shouldn’t he separate the reality dreams from the fantasy dreams.
Chip: What’s the difference?
Media Jean: For example, I dream of traveling to another planet. For now at least, that’s a fantasy dream. Unless bioengineering makes me immortal and we Star Trek beyond the speed of light, I’m not going anywhere. That’s a good dream, but it’s a fantasy dream.
Chip: Like my Jurassic Park dream of cloning a real T-Rex.
Media Jean: Right! You could spend your whole life longing for that dream, but it’s never going to happen in your lifetime. It’s a fantasy dream. On the other hand, my dream of becoming a digital artist, someone who uses pixels the way Van Gogh used paint, that’s a reality dream.
Chip: Like my dream of creating the first honest-to-goodness artificial intelligence. Not like Chat, but a real AI lifeform that’s different from us, not just more like us.
Media Jean: Exactly! That’s a reality dream. You could make that happen in your lifetime.
Chip: So ... you’re saying my dad has too many fantasy dreams?
Media Jean: I’m not saying he can’t fulfill any of his dreams. They’re all doable. But there’s no way he can fulfill them all, not with the time he has left. That means some of his dreams are fantasies.
Chip: I suppose that’s true. A folk-singing bio-architect-activist working on a small but still great American novel does seem kinda unlikely.
Media Jean: He has to pick one, two at most. He has to work within the time he has.
Chip: Or ... get more time.
Media Jean: What do you mean?
Chip: Remember when we took all the junk food out of the house?
Media Jean: I forgot about that! Increase your dad’s natural lifespan in the hopes that he’ll live long enough for science to step in!
Chip: Right! His generation may be the last to live less than 150 years. I feel pretty confident that you and I can expect at least 150 or more.
Media Jean: OK, so what’s the lifespan of the average American male today?
Chip: I just looked it up. Depending on the study, 76.5 years.
Media Jean: That puts his death around the year 2060.
Chip: Right. But if, through heathy eating and exercise, we can extend that to 105...
Media Jean: That puts him at 2090!
Chip: And if we extend his life to, say, 140?
Media Jean: He’ll be alive in the 22nd century!
Chip: That’s only one century short of Star Trek!
Media Jean: Anything can happen by then!
Chip: Nanobots resetting biological clocks!
Media Jean: Neural mapping to download your consciousness into cloned bodies!
Chip: Even simple DNA-repairing technologies could add a hundred years to my dad’s life!
Media Jean: So we’re back to where we started. We have to get your dad healthy, fast. He needs to live to at least 140!
Chip: Right! To the 23rd century and beyond!
Media Jean: Ha ha! All our problems seem solvable now, even Death.
Chip: Sure! In the future, everything will be possible.
Media Jean: I love tomorrow.
Chip: Me, too. There’s so much to look forward to.
Media Jean: Well, I better get to bed. I’ve got a lot to do tomorrow.
Chip: Me, too. See you in the future, Media Jean.
Media Jean: See you in the future, Chip. 
Comic strip from the series "Earth Backup"
(Kid, Inc. Volume 2: The Batcave of Childhood) Have a thought for Bob? Write to us at [email protected] |
AuthorHey, I'm Bob, and I hate technology. So why am I blogging? Because I love my son. He upgraded my typewriter to wirelessly post every keystroke online. It makes him happy, so here I am. Archives
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