Lessons to help our Earth can be learned at any age

My middle child started kindergarten in Chatham, N.J., in 1986, the same year Robert Fulghum's book, "All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten," was published.

Even if you're not familiar with Fulghum's best-seller of essays, you can get the basic message from the title.

Simple concepts you learned in kindergarten -- sharing, kindness, cleaning up after oneself, flushing, looking, being aware and living "a balanced life" of work, play, and learning -- are life's lessons of how to get along in a challenging world that becomes more complex by the day.

Back then, we framed a poster promoting many of the pointers to hang in our playroom in the basement.

There were parodies. Comedians enjoyed adding their two cents. And some sophisticates likely dismissed the common wisdom.

Funny. All these years later, my recent encounters with nature and hissing aggressive geese, as well as countless news items about Earth Day events, turned me toward Fulghum's simple philosophy.

I even flashed way, way back to what I learned in kindergarten, a time when the "Keep America Beautiful" campaign was promoted along America's highways to remind us not to litter. That campaign led to decades of promotions to reuse and recycle.

Coupled with combinations of public education, communication and the fostering of public/private partnerships, we were on our way toward being good stewards of our Earth. What happened?

I remember a lesson from my dad when plastic pop bottles were becoming popular.

Plastic throw-away bottles would have made less work for him to supply his construction crews with cold refreshment. Instead, until he retired, he continued to have glass pop bottles delivered in 24-count wooden crates that he placed on job sites, to later be collected and returned for a deposit every week.

As a young adult in the 1970s, I usually chose aluminum cans over plastic, but by the 1980s, I had succumbed to plastic 2-liter bottles for my Diet Coke-drinking habit until I stopped drinking sodium-laden pop altogether about 10 years ago.

I always try to learn.

Back to Naperville

Last week I watched as one of my neighbors picked up fast-food containers, wrappers and plastic and glass bottles lodged all along the base of the fence on his corner lot.

I was thinking of aggressive geese while he talked of other animals.

"We have a bunch of pigs living among us," he said as he filled his trash bag.

For a moment, I felt sorry for pigs, wondering how they'd feel to be accused of being such slobs.

Another resident responded to my goose tales with little confidence.

"I fear you're fighting a fight that is well lost due to the thousands of mothers and dads with little kids who just want to touch nature by getting close to a duck or goose. Tell me you didn't feed them with your kids?"

I told him. I didn't.

The only thing I saw our children pitch into a river was my middle son's pacifier when he was 2 and many fishing lines over the years.

And I added, "You're probably right about losing the battle to folks who want to touch nature by getting close to a duck or goose, but that doesn't make it right."

Today is Earth Day. But isn't every day a time to conserve water, use recycling bins, discard waste in receptacles and practice ways to protect wildlife and the environment?

"Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school," wrote Fulghum. "Everything you need to know is in there somewhere ... The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living."