Playing for Change is a self-described “multimedia movement” that connects people from all over the world in musical projects, inspiring everyone exposed to feel uplifted and united.
“The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race.” – Read more.
Playing for Change records songs and videos via a mobile recording studio, and supports the musicians who participate as well as their communities. These musicians also tour and play benefit concerts to share their music and their call to be charitable, aware, and collaborative.
On October 7th, some motivated local girls visited the Center for Living Peace to kick off their new year in service as Girl Scouts, and to participate in Jumpstart’s annual Read for the Record. Volunteers from UCI’s Jumpstart club read the official story, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, and helped the girls with craft activities related to the story.
Interdependent with children around the country, these readers were counted in the national drive to build literacy that each year engages millions of children in reading.
Each year Jumpstart coordinates with schools and learning centers across the country to promote literacy. The Center for Living Peace is proud offer our own reading of this year’s official Read-for-the-Record story, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, as well as activities based on this great book.
Join us tomorrow 3:30-5:30 to read this book and for some great craft activities based on the story.
The first 20 children to attend receive a free copy of the book, The Snowy Day.
If you read the book online NOW, another copy of the book will be donated to a preschool for the event!
This striking image is immediately eye catching, but contains a darker truth. The rainbow which first registers as a joyful image, reveals instead the spectrum of plastic pollution as it affects marine life. This mosaic of plastic fragments was created solely from the stomach contents of one Laysan Albatross chick.
Plastic contamination of our oceans has been making the news recently, as scientists have located two new “garbage patches” in Earth’s oceans just this year, in the Atlantic in April, and in the Indian Ocean in June.
This mockumentary by Santa Monica’s Heal The Bay gives an engaging and highly educational view on plastic in the oceans.
Heal the Bay is a nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to making Southern California coastal waters and watersheds, including Santa Monica Bay, safe, healthy and clean. They have successfully completed several projects in the last 25 years, from spill clean-ups to political sanctions which protect Santa Monica Bay from pollution.
Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins, the husband and wife team who discovered the most recent ‘garbage patch’ have founded the 5 Gyres Institute as a means of continuing to help the situation in our oceans. Check out their very cool and informative website.
Though it would be easiest to think of the ‘garbage patches’ as floating islands, able to be scooped or cleaned up, “there is no island of trash,” says Cummins. “It’s a myth.” Instead, she says the garbage patches resemble plastic soup or confetti. “We now have a third accumulation zone of plastic pollution that shows compounding evidence that the trash isn’t condensed to an island,” she says. “It’s spread out across the entire gyre from coast to coast. The world’s oceans are covered with a thin plastic soup that’s thickest in the middle of the gyres.” It would be far easier to clean up the oceans if the trash were forming islands, Eriksen explains. In his opinion, it isn’t practical to try to recover the plastic from sea because most is fragmented and widely distributed. Read the rest of their interview here.
Until a clean-up plan is developed, the most we can do is educate ourselves and stop more plastic from ‘migrating’ into our oceans. We found these great resources on plastic pollution:
Plastic Pollution — A common misconceptions list (explaining how even recycling plastics is not a long-term sustainable solution, that “biodegradable, plant plastics” are not that great either)
Make good happen: Pick up a reusable water bottle, some reusable grocery bags, and switch over to glass or ceramic containers whenever possible. And of course, spread the word!
You can read more about the astounding photo here, and more about albatrosses and plastics in the Midway Atoll here.
Photo courtesy Stencil Revolution. Stencil by Meek.
