[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 8]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 10439-10440]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         CELEBRATING EARTH DAY

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                          HON. ADAM B. SCHIFF

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, April 22, 2009

  Mr. SCHIFF. Madam Speaker, the Los Angeles basin holds one of the 
greatest concentrations of humanity in the world. People have come from 
all over the Earth to live there--when one walks down a street in 
Glendale or Alhambra one can hear a language from ten thousand miles 
away on one block and read signs in a vastly different language on the 
next. But if you look up a little higher, above the signs and above the 
buildings, you'll see gray-green mountains looking down on it all. In 
my district, we're right up against the Verdugo, Santa Monica and San 
Gabriel Mountains, and they surprise you all the time, appearing at 
street corners from behind the buildings, playing hide-and-seek with 
intervening hills and highways.
  Though few of my constituents live up there, I try to get up into the 
hills as often as I can, and I'm often surprised by how many of my 
neighbors I run into on the trail. I think that, like me, they wander 
in the chaparral and oak forests to get away for a while, and find some 
perspective in the process. Among the families, teenagers and retirees 
I pass, I see all of the cultures I know from the streets of my 
district, all enjoying the fact that they can find some peace and quiet 
just a few minutes away from one of the largest cities in the world.
  Our green spaces play an irreplaceable role in our communities, and 
on this Earth Day, I would like to celebrate them. This is a day to 
think globally, but it is also a day to act locally, by taking your 
family to the park and exploring all that you find there. In the words 
of John Muir, ``When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it 
attached to the rest of the world.''

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