Earth Day...

Yes- Earth Day has become a tool. Not only does it celebrate the awareness of our planet and its resources, it has become a major business and revenue income. To some, it is the way of life. To others, it may change the meaning of the special occasion. “This ridiculous perverted marketing has cheapened the concept of what is really green. It is tragic.” (Hayes qtd. in Kaufman) But as times rolls along, many occasions are used as a marketing tool. For example, the new years celebrations. A few hundred of years ago, I do not think that there would have been major sales at almost any store. I might have been a relaxing occasion for people back then. There probably were not as many stores back then. Most people were probably still farming to feed their families and money was probably still scarce. But as times rolls on, people start to evolve on how each occasions are handled.

Forty years ago when Earth Day first took off, it probably was meant to celebrate the awareness of our planet. But as time and technology changes, people probably wanted to celebrate this occasion with other things in mind. I remember back in elementary school, during earth day, we would help clean up around the school. I remember seeing earth day shirts and candy. To whatever the target population, items and marketing tools will be available. For children, does it not seem appropriate to have Earth Day candy available? Or color and cool t-shirts that the children would want to wear; or maybe convince mommy and daddy to buy them this item because it was Earth Day?

Because of the time that we live in and ideology of money, there will always be greed and opportunities that arise with each celebration. There is always a way to make money, no matter what the situation is, for good or for bad.

Hopefully everyone had a chance to enjoy the weather that we are having right now. I know I did. I had spent my past weekend walleye fishing on the mighty Mississippi River. I was having a blast catching fish of all kind and of all sizes. That was until I was interrupted by another fisherman.

First off, I was keeping some smaller saugers on my stringer for my supper fish fry. Saugers look almost like walleyes but differ slightly in their color and they have spotted spiny dorsal fins. Anyways, saugers average anywhere from 12-17 inches compared to the walleyes saugers are much smaller. On the Mississippi River, saugers have no size limit and walleyes have a 15 inches size limit. For both species of fish, you can keep 6 in total. Anyways, I was not catching much walleyes at all. Most of the fish that I was catching were saugers. So I decided to keep a few for dinner. The ones that I was keeping were 12-14 inches. They were indeed smaller but still legal to keep. When I was catching and stringing my fish, another fisherman was insulting me with his side commens to himself. He was an older, Caucasian male. He make remarks from “stupid chinks shooting everything that moves and that is why there are less deer to killing a Hmong, save a deer.” Yes, we shoot deer too and yes, we keep fish also. What is new? If the DNR does not think there are deer out there, why would they sell extra deer tags for $2 each? If I want to shoot and eat an extra deer and I do it legally, buying all the extra and correct tags, what is wrong? Don’t complain about how one race of people is the cause of the decline of deer population. Complain to the DNR about the over estimation of the deer population. But to insult me about the deer population and about keeping the smaller saugers, what can I say? Saugers do not get much bigger than the ones that I was keeping. I am a sportsman too, but I also like to enjoy my game for supper once in a while. After hearing him whine and complain to himself, I did not argue with the guy. I just told him, “Sir, if you have an issue, call up a warden and we can chat with him about it.” He then just mocked me “Sir, call a warden…” I was already pretty upset about the comment that he had made about the killing the Hmong, save a deer. He was referring to the incident that happened up in Rice Lake, WI during the 2004 deer hunting season. Just because one person of my race was bad, we are all bad? What if I stereotyped him as child molester because the other day, a white male was found guily of molesting a 12 year old girl? What if it was another Hmong fisherman and he did not understand English like I did? His actions might have been different than mine.



Other than this incident, fishing for the weekend was great. I still enjoyed being out the on the mighty old river.