Saturday, April 21, 2012

Earth Day overload (events)

Wisdom Quarterly
Mother Earth, Gaia, and her baby, Luna, one of our orbiting satellites

LOS ANGELES, California - For some reason organizers either do not communicate or do not mind piling on events.

The weekend of April 20-22 is so full of attractive activities that it will be impossible to visit them all. And at these prices, it may not be possible to visit more than one.

There's the big Dalai Lama concert at the Long Beach Arena with HHDL on vocals and maybe some Tibetan trumpeters, gong smashers, rhino horn blowers, wooden glock tappers, chyme tinklers, and a very deep voiced chorus backing. Prepare to be empowered.

Monterey Park is holding its annual Cherry Blossom Festival with other Asian delights, including dramatic Sumo wrestling demonstrations.

The Renaissance Pleasure Faire continues at a foothill "lake," artificial reservoir in Irwindale, the beautiful Santa Fe Dam recreation area.

Then there's the Tadasana Yoga Festival at Santa Monica beach, a kick off event for a traveling yoga zoo that plans to go national then worldwide. (See right sidebar).

Then there is the annual hippie haven jamboree that is the Topanga Earth Day Festival, in the Malibu mountains above the Santa Monica Bay. More blond hippies than Woodstock, Native American teepees, healers, health food, music, and community building are some of the highlights.

Then there are the beach and mountain clean ups -- in the Santa Monica Bay below the Malibu mountains and in the San Gabriels, along the headwaters of the rivers that feed the bay: the East Fork of the San Gabriel River in Azusa.

Coachella goes into deja vu mode, repeating last weekend's line up.

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in dangerous downtown LA's police-and-gang-infested (with it usually not being clear which is worse) area around USC, where two Chinese students were recently executed sitting in their car. And now, using that as an excuse, abusive police can shoot at anyone. One campus security drone already shot a suspect allegedly trying to take property from others. And rather than question his judgment, police are frantically reviewing and interrogating the suspect to see if there's any way the shooting of the Chinese students can be pinned on him.

There are Earth Day (Sunday, April 22nd) events all across the country from humble beginnings when the word "environment" was far more likely to be used in a spelling bee than on anyone's tongue. After all, what could just one person do? Truth is, as history shows, it is only ever one person who does anything then that builds to involve many others. So do something.

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