Do you know what an Earth Ball is? It's a giant inflatable ball, also called a cage ball, and you can usually find them in the corner of your junior-high-school locker room, waiting for a rainy day so that the coach can say, "No soccer. Today's Earth Ball Day." I am one of those. I was manufactured sometime in the early 1980s, and I have lived most of my life in a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland. It is a peaceful existence and a generally happy one.