Corpus Christi is situated on a bay, Corpus Christi Bay, so they have and Earth Day/Bay Day celebration. It was held this past weekend. Since I moved to Corpus, I had always worked on Saturday, currently I have Saturdays off so I am taking advantage of festivals and other events. I had never been to Earth Day/Bay Day, so this year I went.

The celebrations were being held at Heritage Park. This area is a grouping of some of the oldest homes in Corpus Christi. Most have been restored, are Texas Historical Landmarks and many support the cultural diversity of our area. I have to admit when I was checking the Earth Day/Bay Day website, I was a little surprised that the event wasn’t being held at the bay. But Heritage Park is a beautiful place and there is plenty of room for all the tables, presentations and food.

When I walked in, the end of a falconry presentation was going on. As I walked around at all the tables, I hadn’t realized we had so many environmentally friendly organizations in Corpus Christi. Especially since conservation isn’t a priority in the everyday behaviors of the majority of our population. Reduce, reuse and recycle and other environmentally friendly actions are usually only performed by college students and if its convenient. In other words they won’t usually bother.

There were booths there from government agencies like TX Parks and Wild Life and the TX General Land Office to commercial organizations like the NEC to public health agencies and even nature organizations like the Texas Zoo and the Texas State Aquarium. I had fun walking around all the booths and seeing all the different way you can do better for the environment. The best part was I saw a lot of people I hadn’t seen in such a long time and getting to catch up.

I do have one complaint. Those running the booths seemed to completely ignore adults and only pay attention to the children. Adults need to and want to learn and experience the ideas too. And they have to power to make the changes in their households. It seemed just because I didn’t have kids I didn’t count. I even had one guy that I was talking to about sea grass beds end our conversation in the middle and start talking to a little girl when she and her dad walked up. He told me, “maybe she’ll grow up to be a marine biologist.” He was to only one to outright turn away, but other booths just acted like I wasn’t there.

I was talking to a co-worker today about it. She had a booth at the event. She told me that she had been taught that children were more important and that if an adult wants to learn, they are supposed to ask questions. The problem with adults asking questions is that they are paying too much attention to the kids to let the adults get a word in. I have a problem with thinking the children are more important. You as a stranger are not in the kid’s lives. They see you for two to three minutes, whereas they know, look up to and emulate the adult in their lives, parents, teachers, neighbors, etc. So why aren’t you paying attention to the adults too. Yes, children are the future, but unless we talk to everyone to start conservation in the present, there isn’t a future. Teach the kids, but teach the adults especially in a community that doesn’t put much faith in conservation efforts.