MOTHER EARTH’S SCARSWe have injured the Earth. Some wounds heal; some never will. The scars are everywhere. When I wrote in an earlier post that lumber companies reforest the hillsides where they have scraped away the trees, my friend Alan Thomas reminded me that it’s not just the trees that are removed when logging is done, but practically everything else is destroyed. Whole ecosystems disappear and there is nothing the logging companies can do to restore them. Large urban areas are another sorrow. Riding into and then out of the Los Angeles sprawl on my bicycle, I was stunned by how dismal and hopeless much of the region has become. Where is the hope in Torrence, the miserably poor little city sandwiched between the three beach cities south of the airport and the industrial suburb and port of Long Beach. Ugly is the only word for the string of strip malls that line both sides of The Pacific Coast Highway in Torrence. What a grand sounding name for a road. What a pitiful place. What a scar.