November 29, 2006
Who knew that a half-pint of chocolate milk could be so inspiring? I certainly didn't. But it was the mere sight of a machine-constructed piece of paper that led to a chain of events which would ultimately spawn the website you're reading right now.
It seemed odd in the beginning that such an ordinary object could alter the course of my life....lead me to read, learn, observe things I had never had much interest in before; but in hindsight, why did I find it so strange? After all, the man who invented that carton back in 1915 -- John Van Wormer, the owner of a toy factory -- was inspired by a broken milk bottle.
When you notice something is broken as John Van Wormer did almost a century ago, perhaps it's human nature to seek a solution. Back in 2003, while eating a Mother's Day breakfast with my family in a Cracker Barrel restaurant, maybe I had an experience similar to John's. As my breakfast was served, I glared at the milk carton placed in front of me by my waitress and was immediately caught off guard by it -- but "it" wasn't the carton itself. "It" was a crossword puzzle printed on the side.
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| Sometimes it's the simple things in life that are inspiring. |
And so my eyes sifted through the clues in the puzzle.
One down: _____ warming is destroying the planet. Two across: a hole in the ______ layer was caused my man-made chemicals.
And that's when it happened. That moment of truth when I realized that something was broken, and a solution was in order.
Nothing outraged me more than to see the innocent manipulated, especially children. My experience that morning had completely ruined my day. A game portraying questionable, if not baseless, scientific theories as fact, printed on the side of a milk carton was being used to brainwash the minds of innocent children in school cafeterias across the country. I was infuriated.
Later that day, that crossword puzzle still engraved in my mind, I would formulate a long-term course of action and take the first step in trying to fix this problem. Several months would pass before I took my first real step into cyberspace and created a website specifically designed to counter the environmental movement with the very things that can tear it down: facts, knowledge, and a sense of humor.
Years later, I can't help but wonder how many children attempted to complete that puzzle and have gone on to embrace the lies perpetuated by environmentalists: that humankind is not unique and is nothing more than an all-consuming carnivore; that all freedoms must be controlled by the state because humankind cannot be trusted to use them responsibly; that God's existence cannot be proven by science, but human-induced global warming is a foregone conclusion based on the evidence. It is my greatest hope that this cycle of ignorance can be broken, and that humankind will come to know environmentalism as nothing more than communism in disguise; otherwise, an iron curtain will descend again. And this time, there will be no one capable of destroying it.
I can only hope to possess the patience that Van Wormer had. Twenty years passed before society finally abandoned traditional glass containers and found favor with his invention. Hopefully you and I will have the courage to stare down environmentalism and ensure that generations to come will never have to face the evil it strives to bring to fruition.
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