Green. It’s not my favorite color.
I’m a purple person who looks awful in green. Unlike some people in Washington who loathe green for very different reasons.
Don’t get me wrong. Green looks great on trees, money, and vegetables. It works for me on my houseplants but not on my walls (my living room is purple).
Color psychology experts say green is the color of balance and growth. That’s great for my lawn. As an author I don’t want to be 
balanced. As an afterfifty-er I certainly don’t need more growth, especially around my middle.
I’ll stick to purple the color of imagination with a touch of red which means energy.
We can all use more of that.
Unfortunately, we all need to go green. With programs for clean water and air dropping like green flies, it might make sense to go blue, the color of trust.
“Trust me!” Mr. Trump roars as he and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) Director Scott Pruitt dismantle the agency.
Clearly they prefer black coal to green trees.
There are bad greens in the world – The Grinch, Lex Luther’s slab of Kryptonite, and green bagels. There are also a lot of good greens like The Jolly Green Giant, Shrek, and Popeye the sailorman’s miracle green spinach. Where would we be without green M&M’s?
Consider this – going green has a history. Some believe it began with Henry David Thoreau, the Walden Pond activist and author of the 19th century book, The Maine Woods. He wrote about living a “green” life in nature.
Maine and nature? Sounds great in the summer. I would rather do Arizona in the winter. It’s not as green but you don’t have to worry about rising sea levels.
President Theodore Roosevelt
The first “green” President was Theodore Roosevelt who protected 230 million acres of public land and asked:
What will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation.
Ask the climate change deniers.
Today, going green is as pervasive Russian hackers. Essentially it means sustainable living. Not the kind of sustainable like paying taxes and eating breakfast but doing things to protect the Earth’s environment.
It’s both a movement and a lifestyle. There are hundreds of sites online, thousands of organizations, and isms like conservationism, environmentalism, and eco-tourism. AARP is on our side. Girl Scouts “adopt” patches of highway. Climate change is a given and our guru, former Vice President Al Gore has a new book, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to power.
What more proof do we need?
Since the color still doesn’t work for me I’ve taken another title: tree-hugger.
Tree-huggers are warm and fuzzy.
“Lonesome George”
Being a tree-hugger means recycling my garbage, keeping the thermostat low, and not eating endangered species for dinner. I cry about threatened animals and support rainforest causes. I shudder over Flint, Michigan and the Marshall Islands. And mourn Lonesome George, whom I met a few years ago. He was a 100-year old Pinta Island Giant Galapagos tortoise – known as the rarest creature in the world. George died in 2012, the last of his species.
I’m also a busy tree-hugger. I co-authored a children’s book, Coco and the Giz Go Green and I donate to organizations like the World Wildlife Fund and LEX-NG Fund for global stewardship. I even use 100% recycled toilet paper. When my neighbor callously cut down a healthy tree in his backyard (for no reason), I called him an executioner.
He still doesn’t talk to me.
That’s what tree-huggers do. We should all be tree huggers – or go green if you like the color.
Stop messing with Mother Nature, Washington.
You can’t win.
