Every dog has his day, the saying goes. Turns out, so does every turtle. Join all those turtle, tortoise and terrapin lovers for World Turtle Day on May 23. This holiday may not be widely known, though it is in the category of those observances that do not appear on wall calendars. And, I would say WTD is even more fun than “Talk Like A Pirate Day (Sept. 19).
As a former Box Turtle owner and admirer of the long-lived, house-toting reptiles, it was fun to see a global holiday just for turtles. I have a t-shirt for the occasion with a sea turtle design that was printed a number of years ago at St. Agnes Academy when my wife taught there. The logo is actually part of a design celebrating Earth Day. I think that the April 22 holiday, started in 1970, syncs well with WTD and other environmental-themed dates — such as Nebraska’s own Arbor Day (April 30).
Every holiday serves to focus attention on a particular event, cause, movement or maybe just a product to advertise on local media. When you hear about a day in relation to the environment the message often rings with a call to action. On Arbor Day the emphasis is to plant a tree. Community litter cleanups pop up like tulips every spring in honor of Earth Day.
Considering the growth of Earth Day over more than a half century, that spring day has become a phenomenon encompassing everything we can do to “save the planet.” One article I read cited Earth Day as the largest secular (non-religious) annual holiday in the world, with more than one billion people in observance this year. A good source for numbers on how our planet is doing can be found at USAFacts (usafacts.org) under State of the Earth In Numbers. Their metrics are from government agencies 1895 to 2020.
Facts from reputable sources are fine to know where Earth stands today. How can we ensure the numbers will be improved in say . . . 15 years? In that time every Box Butte County student, next year’s pre-schoolers on up, will be an adult. This generation will have more information than their parents or grandparents on how fragile our planet really is and what decisions they can make about its fate.
My position at Keep Alliance Beautiful is not to educate youth, Education Coordinator Kari Bargen does a fine job of that in our area schools. I do have reason to visit a couple of our public schools on occasion as a father of two elementary school children. A peek into the future could be found on tables outside the office at Emerson School a couple weeks ago. Children showed their artistic talent through a colorful array of pieces constructed with recyclable materials found at home. For kindergartners a takeaway was recycling is fun. That attitude can be contagious enough for our youngest generation to double the number of people who embrace Earth Day by the time their children make their own Coke bottle towers or cereal box monsters.
For the rest of 2021, I encourage anyone who likes to celebrate the planet to check each month for environmental holidays. Other than WTD, we just passed International Migratory Bird Day this past Saturday with the bees getting their due on World Bee Day, May 20. I’ll see if I can spy both types of animals around town on Bike-to-Work Day, Friday, May 21.