GREEN AND BEAR IT (POSSIBLY, IN YOUR HEART)

Sometime in the middle of year 2000, while in the heat of the United States' presidential election campaign, I received a letter from a woman named Pauline Gore. Mrs. Gore, of course, was no ordinary woman, and getting a letter from her was no ordinary affair; she was the mother - no less - of that election's Democratic Party candidate, Al Gore, who was touted to hold in due time the post of most powerful, most stressful job the modern world has ever known.

I am not personally known to Pauline, and even less so, to Al, and
I surmised she was able to find my name and address from the roster of membership with The Sierra Club, an environmentalist organization that actively supported his candidacy, and somehow she decided to make the plea for our support of him more personal, or on a one-on-one, candidate's mother-to-member, basis.

I had been in possession of that letter for sometime, or long after the election was over, but I do not have it anymore to accurately quote its contents. Nevertheless I remember it to be a charming piece of communication that conveys a sincere sense of pride a mother had for a son, and it was more so because he was a bona fide champion of the same principles The Club came to existence, and his concern for the environment was supposedly one of the centerpieces of his administration if he ever got to be elected.

Let it be known from hereon, however, that I did not give Mr. Gore a single cent even if the sweet power of his mother's letter moved me, even if it was in my heart's deepest desire that he wins, and only because I thought the $50.00 - the highest amount I can spare for him that time - will never make any difference.

Mr. Gore lost the elections, a controversial one if he not only conceded at the earliest moment, but if there was one thing he won, it was the respect of a divided nation.

Al Gore happens to be one of my favorite living American politicians, and if there is one strange thing that sets him apart from my other favorites, it is this: he continues to push for his cause long after he lost in an election pushing for it.

I saw and heard Al Gore at the University of Miami's lecture series last Wednesday afternoon where he spoke mostly of the environment, of global warming, of sustainable development, of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels being trapped in the earth's atmosphere, of man's "business continues" policy, of "nature on the run" phenomenon, of the urgent need to "green" our cities - but the biggest thing I learned from him that night, actually, was the fact I underestimated my $50.00 going into his campaign.

The truth of the matter, as shown to me by this guy, is that Man, in all his smallness while in his fight to stop global warming, can make a difference even if compared to the enormity of the Earth.