Kern: TRUE FACTS

Merry Earth Day 2009!

Earth Day was originally called St. Earthislav Day after the erratic drifter born in Thuringia (now Germany) in 1679. As the perhaps apocryphal story goes, St. Earthislav, to avoid taking food from the mouths of the starving children in his village, moved into the forest and took a vow to eat only dirt and badgers, if he happened to find a badger that was dead. In honor of his sacrifice and the merriment he spread as an object of ridicule, celebrations sprang up in his name during the 18th century. Every April 22nd, a key day in harvest season, adults would dress up like the hardy, filth-covered St. Earthislav and give children bags of sod. Also, many badgers would be killed. Soon, the joy of sod and badger slaughter spread throughout Europe. In 1970, a coalition of hippies, ex-hippies, and Richard Nixon secularized St. Earthislav Day, christening it Earth Day in order to promote awareness of environmental causes and to memorialize all the spacesoldiers that died in the Earth-Neptune War of 1969. To this day, we pay tribute to St. Earthislav's idiotic sacrifice, and to the space fallen, by throwing dirt at children and roasting a deep-fried badger to share with all our relatives, even the ones we'd rather not see.

Go Earth! You rock and are a rock!