To use an already over-used phrase, Hoppy Easter!
OK, that's enough of that. But I thought the wonderful "egg tree" deserved another go-around this year. What are you all doing with your long weekend? For me, not having been raised Christian, Easter has only ever really meant a chocolate-egg hunt inside the house, and the delight of spring beginning, with plants starting to poke out of the ground, and trees in bud. The egg-hunt tradition lapsed when Mat and I left home (although we haven't really left, since we keep rooms there filled with stuff, and go back whenever we can), but the delight at spring will always be associated with Easter, for me.
Good news: the latest Vanity Fair (a sort of Bible for popular culture in the United States and its, er, colonies of culture) is the "green" issue, with George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Al Gore and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the cover. Inside are beautiful photographs by the likes of Lord Snowdon, Brigitte Lacombe, and Annie Leibowitz of all sorts of eco-types who are doing good things for the earth. Ever-savvy, the magazine is of course timed for Earth Day (coincidentally, my birthday as well, April 22), and comes after decades of "counter-culture" shouting of the same variety, but I'm not one to complain about "better late than never". Climate change, or whatever you want to call it, is something I've long been convinced is happening, and the reluctance of many to do anything about it is frustrating, to say the least. So, the more coverage it gets, the better, because that means more people are talking about it.
Mind you, solutions to such a huge problem are both myriad and hard to define, since local efforts do affect the global scheme, but effectiveness is a little difficult to measure. Hence, "environmental guilt", which might be a term already coined, but which affects me every day. The feeling that I could, should be doing more to change my lifestyle, to stop my dependance on huge power grids and damaging behaviours such as strip-mining or river-damming. I have a feeling, living in the time I do, this guilt will never go away completely. What matters is that you do something, anything at all. Waking up is the first step. So, huzzah for Vanity Fair, and huzzah for the little things like hanging clothes on the line, taking classes to educate yourself, and not being afraid to stand out from the crowd for what you believe in. (Just don't wear socks with Birks!)
Now, someone tell me, where do you shop for eco-friendly yet still stylish clothes these days, within the budget of a student?
And speaking of being a student, I have two exams to study for. Happy Easter!
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