"Rhythm & Roots Fest" Revelry

Here's a movie of my photos from this past weekend at the Rhythm & Roots Festival (Charlestown, RI).

Some related photo libraries:
Beth Fridinger
Alex's Zydeco Pictures

Real Love Makes the World Dance

This weekend is the Rhythm & Roots festival in Rhode Island, with Donna the Buffalo and a host of other excellent bands. What fun it will be to share friendship, music, dancing, good food and great weather in the lovely outdoors! Erica painted this vibrant poster for our trip (thank you Erica!) with lyrics from DTB's "Love and Gasoline" (Tara Nevins):

"Sunrise and the whole world sees
All that lays before is made for you and me
Real love makes the world dance
Universal language stands a fighting chance"

Here's to unity in our world. May we love one another and be in peace -- a dance for living, a dance for life!

Life Force

Sun, you are my lover.
River, you are my brother.
Trees, you are my closest companions.
Earth, you are the cradle of my life force.

(Photo: Brighton Dam in Maryland)

For James

God bless you, Jaime, on your new soul path. May it be resplendent with joy, wonder, beauty, happiness and health. You enriched my life with your friendship, your music, your heart full of love and your openness always. Thank you. I send love and hopes that our spirit paths will cross again.

James passed away on June 25, 2007 (Photo courtesy of Roy)

Uniting to Solve a Problem

Al Gore was at UMBC a couple of weeks ago to give his inconvenient truth presentation. The audience was 4000 strong and included MD Senators Mikulski and Sarbanes. He was an excellent speaker—engaging, inspiring, reflective, and warm. I’m so glad Erica, Eric, Lindsey and I could be there together. It was a beautiful and exciting spring evening!

If global warming will be our children’s greatest challenge in their adult years, how will our world be different then? Will the scientific community be united on key issues? Will advocacy groups be adequately represented? Will researchers have access to unbiased resources? Will politicians put health and welfare ahead of donor interests? Will businesses respect the precautionary principle? Will laymen embrace knowledge-seeking with zeal? Will skeptics be receptive to new ideas about change? How will we unite as the community of mankind to help solve a shared problem?

Information about global warming streams daily from newspapers, the Internet, books, speakers, friends, magazines, etc. It’s easy to amass information and questions about how humans impact the Earth and what Earth’s natural rhythms are apart from our human influence.

All questions, though, ultimately seem to point to our relationship with nature, Earth, and the universe. It seems hard to deny that we are one and that one of our greatest human challenges is to respect, value, and appreciate our role in nurturing one another.

For our children, Laurie David and Cambria Gordon have written The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming to help understand why global warming happens and how we can work together to stop it. It’s scheduled for publication by Scholastic, Inc. in September 2007.

• Sierra Club on Global Warming
• Crispin Tickell
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
• An Inconvenient Truth

(Photo from Apollo 11, July 16, 1969)

Mother's Day

Laurie:
You will always be Mom to Kevin and Bob,
always Aunt Laurie to Erica
and always Laur to me.
We're thinking of you now,
everyday missing you.
Where are you in spirit?
We feel you here forever.
We love you. God bless you.
Let us know how you’re doing in your new life.

Happy Birthday, Mom

Today is Mom’s 75th birthday — happy birthday! We celebrated at Ceiba last night, an enticing Latin-American restaurant in DC named after the town in Puerto Rico near where Mom, Dad and Laurie lived when Laurie was born. Dinner was excellent: albondigas, beef empanadas, pork feijoadas, crab torrejitas and black beans with margaritas, pina coladas, and sangria — so good! We toasted Mom and remembered Laurie, who was with us at the restaurant some months after it opened in 2003. A bright and colorful mural of tropical birds was our backdrop, an image of joy and beauty that is always Puerto Rico. Check out the photos of a magnificent 300-year old ceiba tree on the island of Vieques, off PR's east coast near Ceiba.