Under which an equally disparate mix had recently made their home.
And to accept or reject an even stranger solution to their nation’s strife.
Less strange, it was two hundred years to the day
When another collection of just men came together
To say nay to the notion
Of their enormous country being colonized, ruled and taxed
By another, absurdly smaller, and most bizarre,
That sat not next-door but across an ocean!”
Polite applause from the delegates seated before her and who were disconcerted by the rousing response from the bleachers behind them. A dozen mostly recognizable individuals, with a few not at all, were arrayed behind the podium. Most everyone wore hats for the sun; many were in seersucker suits and ties, summer dresses or short sleeves and tan trousers. Among the notables were a rotund jolly Cardinal in all his church vestments, and a full-blooded, hook-nosed Indian chief in full regalia and face-paint.
A nne waited for the ogling and whispering to subside. “If any of you are familiar with current pop music, will you kindly welcome the only rapper with a PhD in oceanography, Rastafarian!”
A young black man stood, his tan skin a contrast to his one-piece, off the shoulder black woman’s dress, and under his black fedora a long display of woven, roped hair. Like a tiger, he began to pace jauntily before the gobsmacked delegates, and snapping out a slow rhythm. Before he arrived to replace Anne at the podium, half the wider audience was clapping with him. Now he ‘rapped,’ but well under his usual pace:
“Neither geek nor will nerd
Be heard to speak, not one word.
Not one chart or statistic
Pointed out by her-slash-his shtick,
But, all’s said and done
They is maybe jus . . . one.”
He threw out his arms then brought them in to indicate himself, slowly bringing the clapping rhythm to his hip-hopping frenzy.
“The thrust, if not trust, of the goal to persuade
Every heart, soul and mind
Of the yet to be signed
Is by persons unschooled in the realm scientific,
But they ruled in their fields and esteemed most terrific.”
Laughter and applause followed him weaving and waving to his seat.
“Why are you all here, at this place and at this time?” Anne stepped up to ask. “We know why, don’t we?” and she raised her arms to embrace those in the stands. They responded shouting and clapping.
“Some years ago hundreds, then thousands and eventually millions of us mostly urban and suburbanites, left our homes and became countrified. Why had we abandoned our comfortable lives?” She replied quietly, almost a whisper, clipping her words and slowly rising in volume until the sound over the loud-speakers fairly boomed out. “It was because nobody . . . not our elected leaders preoccupied with pleasing their corporate friends, who kept us preoccupied with things to shop for and buy and discard and replace, seemed to care. Except for a few staunch environmental organizations and earth scientists and the ordinary people who came away—some of whom are here—nobody seemed to care about, feel any remorse for, or was willing to do something—anything—about our relentless misuse of the most beautiful, bountiful planet in the cosmos!”
It was a full minute before the uproar in the stands subsided.
“In its long evolution, our planet has seen many catastrophic events: ages of ice and of drought, meteor strikes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, fires, plagues. Yet each, Mother Earth has managed to weather and to continue to flourish, thankfully by its inhabitants. Then, in just the last few seconds of the earth’s time-clock, arrived an alien species, taking Planet Earth’s resources without replenishing them, and bringing toxins, sickness, disease, even extinction to many of the planet’s species. That species is homo sapiens, or humankind, and whom we now call ourselves Outsiders.
“Think of it: just two of our everyday needs—the car and the cow—may cause the planet to become uninhabitable altogether. Carbon monoxide, lead and methane gas from their exhausts has already opened holes in the ozone, the layer of dense particles that protects our atmosphere from over-heating and even burning up!