About The Tower: The Earth is First

January 1, 2009

Welcome to the third edition of The Tower.  

The reason I decided to name this edition as I did is simple: The above statement is true .  The Earth is first. 

Individually, you take care of yourself and your home as best you can, but where would you or your domicile be if there were no Earth to sustain it all?   Nowhere, is where.  So I decided to dedicate this issue to all things Earth--good or bad.  Our group of talented writers, artists, and photographers have produced some wonderful content that shows the beauty of our planet and also depicts what it will be like if we do not put the Earth first. 

My contribution to the mix is a very bad piece of prose that I wrote  quite a while ago.  Greenie was selected to be published in a local newspaper, for which I was truly honored.  The reason I decided to add it to this edition, and in the way that I did, is because I wanted to show the actual publication date.  If you look closely at the top of the page,  you can see that it was published on  December 7, 1989.  Almost 19 years prior to this edition of The Tower.  At that time, we referred to Global Warming  as the Greenhouse Effect, thus came the title.  I feel that it is unfortunate that all these years later we, as a race, have done so  little to stem the effects of this disaster in the making.

A short story that I would like to highlight is one that was sent to me by a man, I think, named Klattu.  He claimed to be from a distant world, but then a lot of writers are--myself included--so I paid little attention to that claim.  However, the cautionary tale he sent along entitled, There Must Be Cowboys, is one that I, as an editor could not ignore nor should we as a people ignore it.  Mr. Klattu did say he could destroy the Earth if we did not mend our wasteful ways, but then he added that it most likely would not be necessary given the fact that, to this date, we are doing a good job of destroying Earth ourselves without his assistance.

After you finish enjoying the work on these pages, please take some time to stop in to our Meet the Artists site where you will find out more information about our talented contributors and where you will  find links to more of their work.

Enjoy!

John Darling, Editor