The enemy in your mirror

“We have met the enemy, and he is us.’’

— “Pogo”

A line from one of cartoonist Walt Kelly’s (1913-1973) “Pogo” comic strips, modified from Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry’s remark in the War of 1812, “We have met the enemy {the British} and they are ours,” after the American victory in Battle of Lake Erie, on Sept. 10, 1813. Perry was a Rhode Islander.

Walt Kelly, who grew up in Bridgeport, Conn., was marking the Earth Day, in 1971, with the message that man – because of his treatment of the Earth – is its enemy.

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But in another Pogo chapter the character Porkypine says:

“Don’t take life so serious, son….it ain’t no how permanent.’’

The huge Deer Island sewage-treatment plant in Boston Harbor, created as a result of the environmental movement that started in the 60’s. It became fully operation in 2000. Boston Harbor had been notoriously polluted since the mid-19th Century.

— Photo by Doc Searls