I never needed Earth Day to respect nature

Earth Day, birthday.

Kinda’ rhymes doesn’t it?

Come to find out I was born on Earth Day, or since I first appeared in the world April 22, 1953 and Earth Day was hatched in 1970, it must be the other way around.

I’ll blame my confusion over the celebration of the environment on two things: 1960s “new math” and nuns with rulers.

I realized well after the first Earth Day — initially organized in 1968 by the U.S. Public Health Service as a conference for students to hear from scientists about the effects of environmental degradation on human health — that these two celebratory events share the cal...