November 2006

Notes from the Old Noank Jail

At the Water’s Edge by Ed Johnson

As we are now in the Thanksgiving season, it is appropriate to look around us and be thankful for what we have…at the moment. Walking down to a nearby beach late at night, looking up at a clear sky and feeling the crisp, cold air somehow gives me a feeling of “eternity” and that nothing I am seeing will ever change…and that somehow I will always be a part of it.

I’m snapped back to reality when reading comments in a school magazine, written by noted author and photographer Peter Beard. Much of his work has focused on Africa, specifically Kenya and the elephant population, for more than 35 years. Today, Beard describes how the Kenya he knew went from lush paradise to dusty, diseased landscape within one short lifetime. When he first visited the country (during the sixties), Beard met a vibrant culture of 5 million people. But with the decimation of the forests and the slaughter of elephants came a burgeoning population that swelled to 30 million. “I left an Africa overpopulated, riddled with corruption… We are not interested in the causes, just the band-aids. We are not interested in the problems, as there is no sustainable yield.”

I take comfort that Africa is far away, until I sit in our local Firehouse having dinner with some “old timers” who came from families that grew up on our waterfront years ago. One man suggests that the average normal ocean waterline (allowing for tides) has risen 6 inches along the Mystic River since the 1938 hurricane and that the melting ice caps are the primary reason. We joke that the Town Tax Assessor’s office would still refuse to give us a lower appraisal for living in such an “endangered area.” Another man remarks that there was a time when his ancestors were able to walk on the Mystic River winter ice from Noank to Ram Island between 1850 and 1900, but that the increased warmer winter temperatures would now make such a journey “extremely wet.”

Today there are many horror stories written and televised concerning the negative impact of mankind on the environment. We are to the point of being constantly barraged by reports of pollution, global warming, global dimming, melting ice caps and man-made cloud formations. More recently we read of statistics concerning the population increase in the United States, beginning with 100 Million people in 1918 and now at 300 Million people in 2006. The key ingredients appear to be the result of couples having more children and the immigration of more people, legal or otherwise. We now even read that we cannot properly sustain our life systems if this population continues to increase and we continue to abuse our own natural resources. Indeed, “eternity” is no longer a reality…we are now time limited. But is anyone really paying attention?

Perhaps it is not too late for us to reverse our self destructive trends. In a recent sermon, Dr. Paul Hayes of the Noank Baptist Church writes,” The climate of our times requires us to recognize the damage that is being done to our planet earth before the consequences are irreversible…and we have only our own shortsighted selfishness to blame for it.”

Dr. Hayes then goes on to give a specific, successful example of reclaiming the environment. “I grew up in Maine and vividly recall the images and smells of the raw sewage and chemical pollution downstream from many of the paper mills. Three main rivers were notorious for their pollution in the 1950s and 1960s…with brown water, grimy foam and debris. Fortunately, enough people had common sense to address the problems, educate the population, add filtration systems, reduce toxins and river pollution, with the result that Atlantic Salmon fishing has recently returned to the Penobscot River. In other words, Nature has a chance to reclaim that which is otherwise lost, and is God’s redemptive mercy for this world.”

Is there hope? Are we smart enough to save our own species, along with the others on this earth, for ultimate survival? And is it realistic for us to expect the people of this earth to stop having so many, many children, many of whom will end up driving so many, many cars? Surely, such a simple solution should not be too much to ask of any society with reasonable group intelligence. Of course not. And of course our governments want to protect us and do what is right for the greater good.

There, I feel better already, walking down to the beach. It’s a clear, cool night and once again I have that reassuring sense of “eternity.”

Of course, I do always feel more secure after my medication starts to kick in.