On Monday, in a region of northern India, 800,000 volunteers planted nearly 50 milli0n trees in 24 hours. The goal was 50 million, but they only made 49.3 million before the 24 hour deadline.
That’s kind of awesome. All walks of life, politicians and housewives, school children and soldiers, out in the sun, sort of a festival atmosphere, planting and singing…it didn’t say in the article that they were singing, but I hope they were singing because it makes the work go easier and that is, therefore, how I picture it.
I didn’t actually hear about it until yesterday. 50 million trees is a cool thing, and it will go into the Guinness book of world records (the previous world record was fewer than a million trees), but it’s not Earth shattering news.
Then, this morning, I hear the news of the massacre in Nice. 88 dead, many of them children. There’s nothing you can say about it. It’s horrible. There’s nothing anyone can ever do to make it unhappen, or to make the damage less painful.
But, as the world moves backwards, so it moves forwards, and I think of the trees. For all of the people in France who died, thousands of trees were planted. May they live long and grow tall.
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