Squeezin’ the Juice
by SVEA SAUER
Stop The World. I Want To Get Off.” The original play in New York presented life as a circus. I feel as if life has been a circus in the last few months: deaths in a West Virginia coal mine, tornadoes, floods, threats from abroad and at home, and now an oil spill of such tremendous proportions that, as I write this, oil is still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.
In October of 1938 a famous radio broadcast called the “War of the Worlds,” with Orson Welles, sent people into the streets in hysterics. They were loaded down with baggage and household goods crying that the Martians had descended on New Jersey and were fast approaching. There was complete chaos in the streets. No one knew where to go but all were going some place. This was truly a time when everyone wanted to get off the world.
Perhaps President Obama would like to get off the world now. There is no end to the disasters he is supposed to prevent. Having to face the knowledge that people in certain government agencies cannot be trusted, knowing the vast sums of bribery offered, not being able to trust financial leaders or oil executives, faced with endless greed in the market place, he is flying on a trapeze.
People waiting on the shore, watching their livelihoods evaporate are desperate. They are waiting for someone to do something to stop the horror of destruction, to save them from ruin. The oil that makes modern life possible has become their Martian.
They must sit through hours of watching television for news, hearing that soon they will know if the oil has been stopped, but no explanation satisfies them as time goes on. In the meantime, they know the oil has already reached the marshes.
The marshes are dying along with the loss of refuge for birds and all that lives in the sea, wherever the oil finds its way. We are desperate to punish those who are responsible. Yet our addiction feeds their greed.
Now is the time to take risks in alternate forms of energy. Even the most dyed-in-the-wool conservative can see that the nation must invest in the young people who are struggling to find funds for their inventions. It is time to face the truth: there is no way to stop the world and get off. Make your choice. Innovate or perish.
Whatever you invent, make sure it will make an automobile run.
Yesterday, I saw a picture of a turtle swimming in clear water. Keep that picture in mind.
