Monday, April 22, 2024

Earth Day greetings from Walt Kelly and Pogo Possum

Here's a rather famous Earth Day cartoon by the late Walt Kelly, creator of the long-gone but beloved comic strip Pogo. Kelly is believed to have first used the line "we have met the enemy and he is us" on the first Earth Day, in 1970. He revived it in a two-panel cartoon in 1971, and again in 1972, as the title of a collection of Pogo strips.

Kelly's message paraphrases the report that Oliver Hazard Perry sent to Maj. Gen. William Henry Harrison on Sept. 10, 1813, after Perry's fleet defeated a British fleet on Lake Erie during the War of 1812: "Dear Gen'l: We have met the enemy, and they are ours, two ships, two brigs, one  schooner and one sloop. Yours with great respect and esteem. H. Perry."

 

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