Lisa Larson, Judy Tucker, Cindi Ott, Susan Ratliff, Donna Kluch, Kathy Larson, and Ronnie Siegel are lifelong friends and very concerned about climate change and pollution of the land and oceans.  We wanted jointly do an action to help.  Lisa suggested making a globe together for the Carry the EARTH project.  Judy was expert at making piñatas for her traditional July 4^th family gatherings each year while our children were growing up.  She must have made 20 themed piñatas out of paper mache and they were so durable that they served to train all of our children to be hard hitting baseball players.  Not only durable, they were creative and beautiful. We thought we would make a piñata earth but the idea morphed into a paper mache time capsule instead.  On one of our weekly get togethers, Judy taught us how to work with paper mache and directed the creation of Time Capsule.

The thought behind the project was to commemorate June 2019 in our 30+ year friendship as a moment in time when environmental issues are of the largest concern to all of us.  We each placed an object of meaning in the globe and then worked together to cover it with paper mache using current news articles about environmental issues of today.  It is our hope that when opened in 50 years and we are long gone, the contents will describe the beginnings of a solution to our current environmental issues and the Earth will be a better place for our children and grandchildren. These seven friends have come together to create this earth with love and hope for a better future.

Susan:  The Western Monarch Butterfly population that migrates through California has been diminishing at an alarming rate due to weather changes, fires, pesticides and the lack of food availability for their caterpillars.  The population has declined 99.4% since the 1980s (an estimated 4.5 million then) in 2018; the Western Monarch population reached an all-time low, with only 28,429 butterflies counted.  There is an application to put the Monarchs on an endangered list.  Their numbers can be improved if more people simply added milkweed plants in their gardens.  Let us help the Monarchs flourish again.  Please study carefully the proper native milkweed for your area. There is a non-native tropical evergreen milkweed that harbors a protozoan parasite.   https://xerces.org/save-western-monarchs/

Lisa:  My contribution to Time Capsule was an article I found online. Some of the small things we do every day contribute to trash that goes into landfill. For example, brushing our teeth…I wondered if the empty tubes, though a composite, could be separated and recycled. A call to the City of Pasadena Curbside Recycling Program confirmed my suspicion that our mostly plastic toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes end up in local landfills because they’re considered ‘soiled’. A quick online search led to this site:   https://earth911.com/living-well-being/health/recycling-toothbrushes-and-toothpaste-tubes/. The good news is that some companies are looking for more environmentally friendly ways of packaging their products. Colgate-Palmolive will begin selling toothpaste (and other products) in recyclable tubes (made of HDPE #2) in about 5 years. In the meantime, their natural products line, Tom’s of Maine, will begin selling toothpaste in recyclable tubes in 2020. TerraCycle (Trenton, NJ) is working with Colgate and Tom’s to recycle oral care products:  https://www.terracycle.com/en-US/collection-programs?query=toothpaste (check out their recycling program). Also, bamboo toothbrushes are an alternative to plastic brushes: https://www.brushwithbamboo.com/proper-care-disposal/.

I hope that focusing on the small stuff will lead to bigger and bigger changes in terms of how we care for the environment. 

Judy:  My time capsule addition was an article about our local lake drying up during the drought as well a picture of what an Alaskan glacier looked like 30 years ago vs today.  My feelings are we should all be very concerned about global warming and
its effects on all the natural beauty that surrounds us on this earth and that we should be concerned about keeping it intact for future generations. 

Cindi:  My contribution was a burnt piece of wood representing the terrible wildfires we have experienced in California.  Scientists say that with climate change this will only get worse.

Donna:  For my contribution, I made a silver and copper wire heart as well as two flowers made from recycled newspaper.

I made these items from those specific materials as a reminder for us to use natural materials whenever possible, to help our environment and make recycling a way of life.

I believe that we are a part of God’s creation and have been given innumerable precious gifts on this awesome and breathtakingly beautiful planet on which we live, that is what the flowers represent.

The heart represents the love we feel for these gifts. Also for the loving hard work to properly fix and take care of our earthly home. Whether the problems are from climate change or pollution, we want to make and keep our environment clean, healthy and safe for all of us as well as each generation to come.

Ronnie:  To me this earth encapsulates the tipping point moment when powerful action to address manmade climate change is required and we do not know if it will really happen.  As a landscape architect married to a NASA scientist, I have been watching the deteriorating planet over my lifetime. With frustration and angst, I wish that my anxiety could be relieved by having a view into a future that is bright.   I am hopeful for a better future but there is always the possibility that mankind is not capable of working together to solve this most critical issue and that we will go by way of the dinosaurs.  What can you put in a tiny globe to say it all?  So just in case, I put local wildflower seeds in the time capsule so that if opened in 50 years and these wildflowers no longer exist, they may be replanted as a harbinger of spring and a time of renewal.

The messy work began….

As we send this EARTH off into the world, we hope it inspires others to do whatever they can to help the planet.