I'm not quite old as dirt, but I remember the very first Earth Day. On April 22, 1970 the day was celebrated as a call to action, a challenge to change. Back then the double-C words hadn't really entered our consciousness, the situation was drastic but not dire.

Problems like pollution and overpopulation loomed large but not without solutions. The mood was purposeful yet hopeful. Now in the face of climate change, and all that entails, including huge unknowns; the concept of Earth Day seems so sweet and quaint and almost antiquated.

The issues today are complicated and intricately interconnected. It's hard not to feel that any effort is futile. When the issues include food and water scarcities, epidemics, energy shortages, economic uncertainty, erratic weather, wars, etc, etc; swapping out light bulbs seems like just so much spitting in the wind.

Overwhelmed with it all, I plant a garden. I try to provide food and shelter for the birds and insects that will in turn feed bigger things. And then I hope others do the same forming a survival corridor through the land.

I try to live smaller, I try to live mindfully. But it never seems enough.

In 1970 I was an eighth-grade student on the school newspaper staff. Our advisor was Minnie Surles. Once upon a time she wrote a column called Minnie's-Ha-Ha's. Now that I live near Minnehaha Creek, I often think of her.

I remember that as we put the April 1970 issue of The Road Runner to bed, we had some space left on one page. Mrs. Surles told me to add a filler, so I inserted a few words into a little box at the bottom of the page. It read: "Make Every Day Earth Day".

If only we could.