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[Originally uploaded in 2014 during the Polar Vortex hitting US. Remastered here November 11, 2015. These are my original production notes.]

While playful Kat's warming up outside in the cold distance, a wild Kat did growl: This prose poem was written in a rush of despair the morning of the autumnal equinox, September 23, 2010, after hearing a weather report the temperature could reach 100-degrees in the Louisville, KY, metro area that day. It is an Owed to Earth screed about unbridled greed, my enviro-rant venting rage over the decades of senseless waste now creating great haste (if not too late already). It's a bitter pill prescribed without sugar coating for parents and those planning ever to parent.

If you are not as responsible a steward of this planet as you can be, get real and ponder: Why is it you sacrifice less toward the future your offspring will inherit than do citizens without any lineage to inhabit a damaged Earth? At least consider what is Owed the Children and why it is that a childless couple cares more what your great-grandkids will be forced to endure decades from now than you do. Also, it's long past high time to start calling some of us so-called '70s "pessimists" by our true identities: REALISTS. [c.f. first post of Getting Real here: kat330.tumblr.com/post/3242598956/getting-real ]
And for further evidence why we must remain stewards of this beautiful globe, see these great animal portraits here:
www.flickr.com/photos/84307396@N00/albums/72157660985981162

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Okay, all right. Gotta admit, you got us good. I'm talking to YOU, the loud, materialistic majority who smirk at us bent on our bicycles or cramped in our compact cars as you cruise around in your roomy, gas-guzzling SUVs and minivans. Who scoff at all the extra time and effort we take to recycle and compost over the decades, while YOU fill the ground with your mounds of trash. YOU, who luxuriate in your long hot baths and chuckle at us shivering in our stream-off-as-soaping showers. YOU, who fill up your swimming pools and hot tubs with utility rate breaks, while we use collected rainwater on our locavore gardens. YOU who sneer at the "eyesore" of clothes hanging to dry on lines while running your washer and dryer for that one pair of jeans you just gotta wear tonight. I could continue ad nauseum with this laundry list of compare and contrast, but you get my drift.

So now, when it's 100 degrees on the first day of autumn, and natural disaster after natural disaster follow upon the heels of man-made disaster after man-made disaster, you get to gloat about us all winding up together in the same oil-filled boat after all. You can smile smugly to yourselves and think, "Tree-hugging suckers! At least WE really lived it up and enjoyed the spoils of the planet before we spoiled it for everyone! Ha-ha! You took all that extra effort and you sacrificed creature comforts for decades yet, in the end, you won't suffer any less from our selfishness just because of your responsible behavior. Nah, you just bought us all a little more time to party on. And besides, we'll just crank up the A/C even higher and go take a dip!"

But here's a truly sobering thought for consumerists who have done little-to-nothing as stewards of this great Earth: If not your children, then your children's children, and whatever generations may survive beyond that, all still alive will curse you and your lethal legacy left to them with every labored breath they try to take. And the band plays on, with Nero on first violin...

[Please, if you can, translate to other languages and pass along this SOS]

credits

from Words Over Music (spoken word tracks), released August 18, 2015
Artwork design by JT Lindroos. Background music mash-up of Nearer My God to Thee + And the Band Played On

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Kathleen Martin Finland

For music fans who think outside the boxy confines of genre labels, find here my original work arranged for and performed on a variety of instruments for sounds ranging from sweet to sassy and reedy to brassy; from lofty to lowdown and soulful to hoedown; from serious to silly and urban to hillbilly. I urge you to click on my production notes/lyrics before or as you push play. ☼♥ ... more

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