I have always had a love for the land, growing up in the woods in northern Minnesota was idillic. The smells and sights I recall are still vivid even 43 years later. The early morning sunshine on a frigid morning after an ice storm; the branches of the leaves would blind me with color and light. The smell of the damp autumn leaves we would play in. The northern lights I was so impressed with. I was honored at seeing these in full power at least once a winter.
So, it is not a far reach that after learning what was happeing to the earth, I felt needed to do something. I retired in 2024 so I have some time on my hands. We all know we were polluting the earth when I was young, but in our ignorance thought the earth could take care of the mess and clean itself as it has been doing for so long. The abundance of life in the northern woods also gave me a false feeling that everything was fine. Trees were considered to be weeds there were so many. What a difference living in a dry climate near a big city!
I have been torturing myself for several years over the earth dying, not being able to sleep at night, until I learned that by getting off my butt and doing something about the pollution actually made my fears more manageable. I could not look my grandsons in the eye and tell them I did nothing while the earth was burning.
I started looking around for a goup to join to offer up my time to help out, whatever they needed me for. I have been a member of Greenpeace for years. I did not find much I could do there, except for writing letters to voters at election time. I tried CCL, and there were a few people involved, although they did not seem to have anything concrete to work on. So, I looked at 350 Colorado. A lot going on in Boulder, but that is just too far for me to drive a couple of times a week. I needed something in Aurora.
I ran into Save the Aurora Reservoir, or STAR. I am doing a bit for them now, I got to meet with Jane Fonda this morning! The fracking they plan on doing under my house is disturbing to say the least.
I noticed a trend in all of the groups I have looked at. The members are all wonderful, caring people, and the groups are making a difference, but they should have a much louder voice. Why are they not all connected so when one group needs a huge group to stand up and shout, they can get it? We needed one place to pay attention to what everyone else is needing, and getting the word out.
So, with the help of a gracious CCL member, we created this website. My goal is to have 10,000 Coloradians signed up to receive 1 email a week. In that email will be 1 petition to sign. It should take 15 seconds to sign the petition online. There is more to the email of course, but that is what we need. 1 petition signed once a week. Working parents, people who just do not have the time to invest in doing more, outlying communities, people already involved in a group should love this, right?
So here I am. Working on getting more people to sign up. Besides that, right now I am working with STAR investigating getting some air quality monitoring devices up and running by the reservoir so that when they do start to frack, we can show what the air quality used to be. Saw Jane Fonda in person at a small meeting this morning. She is focusing on Suncor right now for Colorado. I am going to the Town of Erie tomorrow night to oppose fracking in their area, although they have been fracked already. The US is becoming the largest exporter of oil and gas in the world. At the expense of all of us. Our health and our pocketbooks as we are forced to clean up fracking messes after they leave their wells.
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