Community Arts Extension honoring Earth Day event pioneer with 2023 celebration

This Saturday, April 22, the Whitley County Community Arts Extension will be hosting its annual Earth Day festivities at the Goldbug Extension Office off of I-75 Exit 15 in Williamsburg. During the event, community activist Marian Colette, who pioneered the very first Earth Day celebration in Williamsburg in 2012, will be posthumously honored.

“This will be our ninth annual Earth Day event,” said Extension Agent Cortney Moses. “We will be doing it in honor of Marian. She was the one who started it in 2012, and then she came to us and the first one that we did was in 2014.”

Colette, who passed away in November of 2022, is described as a “trailblazer for education and community advocacy” in a short bio on her that is included in the Community Arts Extension Office’s program of activities for March-August 2023.

“Marian’s passion for the environment and commitment to making a difference in the community inspired her to organize the event and bring together like-minded individuals to celebrate the beauty and importance of our planet,” the bio said of Colette’s early efforts to bring an Earth Day celebration to Whitley County.

Colette’s husband, Dal Macon, said of his late wife, “Earth Day is something that applies to all of us. With the climate change that is taking place, and what that means to everyone, it applies to us here just as much as it does the rest of the nation and world. For her to act on that, and decide to do something locally, was more than appropriate.”

“I think that what she did in bringing Earth Day to Williamsburg and Whitley County was a celebration of what we have, and what we would like to keep,” Macon added. “There is only one way to keep it, though, and that is through all of us being more responsible for the earth itself.”

Moses also spoke to that point, saying, “It’s about education-based environmental awareness. We’ll have fun, and we are celebrating, but there are also some very important issues going on that are hard to deal with. I think that, if we’re going to make a change, then we need to start accepting that our climate is changing. Regardless of the reasoning behind it, there are little things that we all can do to help combat against it. Whether that be energy conservation, recycling, or planting trees. We just need to start taking things seriously.”

As in years past, the Community Arts Extension will be giving away young trees at their Earth Day event so that people can take them home and plant them on their own. In addition to that, free books will also be given out to kids, and a long list of community partners will be in attendance to offer visitors a broad range of useful information and resources.

The free Earth Day event is scheduled to take place from 2-6 p.m. on Saturday at the Cooperative Extension Office in Goldbug. For more information on the day’s festivities, please see the advertisement in this week’s edition. Those interested in learning more can also call the Whitley County Extension Office at (606) 549-1430 or (606) 549-7373.

Additional Earth Day resources can be found at:

·         www.climate.nasa.gov

·         www.climatekids.nasa.gov

·         www.nature.org

·         www.noaa.gov/tools-and-resources/weather-and-climate-resources

·         www.earthday.org/take-action-now