Monday, May 02, 2005

Well, the wedding was gorgeous. Beautiful setting. Love everywhere. Some drama, to keep things interesting. Plus amazing food (especially the salad--strawberries and dried figs and candied pecans on a bed of dark peppery greens. Mmmm!) I hope C & R are having a glorious honeymoon in Paris (and I hope C is finding some good vegan delicacies--it's hard to imagine Paris without cheese! )

There is another wedding of the century happening soon in my world. My spectacular cousin Sahra is getting married to her boyfriend Mark in a couple of weeks. We are taking the train up to Washington; the tracks hug the West coast, so the views should be incredible. Check out the Mark and Sahra website--they've included tribute to my aunt Mimi (Marion; Sahra's grandmother), who died in March. Seeing her young self on the screen made my heart do a little hiccup. We were supposed to celebrate her 90th birthday the day before the wedding; instead, we'll celebate her life. It will be so good to be surrounded by family. I can't wait.

I had a very cool experience yesterday, too--I was invited to attend the awards banquet of the Angeles Chapter Sierra Club. What lovely and dedicated people. I sat at the Endangered Species Task Force table, which was decorated with tons of stuffed and plastic animals; a lion and a gorilla stared at me as I ate. I've been on a bit of a banquet circuit, lately--not a bad circuit to be on, I must say (one day, I feel I should do a run down of vegetarian plates at banquets--they run the gamut from luscious wild mushroom ravioli to a few dry potato wedges swimming in what appears to be chicken gravy). I still feel so inspired by all that the Sierra Club is doing to protect our environment. And I met the man who, with the encouragement of his coin-collecting wife, designed the California State Quarter. They are a very fun couple; it was cool to hear about their journey (over 8,000 people submitted designs to the public contest.) I'll have to admit, I voted for another design when the finalists were posted, but after hearing his story, I'm glad his tribute to John Muir won.

2 comments:

M. Damian McNicholl said...

On matters environmental, there's an excellent program running on PBS currently--they often repeat these through the ensuing couple of weeks--about how important the Brazalian nut tree (which grows to 500 feet tall) is to the rain forest, how it really is vital both to the forest's life and ultimately to us. They go into considerable and fascinating detail about how everything in the forst is inter-connected. Thought I'd mention it in case anyone wishes to look out for it.

gayle said...

Thanks, Damian--I will definitely look for that. I love seeing concrete evidence of interconnectedness--it is so often such an abstract sounding concept (even though I know it is real and playing itself out everywhere.) I had some good conversations last night about how interconnected everything is (we were speaking specifically about non-native plants, and how they disrupt the interconnectedness of regional ecosystems. It is amazing what we do to our planet. And it is amazing that our planet keeps on chugging along. I want to see A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but part of me doesn't want to see the Earth blow up--that's our home!)