Lowell Bliss is the director of Eden Vigil and Care of Creation’s partner in environmental missions.  He’s appeared already in these pages as a guest blogger and has now agreed to be a regular contributor. Having spent fourteen years in India and Pakistan, Lowell, his wife Robynn, and three kids now reside in Manhattan, KS.

I know that YouTube is primarily used to apprise ourselves of this week’s media spectacle, but it’s also a wonderful tool for nostalgia.  Every once in a while, sitting at the computer, I announce to my family, “Classic Rock Night!”  The kids groan and the speakers play Creedence Clearwater Revival.   One day I went to YouTube in order to relive my childhood environmentalism.    When the world celebrated its first Earth Day in 1970, I was still in second grade.  YouTube allowed me to revisit the Ad Council PSA familiar to my generation of Saturday morning cartoon watchers.  I typed in “Crying Indian,” the name under which the ad is apparently archived in our collective memory, and watched the old chief paddle his canoe past a riverfront factory.  He beaches it on a littered shore and climbs an embankment alongside an eight-lane highway.   The narrator’s voice is deep and accusatory, “Some people have a deep abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country. “  We then see a bag of fast-food garbage flung out from a car window.  It splatters the Indian’s moccasins.  “And some people don’t.”    The camera then pans closely to his face and we see the famous tear.  “People start pollution; people can stop it.”

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