Today bloggers in one hundred fifty countries are blogging about different aspects of climate change. I’m blogging about going to the Children’s Music Network National Gathering outside Asheville, North Carolina, which fits right in. As I said in my last post, the Magic Penny Award went this year to Tom Chapin. At the open mike the night before the award, he sang a song about eating local food that I want to use. I asked him and he said it’s not recorded yet but he’d put it up on his website. I’ll keep checking and let you know when he does. Much of our food travels thousands of miles to get to us, so eating local saves lots of oil, (unless it’s grown in oil-heated hot-houses, not a problem in California) and Tom managed to make a good funny-and-serious song about it. He told us the songwriter “Tom Chapin” is actually two to four people collaborating. The gathering was great. My friend Angela Lloyd came for the first time, and at the Peace & Social Justice song swap we sang the recycling song Candy Forest and I wrote, “Cycles,” with Angela playing her washboard with all the bells and whistles on it (literally). Scott Bierko sang his high-energy song celebrating singing about what annoys/scares/concerns/elates you: “Sing About That!” Next Bonnie Lockhart and I led a song swap of songs to foster appreciation of nature—songs about observing and coming to care about the natural world before we go marching off to save it. Jenny Heitler-Klevens (of Two of a Kind) sang her “I Am a Turtle” a perfect go-with to my mom’s “You Can’t Make a Turtle Come Out.” I brought home the CD, Going on an Adventure. The keynoter was Billy Jonas, a human dynamo of a percussionist and singer and a deep thinker. A lot of his percussion is done on found and recycled instruments and his songs are zany and intelligent. Check him out! On the home front, find a climate-change action near you on the 350 website map, and join in on October 24. In Berkeley, there’s meditation at 11 a.m. at the West Berkeley Senior Center at Sixth and Hearst followed by a spirited gathering at noon down the block at Sixth and University to wave signs about climate change at that busy intersection. This morning I woke up thinking about Malvina’s “World Gone Beautiful (because it’s about to die)” which also, alas, fits right into today’s theme. It’s on Ear to the Ground and Malvina Reynolds.  Then I saw an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the earthquake here twenty years ago this month that stopped the World Series, an emblematic example of the adage that “Nature bats last.” And an article on the National Geographic website about sea snot! Miles-long mucus-like blobs full of germs and stuff, getting more common as the oceans warm up. I bet twenty people are writing songs about that right now and I’m one of them! Every third-grader will want to sing it! ©2009 by Nancy Schimmelhttp://www.cmnonline.org/http://64.23.8.93/index.htmlhttp://www.angelalloyd.com/http://www.bonnielockhart.com/http://www.twoofakind.com/Recordings.asphttp://www.billyjonas.com/http://www.350.org/maphttp://www.folkways.si.edu/albumdetails.aspx?itemid=2675http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/15/SP5T1A4J3F.DTLhttp://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091008-giant-sea-mucus-blobs.htmlsrc="CACD2573-12EF-4077-A0FF-A0B0D66538F0_files/shapeimage_2_link_7.png"
My favorite environ-mental song on this CD from Two of a Kind (David and Jenny Heitler-Klevans) is “The Double Life of Amphibians”http://www.twoofakind.com/Default.asp
Thursday, October 15, 2009
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