Fun Photos from Earth Week

And an invitation to join me Saturday!

What a world!

What a week!

Tuesday afternoon’s reading with five other poets at the South Carolina State Museum celebrated the launch of Coast Lines, the new anthology of poetry and photography about the South Carolina coastal plains, marshes, swamps, and coast.

Tuesday evening's Earth Day Poetry Reading at the Bierkeller was a benefit for Congaree Riverkeeper and featured Columbia poets Evelyn Berry, me, Lawrence Rhu, Al Black, Ed Madden and the Poet Laureate of Columbia, Jennifer Bartell Boykin

Tuesday was also the 10th birthday of my book, Earth Joy Writing: Creating Harmony through Journaling and Nature

Also on Tuesday, my dog Lenny and I met this Big Mama Pekin Duck and her duckling down at the beaver pond in our neighborhood.

These ducks are not normally found in the wild (hence their Chinese restaurant-like name), but this duck has lived with the Canadian Geese at the beaver pond for several years.

This was the first time we saw her with a youngster.

And she seems to be a doing a good job of nagging that teenager to cross the street safely.

Bonus points for watching until you hear Lenny laugh at the end.

While the rain held out on Tuesday for all the Earth Day events, it started pouring Wednesday morning as I headed across town to take Lenny for eye surgery. The geese and goslings at the beaver pond told me they were praying for Lenny as I drove by later that day.

He did great! Dr. Benson also cleaned his teeth, and while he’s had nine extractions in the past because his first year was spent unhoused in Greenwood, this time he got a clean bill of teeth and won’t need to have them cleaned for another two years - when he’s 13!

Rescue dogs are to fancy pure breds

Like poetry is to artificial intelligence

Congaree National Park entrance sign and me in a field of longleaf and loblolly pine

Thursday took me out to a volunteer appreciation potluck lunch at Congaree National Park where, for the past 5 years, I’ve volunteered to teach seasonal forest journaling workshops based on Earth Joy Writing for their wellness program.

The next one is scheduled for May 31 and registration opens soon.

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Today I’m resting. Getting my monthly massage from a gifted healer. Sitting and knitting with Lenny after. Modeling the fact that those of us who are artists, activists, writers, organizers, community builders and hope keepers need to take care of ourselves, too.

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…hope keepers need to take care of ourselves, too.

Earth Day Climate Action Fair with the Columbia Climate Protection Action Committee

Saturday
April 26, 2025
9:00 am-1:00 pm

In celebration of Earth Day, the City of Columbia is hosting a Climate Action Fair on Boyd Plaza designed to educate, inspire, and engage the public around environmental awareness and sustainability.

The carnival-like fair features free face painting, a photo booth, music, and appearances by local mascots such as the City’s Recycling Wizard and Cocky. In addition, the fair showcases interactive booths hosted by environmental organizations and hands-on workshops like haiku writing and seed planting. The event will also include a climate-themed virtual art unveiling, with participating artists (including me!) holding a panel discussion at 12:00 PM about their role in engaging the public in climate conversations.

Local artist Easel Cathedral (aka Tranhern Cook) will live-paint a work of art, which will be raffled off to attendees through free tickets distributed by environmental educators.

This is a FREE family friendly event brought to you by the Columbia Climate Protection Action Committee (CPAC) with co-hosts SC Public Health Association and Central Midlands Council of Governments.

I hope to see you there!

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But wherever you are, remember that you are right here.

As the former Poet Laureate of Columbia, Ed Madden, reminded us at Tuesday’s Earth Day Poetry Reading:

“In her diary of 1939, Virginia Woolf records hearing Hitler on the radio. Her husband Leonard was in the garden he’d painstakingly constructed at Monk’s House, their damp green cottage in Rodmell, East Sussex. ‘I shan’t come in,’ he shouted. ‘I’m planting iris, and they will be flowering long after he is dead.’”

—from Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing, (Norton, 2020).

The irises are still here.

Ducks and ducklings and geese and goslings and dogs and trees are still here, oh my.

Poetry and friends and books and gatherings and birthdays are still here, oh my.

So much still beautiful and alive.

Keep that Green Ink flowing, my friends.