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6 Inch Wide Purple Butterfly
In 1972 the writer's stepson David was mowing the family lawn and accidentally chopped the leg off of a toad. He was upset about it.
She suddenly decided to stop mowing her lawn. The following year when the local city
magistrates ordered her to mow, she issued a press release about the nonviolence aspects of not mowing. Channel 8 WJW Cleveland Ohio responded.. and scheduled aninterview.. but the following day as she was driving up the street in the Boxville type development.. she felt no tv show could communicate
anything but an unkempt lawn surrounded by neatly manicured ones in which all dandelions were decapitated.
She went in to cancel the show and while she was on the phone the Channel 8 van
drove up. She waited for the newsman to knock on the door. He never did. She looked out
back.. and saw him filming a 6 foot high thistle plant with a lavender bloom.. upon
one flower had alighted a 6 inch wide 4 inch long deep royal purple butterfly who was
moving her wings back and forth. Never before or since has she seen that size butterfly.
The scene was the whole television show.. the lavenderv thistle and deep purple
butterfly slowly moving her wings back and forth, with no sound.
Her guru subsequently let her know that he had materialized the butterfly for her
and that he had given victory in the court case.
The city came in and mowed down the lawn. Two merciful angels, Bill Whitaker with Beverly Rose assisting with research were the attorneys and filed directly in federal
court, challenging compulsory mowing on the basis that it violates the 1st amendment of the U.S. constitution to force someone to kill living beings against spiritual principles. The judge ruled the city had to pay damages. It is virtually impossible to mow a lawn without killing baby sapling trees, ants, butterflies, fireflies, toads, bumblebees etc. With huge harvesters, the devastation is much greater as red winged blackbirds and small field mammals are shredded.
Atty Rappoport in the Chicago EPA developed a legal brief
defending those who are fighting against compulsory mowing
FoodNotLawns Dot Com has extensive chapters.
