I have tried to be a good steward and to set a good example, but clearly it hasn’t been anywhere near enough. I was an environmental activist back at the first Earth Day; I learned to garden and spent a number of years teaching environmental education. But life moved on and I had a family to support and somewhere along the line I lost that 70’s zeal, and as I watched how the capitalist greed ran rough shod over everything I got cynical. Now I look to you with the youthful energy and idealism to help me get more focused, to help find ways to do things that may actually make a difference. Sure, I drive a Prius and try to eat local, I turn off the lights and recycle. We belong to lots of environmental organizations, but mostly we just send a check every year. Your mother and I have been volunteering for local candidates and knocking on doors to get out the vote, but the direction of the country is moving to the right and it is very discouraging. Lots of days I feel like it is too late, that the world will have to do through a mass extinction that includes the end of homo sapiens and then start the process over again. But I love the natural world too much to give up. Hopefully I can spend the time I have left finding ways to make a real difference so that you will still have a world full of bird song after my generation is gone.