Arctic Sunrise Crew – The Real Heroes

It’s Toy Fair time at the Javits Center in NYC. We of the Granny Peace Brigade, along with our singing friends the Raging Grannies have just returned from a singing fest outside the Toy of the Year Awards ceremony.  We were singing about how we don’t like war toys because we don’t want our kids to play war and grow up to be soldiers.  There are great things for them to do out there, and war is really the worst form of terrorism.

This week we got a taste of some of our grandchildren’s better options.  We visited the Arctic Sunrise, the icebreaking ship of Greenpeace.  The Sunrise was docked here in the Big Apple, and we were invited to get on board.

Here is Laila, our guide to the ship.  Right away I’d say that Hasbro should get wise and create some Laila dolls for girls and boys to play Greenpeace adventurer with.

Laila is showing us the control panel where the captain handles the ship.  We’re learning about all the different instruments and what they do.  How much fun will this be for our grandchildren if they decide to take some time to serve the Earth after college!!  Laila studied tropical forestry.  She has joined  Greenpeace especially to do projects related to rainforest preservation.

Here’s one of the four mates on the ship. The mates are the only ones who know how to navigate. She was glad to wear one of our Abolish Nuclear Weapons buttons because Greenpeace has been about eliminating Nukes for a long time. If granddaughters had Greenpeace dolls they could wear sailing outfits like these and play mate and scientist, or media specialist who makes films of all the projects.

The ship has a helicopter deck and a place to store the copter; it also has a crow’s nest up high where one of the mates sits and spots the places in the ice where it’s easiest to break it up with the weight of the ship.  We could imagine it just slipping over the ice and then crunching down.  Wow!

Everybody was very glad to learn about the project the Arctic Sunrise is helping with now. It’s about coal.The ship is traveling along the East Coast, docking to network with community groups who are working to eliminate the use of coal for generating power, as well as to limit the mining of coal in ways that destroy the land. We learned that coal power is not really economical. Of course also the greenhouse gas emissions when it is burned are very destructive for all of us.

These Greenpeace people are out there to rescue the planet.  That’s the kind of hero or heroine doll our grandchildren need.  Get busy, Hasbro Company.  Retire G.I. Joe and let’s go!!

On our tour we met also some performers from the FLUX FACTORY.  Here they are selling Houseboat Condominiums up near the North Pole.  The Arctic Palms, they call them.  What’s up??? These artists are raising our consciousness to the consequences of Global Warming (the sort made worse by coal) by creating a sales campaign with scale models and brochures, everything you need to sell real estate.  Fun to meet the Flux Artists!!  Hey, Mattel, how about a Flux Artist Barbie and Ken??

– Caroline Chinlund
for the Granny Peace Brigade