Environment

My earliest memory of facing an environmental issue is from my 5^th or 6^th grade year.  My mom had moved to Las Cruces, NM with my step-dad.  Las Cruces was a thirty minute drive from El Paso, TX which sat across the Rio Grande from Juarez, Mexico.  When I visited my mom (I was living with my dad elsewhere) we would often drive to El Paso.  There were shops there which we didn’t have in Las Cruces.  Each drive to El Paso took us past a large industrial factory on the outskirts of El Paso.  The factory was located near the homes of thousands of the poor in Juarez, Mexico who lived in cinder block homes.  From miles in any direction you could see thick colored smoke pouring out of the smoke stack of the factory.  Day and night smoke spewed out of the factory.  Read More »A Poet’s Look at the Environment