Save the Date - October 30, 2010

From the website Beyond Katrina


On Saturday, October 30, from Houma, Louisiana to Pensacola Florida, all along the waterways affected by the oil spill of April 20, 2010, people will gather together in a spirit of appreciation for their beautiful, damaged home and their own determination to thrive. On that day school students, church groups, birdwatchers and fishermen, artists and musicians, families and friends will get together to talk about how the oil spill has affected their lives, and who and what has given them strength. They will sing, reflect, play music, read poems, eat good food, drum or whatever feels right. Each group will create a simple picture out of ordinary materials—a bird, a shrimp, a human figure or anything else that represents the vitality of life in the Gulf—and take a photograph of themselves with their image. Groups that create a picture fifty feet long or larger will be considered for inclusion in a special, limited number of aerial photos to be taken that day by the award winning New Orleans photographer, Matthew D. White. The photographs will be combined and every group will receive a presentation of the images on digital disc.

Radical Joy For Hard Times, the organization sponsoring the event, is calling for Gulf Coast citizens, groups and organizations to support the effort by either organizing or participating in an event. Groups can sign up for an event via the website at http://www.radicaljoyforhardtimes.org. It is not necessary for groups to have their plans finalized at the time of sign up as the information can be self updated at any time.

Radical Joy for Hard Times, http://www.radicaljoyforhardtimes.org is a non-profit 501c3 organization whose mission is to find and make beauty in wounded places. On June 19, for their Global Earth Exchange, people on all the seven continents of the Earth went to clear-cut forests, polluted rivers, damaged beaches, the sites of coal and gas mining, and other places to gather, tell their stories, and make simple acts of beauty. The Gulf Coast Rising Project is the latest venture in the organization’s effort to introduce a new, more intimate environmentalism for all citizens of the Earth.