My final this semester in Physical Science was to plant seeds.

Like literally, after a four-week unit on sustainability I brought in soil, pots and seeds and had students dig in the dirt (many for the first time). Course, I also had students prepare and present reports on their solutions to climate change (Wave energy is my current favorite underutilized solution-invest now!), this year’s curriculum was heavy on the Wall-E concept that if we just get out of the way, nature will heal itself.

Jill Gregory came to class to talk about sustainability in NASCAR because that’s what it will take, getting out of our lanes (get the race reference?), understanding, innovating and working together for a solution. Jill has goals for NASCAR, believing that sustainability is not an us vs. them thing but a let’s-understand-each-other thing. She even convinced my liberal hippie ass to go to a NASCAR event (full disclosure, I really wanted to see Shaq who was DJing before the race).

I wish there was better news for mother earth but other than Biden’s plans (a zero-emission economy by 2050) which are great in theory, the good news is limited. But the NASCAR thing is encouraging, the idea of bike races and electric cars on the racetrack is encouraging, and students are recycling, The Day After Tomorrow might not come tomorrow and after the great winter of 2023, we might make it through a fire season without a fire (might is much different word than will).

Course, the solution is still a long way off but at least there are some good signs. The inconvenient truth (Jeez, enough with the movie references Walt), is that inconvenience is the truth. Right, like if we walked and biked instead of drove, if we stopped eating fast food and Door Dashing and Amazoning and quit watching instead of doing we would be in a much better place.

When you traverse that vast sociological landscape from Boyes Hot Springs to the high school, as I do every day on my trusty Schwinn cruiser, you see the great environmental divide of America  where the sustainable movement is working and where it isn’t. Guess where you see the Teslas and Solar Panels? Guess who has pulled out their lawns and planted bee environments? The Eastside gets it because they know that California gives a 12K rebate for solar panels on the roof and they have a 20k pot to pull from when they want to invest in photovoltaics and Tesla batteries. Plus, they have neighbors who are doing it and want to talk about sustainability and promote it.

But here in the Springs we are just trying to stay in the green month to month, sure we think about solar panels and Tesla batteries but we have other priorities like uh, eating.

But planting stuff helps because a plant is not a one and done deal. If you want to produce the award-winning heirloom tomatoes, like my friend Rob, you have to tend and study and be vigilant which is tough to do.

Which is why the class is digging in the dirt. I also have a number of unclaimed ceramic vessels from a collab with the Community Center which are sitting empty on a shelf and will look much better as flowerpots. Recycling takes many forms.

So build that planter box (one of my real-life Geometry projects), fill it with seeds and dirt and care and watch as the magic of life grows each day.

And yes, I did go to NASCAR and I did enjoy it and I think you might too. Try new things people, get outside your silo, make some new friends and realize that our time on this fragile green ball is very very short.