My father was a pilot who flew off an aircraft carrier in the Pacific and fought in every naval air engagement from Midway Island to the Second Battle of the Philippine Sea, where the Japanese fleet was destroyed. Seventy five percent of his original squadron was lost in that effort. His skipper later published a book with photos taken from the cockpits of Corsairs, aerial pictures of torpedoed destroyers, Japanese carriers on fire, and American Hellcats flaming into the sea. Growing up my father rarely spoke of that time. Once or twice, though, with the power that only such an experience can bestow, he’d quietly talk about patriotism, about love of country.
Growing up during the eras of civil rights, Vietnam, the seemingly endless world population growth, and its effects on our environment, I’ve often wrestled with those words, patriotism and love of country, trying to understand better what they really mean.
Patriotism is certainly not love of a political candidate or even a president. If it were, few patriots my age would be left. It is not even the admiration for a political system. After all, as Churchill once quipped, “Democracy is the worst form of government… except all the others that have been tried.” Moreover, if it were simply loyalty to a form of government, how would one explain the love of Nelson Mandela for South Africa even while imprisoned for decades by his white oppressors?
Part of patriotism certainly is a love for your people. But in equal measure the word means a love of the land, of the place where you call home. It means a love for the fields, rivers, mountains, animals, seasons, the traditions they engender, all part of the place that is intimate to your life.
As such, perhaps one of the most powerful expressions of patriotism is to be willing to fight for the health of such a place, for clean water, clean air, for land that is not poisoned or degraded. We are, make no mistake, embroiled in such a fight in 2012. For forty years we have tolerated the gradual deterioration of our magnificent rivers and bay such that we have “dead zones” proliferating around us. All of us are inculpated in this catastrophe and all of us, at least those who wish to bear the mantle of patriot, must now take on the challenge of this fight.
Recently, a local non-profit, Environment Maryland, published a scientific study on chicken manure, demonstrating how it contains excess amounts of phosphorus which has been poisoning our soils. When a farmer fertilizes his corn with chicken waste, the report detailed, in order to provide the needed amount of nitrogen, he must put enough waste on his field that it leaves as much as four times more phosphorus in the ground than the crops can uptake. This excess phosphorus over the decades has saturated our soils and is polluting our rivers. The report raised the ire of certain segments of the agricultural community. A poultry industry representative called it a “misguided effort in an on-going series of attacks upon the Delmarva Peninsula’s chicken industry and farmers…”
Maryland farmers rightly point out that they have been doing a great deal to improve their agricultural practices so as to reduce pollution. We are all grateful for this and commend them for this effort. But many of our eastern shore rivers, above the tidal influence, watersheds surrounded by agriculture, continue to become more polluted. The better response to the Environment Maryland research paper might have been to acknowledge its conclusions, and to appreciate and articulate that ways must be found to better manage the 500,000 tons of chicken waste that is spread on Maryland fields each year.
Agriculture is only one piece of the equation of course. There are those among us who want to block septic reform, who insist on the “freedom” to over-fertilize their lawns, and who don’t think we can “afford” to upgrade our waste water treatment plants.
For all of us who love this land the time is now to make our voices known, at home in the county in which we live, in Annapolis and Baltimore, and in Washington DC. Let us engage in this vitally important fight with the same courage and intensity that our parents displayed a generation ago and that our men and women in uniform display today. Let us all reflect on the spirit of sacrifice that true patriotism requires. Be an advocate in the fight for clean water!
Timothy Junkin is the Executive Director of Midshore Riverkeeper Conservancy(midshoreriverkeeper.com)
.
steve hamblin says
Bravo Tim! Stay aggressive like my heroes at NRDC. Name names. Kick butt. Sue the Bastards! We’re with you. Steve
Bill Sylvester says
Now go back a page and read this.
Coming to Grips with Sewerage in Maryland by Jay A. Jacobs