By Barb Hauge
We often think of the Irish as being a drunken, brawling lot. Violent exploits of the Irish Republican Army have not improved that image. Its Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we may die. Like most of us, the Irish do not take kindly to domination by the British and the IRA is their arm of rebellion. Hopefully, things will get better under Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Included in the mix of every hot war is religious intolerance and in Ireland the Catholics and Protestants have been hating one another for generations. The Irish have also not been allowed to self-govern, which is the right of all people. In its devil-take-it attitude the plight of the Irish is not unlike the plight of life on Planet Earth. In a world where internal combustion engines are heating up the atmosphere and endangering all life on Earth, we continue to careen madly down every artery of transportation, clogging them beyond belief.
We recently celebrated my 74th birthday at Lewistowns Music and Cowboy Poetry Gathering. We took the RV and attempted to sleep in Yogo Inns parking lot. Traffic was heavy and they were still hauling away uprooted trees and debris from the recent tornado. Around midnight I told my husband, Someone should have shot Henry Ford before he invented those damn vehicles, which was pretty stupid because without the damn vehicles we wouldnt be going any place. And thats the enigma. The world, as we know it, would pretty much shut down unless we can immediately convert to a non-pollutant source of energy.
That is the crux of the problem. If we are to save our host, Planet Earth, we must cease and desist from using all internal combustion engines. If we continue to use them Earth will, in the next 100 years, heat up as much as it has in the last 30,000 years and become too hot for most forms of life, including us. With temperatures soaring into the 100s, we have all been feeling this searing heat the portends our future.
Pollutants and all toxic emissions of every type must stop and this includes everything from factory emissions to that generated by nuclear plants and by war itself. Yet no one in official capacity or anywhere else is acting to end this syndrome of eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we shall surely die. If young Bush of the oil dynasty is elected U.S. President, it for sure wont end. The Bush fortune is tied to Texas Oil with all its affiliates around the globe.
There are wild and bawdy drinking songs too numerous to mention. One goes, We never stagger; we never fall. We sober up on wood alcohol and when our loyal scouts come in we sober them up on a bottle of gin, etc.
I much prefer the re-write we sang at Fort Assiniboines Farmers Union camp near Havre: Our voices are saying as we march on, lets live as brothers each arm in arm and make this World one home for all; then well have peace for great and small. American youth will go hand in hand with foreign brothers oer all the land till all men shall cooperate and security shall be ours!
We must stop acting like brainless lemmings on a wild rush to our own extinction. Please, do act now to save this world in which we live!
