Friday Afternoon in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden: Cherry Blossoms at Cherry Esplanade and Cherry Walk on Earth Day

(Video courtesy CrystalBlueAmethyst)

Tuesday Morning in Union Square: Earth Day 2014 at Union Square Park

(Video courtesy Joe Depace)

Saturday Afternoon in Rockaway Beach: The Seventh Annual Earth Day Rockaway at MoMA PS1's VW Dome 2

This afternoon we were lucky enough to be in Rockaway Beach to attend the seventh annual Earth Day Rockaway event at MoMA PS1's VW Dome 2.

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Thursday Morning in Brooklyn Bridge Park: Earth Day 2010 Opening of Pier 1's Fabulous Organically-Maintained Lawns

We were at the first Earth Day in Prospect Park on April 22, 1970, when we heard speeches and listened to music and saw New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller riding a bicycle. Twenty years later, on April 22, 1990, we spent the twentieth anniversary Earth Day festivities near our house in Davie, Florida, at Pine Island Ridge, 101 acres of environmentally sensitive land where Tequesta Indians lived as early as 3,000 B.C.E.; we went on a hike, heard Florida Governor Bob Martinez and other officials talk about the environment, sat in on educational seminars on water conservation and sea turtle protection, and ended the day at a sunset concert.

This morning, we celebrated the fortieth anniversary of Earth Day in Brooklyn Bridge at the opening of Pier 1's fabulous organically maintained lawns.

Around 10 a.m., we seemed to be the only one who actually ventured onto the gorgeous grass, so we were waiting for some park workers to yell, "Hey, geddoudathere!" but no one did.

Things just looked great on this beautiful Earth Day morning every way we looked, like north to Fulton Ferry Landing.

Even the traffic on the BQE under the Promenade looked pleasant.

And so did the view of the Jehovah's Witnesses' Watchtower.

And far in the distance the Statue of Liberty looked pretty good to us, too.

We guess we got there either before or after the "official opening." According to the New York Post:

Park officials will open the Harbor View and Bridge View lawns, as well as the Vale, adding nearly two additional acres of recreational space to Pier 1, which last month became the first segment of the long-awaited 85-acre waterfront park to be unveiled.

The gently sloping hills and grassy expanse complete the 7 acres of open green space on Pier 1.

“We are thrilled to be celebrating Earth Day with the opening of the Pier 1 lawns and welcoming visitors to these spectacular park amenities,” said Regina Myer, President of city-state Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation.

“We are proud that these lawns will be organically maintained and watered primarily from our on-site storm water management system with its 104,000 gallon-storm water containment tank. Brooklyn Bridge Park is a new park for a new era in environmental sustainability."

Forty Years Ago Today in Brooklyn: The First Earth Day in Prospect Park on April 22, 1970

On Earth Day four years ago, Louise Crawford, the doyenne of Brooklyn bloggers kindly published our diary entry about the first Earth Day in Prospect Park on Wednesday, April 22, 1970. We'd like to reprint it forty years later:

A warm & sunny Earth Day. Mark called & asked me to come with him to the Union Square rally. Mayor Lindsay closed off 5th Ave. & 14th St. to traffic & the crowds were enormous.

But I didn't feel like getting into so big a crowd & went by myself to the smaller Prospect Park rally. I parked the car on 8th Ave. & walked to the meadow. A singing group called the Smubbs, dressed as pigs, sang about pollution. They also sang a song to the tune of "Give My Regards to Broadway" that was "Give my regards to Brooklyn / Remember me to Bartel Pritchard Square."

Then Gov. Rockefeller

made a speech saying, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the pollution." He had a lot of trouble with hecklers...

Walking back to the car when the rally ended ended, I was stunned to see Rocky waving to me from a bicycle! Too bad I'd used up all my film.

Dad came home and said he was booed by the crowd as he drove through the streets near Union Square and people banged on his Cadillac. The TV reports said the crowds were disappointing.

It remains to be seen what will be done about our environment.

--Richard Grayson

More of our diary entries from age 18, long before the age of blogs, are featured in Dumbo Books' Summer in Brooklyn.

HORSING AROUND IN POLITICS by Richard Grayson now available at Amazon Kindle Store

Richard Grayson's Horsing Around in Politics is now available at Amazon's Kindle Store for 99¢.

Here is the promo material for the 143-page $7.99 paperback edition from Art Pants Company:

In these alternatingly hilarious and earnest memoirs, satirist and political activist Richard Grayson recounts moments in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s on the campaign trail and the political barricades.

There are reports from the police riot of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and the takeover of the party by Grayson's young peaceniks four years later in Miami Beach; scenes from the New York headquarters of the October 1969 Moratorium, a nationwide general strike to protest the war in Vietnam; accounts of the first Earth Day celebration in Brooklyn, with a bike-riding Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and a rock band dressed as pigs singing about pollution, and later the same year, a now-historic 1970 "Women's Lib" action to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of female suffrage featuring feminist icons Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug.

Grayson also reports on his own political mischief-making: getting 26% of the 1982 vote for a seat on the Town Council in Davie, Florida, running on a platform of giving horses the right to vote; creating a political scandal involving Florida lawmakers in "Legislators in Love," and the wacky press coverage in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, The New York Times, People Magazine, and many news outlets of Grayson's joke candidacy for President in 1984, when he famously picked as his running mate the star of TV's "Falcon Crest," the actress Jane Wyman, because of "her experience in dumping Ronald Reagan."

Richard Grayson on the First Earth Day: April 22, 1970 in Prospect Park

On Earth Day three years ago, Louise Crawford, the doyenne of Brooklyn bloggers - who is doing a series of workshops on blogging for beginners at the Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) starting a week from today - kindly published our diary entry about the first Earth Day in Prospect Park on Wednesday, April 22, 1970. We'd like to reprint it on this Earth Day:

A warm & sunny Earth Day. Mark called & asked me to come with him to the Union Square rally. Mayor Lindsay closed off 5th Ave. & 14th St. to traffic & the crowds were enormous.

But I didn't feel like getting into so big a crowd & went by myself to the smaller Prospect Park rally. I parked the car on 8th Ave. & walked to the meadow. A singing group called the Smubbs, dressed as pigs, sang about pollution. They also sang a song to the tune of "Give My Regards to Broadway" that was "Give my regards to Brooklyn / Remember me to Bartel Pritchard Square."

Then Gov. Rockefeller made a speech saying, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the pollution." He had a lot of trouble with hecklers...

Walking back to the car when the rally ended ended, I was stunned to see Rocky waving to me from a bicycle! Too bad I'd used up all my film.

Dad came home and said he was booed by the crowd as he drove through the streets near Union Square and people banged on his Cadillac. The TV reports said the crowds were disappointing.

It remains to be seen what will be done about our environment.

--Richard Grayson

More of our diary entries from age 18, long before the age of blogs, are featured in Dumbo Books' Summer in Brooklyn.

Other Brooklyn pics from 1970 of NYC politicos like Bella Abzug, Paul O'Dwyer, Arthur Goldberg, Basil Paterson, Howard Samuels, Richard Ottinger, Elinor Guggenheimer, Adam Walinsky, et al. can be found on our 2008 Grayson for Congress blog.