That post below about my elementary school experiences triggered a few more memories which are about as blogworthy as anything else that I record here.
My final elementary school was big into assemblies. Most every school-wide assembly had a little stereo playing Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" as the various classes trickled in. At the beginning of the school year, we'd have a little chant, saying the school name over and over with the principal's motto, "Learning Safety and Dignity" sprinkled in, sometimes with the boys and girls singing one part or the other. Even at that age, it struck us as cultish, and some of us would sing it as though we were polynesian islanders preparing to sacrifice a virgin Western woman to a volcano.
One day, we had an Earth Day assembly. It had similarly odd chants and songs. One, which caused much jollity on the four square court for months afterward, ran "Earth Day! Earth Day! There is No Away!" The phrase "no away" is probably some sort of pedantic mock-profundity caused by meditating on the phrase "throw it away." Similar to "square" being a hipster insult for those who aren't well-rounded.
That night, I believe, one of the networks ran an "Edutainment" special on the environment featuring the network's star cast. Mother Earth, dressed like a refugee from a Renaissance Festival gone horribly wrong, stumbled into Doogie Howser's hospital. She was placed on the operating table and Doogie played Doctor Exposition, noting everything that was wrong with her(or is it Her?), each diagnosis of one problem gave rise to a ten-minute speech from some actor. I don't remember too much about it. I think there was an appearance from one of those forgotten SeaQuest actors. I do remember that Fred Savage from the Wonder Years gave a little spiel telling us how recycling one pop can would save enough energy to run a television for three whole hours! I still have no idea if that is true or not. This was around the time McDonalds phased out its styrofoam containers. About the only "environmentally friendly" thing it inspired me personally to do was to shut off every light that wasn't in use scrupulously. I continue the practice to this day, but now it's more out of stinginess than anything else. It's my one pinch of incense economically burned to the demigod Efficiency.
Anyway, I read Orwell soon after elementary school, and saw the 1984 movie on Bravo. Being a master of making connections, I reasoned: Big Brother appears on Television Screens to make people follow his political programs. Environmentalists appear on Television screens to make people follow their political programs. Therefore, Environmentalists are like Big Brother!
Good old paranoiac illogic. How the Birchers missed recruiting me, I don't know.
Anyway, it wasn't helped when I saw Ted Turner speak at a conference at CU-Boulder during my junior high years, and noticed the vast herd of people applauding him, especially when he bashed Catholics. Turner did not share my matrix of beliefs, but he shared my juvenile illogic, reasoning that since the local church changed her teaching on abstaining from meat on Fridays, it should do so on abortion as well. The herd of Boudlerites who gave him a standing ovation for that half-thought brought memories of that Two Minute Hate to the mind of a new adolescent. It also sparked intimations that Catholics were enemies of the powers that be, and thus the good guys. If I end up a saint, blame Ted Turner. Or thank him.
Turner started putting out his Captain Planet Enviro-agitprop around that time, and I noticed all the raised fists put up by the heros of that cartoon. Proof that Orwell makes you a paranoiac who sees crypto-fascism everywhere. (Orwell can also make one humorless. Witness Christopher Hitchens.)
Thomas Frank should have included Stan Slaughter, Eco-Troubadour, in his book What's Wrong with Kansas. That link doesn't go to Amazon, but to Stan himself, full of the unintentionally funny emotivist moralizing that is only permitted, aside from the mixed company of governmental and corporate fora, in the company of children. He also has a song guaranteed to give some poor kid nightmares about toxic waste, "Don't let the Goo get You." I can't find the "There is no Away" chant, though perhaps that song is one of the things that shouldn't be recollected until the eschaton.
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