My Bead Journal Project for April concerns a topic not everyone wants to discuss. Please stick with me on this one, and feel free to post your comments, even if you disagree with my thoughts on the subject.
If you've been following my BJP pieces this year, you know I've been greatly concerned for the future of the world and the children who are yet to be born.
Countdown, a book by Alan Weisman (a well-researched, yet readable, book about the recent history of the growing human population in all areas of the world, and the effects this growth is having on us and on our habitat) greatly influenced my piece for April. Although I began working on it before getting the book, you can see the like-mindedness between my divided piece (in progress) and the art on the cover of the book (which I think is fabulous).
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| Message to Elders of the World (in progress) |
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| Cover Art by San Chung for the Book, Countdown, by Alan Weisman |
Watching environmental documentary films on many topics over the past few years, a foreboding sense of the damage our ever increasing growth and demands place on the earth has brought me to a
voluntary, world-wide, one child point of view, as the only thing the citizens of the world can do to save it. I call it
1+1=1, and it is the theme of my BJP pieces this year.
For April's BJP, I direct my hopes toward the elders, the grey and white haired folks, like myself.
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| Message to Elders of the World |
Above is the finished piece. And here is a poem I wrote while beading on it and the message I hope it conveys to others who are grey now, like me:
I Am Grey Now
I am grey now
–
no longer so
self-absorbed
as in the
greener phase of my life,
looking
beyond my pile of beads,
considering
the colors of the whole world,
wondering how
long before
there are no
more red or green apples,
how long
before the abundant waters
under the
earth's crust are gone,
how long
before order turns to chaos,
and most of
all wondering what I can do,
in my grey
years, to help.
Robin Atkins
Message to Elders of the World
For the sake
of your grandchildren and great grandchildren,
wake up to
the possibility of massive hunger and thirst,
the depletion of resources and environmental destruction
caused by the
demands of an ever increasing human population.
We, the
elders, must help our granddaughters and grandnieces
to understand
it is on their shoulders to save the world,
with only one
way to do it: world-wide, voluntary, one child.
No government
can make this happen. Only they can do it.
Robin Atkins
If you are like me, worried about the world, concerned for the future of all the babies being born every second, and especially for our own children, it follows that we must take on the responsibility of coaching them in stewardship, which includes green living as well as voluntary one-child. My other three bead embroideries on this theme are:
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| Message to Young Brides of the World |
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| Message to Women of the World |
My available tools of change are art and words. Thus, I am making these bead embroidery pieces (2.5 x 3.5 inches each), which can be displayed on small easels, and writing poems for whoever will see or read them, in the hopes of helping others to envision and question the future, to ask what they can do for the world.
Thank you for staying with me to the end of this post, and for considering the questions it raises.
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