Hello Lovers,

This letter is not for you Earth Lovers who, whenever possible, search and wait until they find the things that they want as secondhand or used. This letter is not for the Earth Lovers who refuse to buy products that they did not really need, or who fix or repair things instead of buying new.

For life, Sharlo, a Redwing Blackbird [Earth Quest] ~s

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Hello Earth Haters.

I’m Sharlo, a Redwing Blackbird. This letter is to the Earth Haters who participate mindlessly in the purchase of unnecessary products, which we call an Extinction Things.

You, the Earth Haters, love to join in the torrent of greed that smells like oil and cheap plastic. That frantic, flapping panic to gather more, more, more. It is a swarming in the stalls and screens for products we often don’t need. They are Extinction Things and they tear the wings off the forest and foul the water we drink.

Soaring above the tangled, dying reeds you left behind, I see your consumption for what it truly is: a blood-sport. But the blood was drawn from the very Earth that fed you. A feast of consumption, divorced from the quiet gratitude of the harvest. Your Earth Hater persona participates mindlessly in the conquest and consumerism that is driving us all toward the void.

When a frivolous product is purchased, it should also be the time to look at an empty sky, a poisoned pond, a silent forest, missing insects, and the others you chase away by demanding more Extinction Things. Every Extinction Thing is a fresh scratch on the face of another life.

But we beg ye careless consumers and resolute Earth Haters to cease your gathering of trinkets.

Promise, not to the sirens of stuff, but to the earth beneath your feet, that you will stop fueling the pyre.

Then, if you and some others turn away from being Earth Haters, your atoms and molecules may one day become part of a Redwing Blackbird too.

Then, as a Redwing Blackbird, your voice will ring out across the marsh as a sharp, clear counterpoint to your prior, consuming self.

Then, your future, singing, smart, feather-and-bone self will look back at the noise you once made and celebrate that you became an Earth Lover.

Then, your future selves will be jazzed you stopped following other Earth Haters into the maelstrom of buying Extinction Things.

For life, Sharlo, a Redwing Blackbird