I ran out to the marina yesterday first thing to catch the morning light and the early birds. Spring sunshine has never been so welcome after this winter of heavy rain. This week, I was reminded how light sensitive I am. One day of clouds sent me into a funk, while anything felt possible with the bright sun’s animating force. In the past week, everything with roots around her seems to be growing inches each day. The trees are leafing out and purple lupine and California Poppy are blinking from sidewalks, city parks and open lots, hints of the superbloom that is occuring across the state.
While I’m a bit of an everyday-is-earth-day sort, Saturday, April 22 is officially Earth Day. Bay Station has a show that day at the Berkeley Back Room, and while it’s not an official Earth Day event, I’ve been struck by how many of our songs — which have accrued over the past 10 years of this collaborative project of Kwame, Steve and I — are concerned with climate-related issues.
We’re hardly the only musicians addressing threats to the environment. SF musician /activist Pete Kronowitt alerted me to Music Declares Emergency a few years back, a nonprofit intent on getting artists, music fans and industry members looped into the climate movement. This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned the organization, but I wanted to point out their free action pack and new Fan Club for the environment.
In other environmental news, Susan alerted me to the work of The Old Growth Forest Network which is dedicated to protecting, old-growth, native forests in the U.S. This week, East Bay Regional Parks is inducting Oakland’s Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park into the Old Growth Forest Network with a ceremony in Fern Dell that is open to the public.
“This is the map of the forsaken world.
This is the world without end
where forests have been cut away from their trees.
These are the lines wolf could not pass over.
This is what I know from science:
that a grain of dust dwells at the center
of every flake of snow,
that ice can have its way with land,
that wolves live inside a circle
of their own beginning.
This is what I know from blood:
the first language is not our own.”