Say what you like about Earth Day — there’s someone I know out there is snarking about it right now, if he even knows about it — but if you ask me, it’s a holiday about celebrating and embracing something that is here, visible, tangible, and unarguably real. People survived and thrived for hundreds of thousands of years without holding major festivals for specific deities, without holding big annual parties for imaginary constructions like nation-states. Nation states are all well and good, but the Earth is here, tangible, and absolutely necessary for our survival. It’s as close to sacred as …