by levan mindiashvili

Earth Fest Floods

Earth Fest Floods

Brittany DeVries

Date: Wed Apr 23 21:06:43 2008

Mother Nature clearly heard O.A.R's Mark Roberge on Sunday.

Soon after "Love and Memories" reverberated through the loud speakers to hundreds of fans on the National Mall for D.C.'s 2008 Earth Festival, the clouds let go, and that same crowd was drowning deep inside her water as well.

During the first electrical storm, even actor Chevy Chase and Umphrey's McGee couldn't keep the crowd from running to take cover. Ponchos and umbrellas found solace beneath the roof of the Smithsonian entrance, under large magnolia trees, or by sidling up to workers at their tented advertisement booths.

The second storm forced the organization to cancel the rest of the afternoon, and the chaos on the Mall turned into chaos in the streets and at the Metro.

The Green Apple Festival, partnered with the Earth Day Network, put on D.C.'s wet and wild Earth Day event. The festival is actually part of a nationwide collaboration that includes eight festivals simultaneously taking place in eight major cities throughout the country.

Though much of this year's lineup was spoiled by the weather, a handful of top bands, public figures and activists still kept the audience pumped for most of the day.

American Idol's Blake Lewis beat-boxed the National Anthem to kick off the event. O.A.R played an acoustic set that included a Dylan cover of "The Times They Are A Changin,'" very fitting with the festival's theme of global concern. Umphrey's McGee and Warren Haynes also took the stage between the rain's adamant performances.

Junior Kristin Astley attended the event with friends.
"Despite the torrential downpour, the bands were amazing," Astley said. "The crowd especially came to life when Edward Norton delivered his speech."

Other speakers addressing environmental concerns included Ed Begley, Jr., NASA scientist Dr. James E. Hansen, journalist Thomas Friedman, Olympic skier Joe Holland, and Earth day Network President Kathleen Rogers.

Rogers asked the audience members to "Call for Climate," using cell phones to speak with their representatives.
Astley said that the concept of the Earth Day Festival conveys an important message.

"It brings in a lot of diverse people," Astley said. "It informs us of global concerns and the actions we need to take to preserve the environment."

Privilege of Being, by Robert Hass

Many are making love. Up above, the angels
in the unshaken ether and crystal of human longing
are braiding one another's hair, which is strawberry blond
and the texture of cold rivers. They glance
down from time to time at the awkward ecstasy--
it must look to them like featherless birds
splashing in the spring puddle of a bed--
and then one woman, she is about to come,
peels back the man's shut eyelids and says,
look at me, and he does. Or is it the man
tugging the curtain rope in that dark theater?
Anyway, they do, they look at each other;
two beings with evolved eyes, rapacious,
startled, connected at the belly in an unbelievably sweet
lubricious glue, stare at each other,
and the angels are desolate. They hate it. They shudder pathetically
like lithographs of Victorian beggars
with perfect features and alabaster skin hawking rags
in the lewd alleys of the novel.
All of creation is offended by this distress.
It is like the keening sound the moon makes sometimes,
rising. The lovers especially cannot bear it,
it fills them with unspeakable sadness, so that
they close their eyes again and hold each other, each
feeling the mortal singularity of the body
they have enchanted out of death for an hour so,
and one day, running at sunset, the woman says to the man,
I woke up feeling so sad this morning because I realized
that you could not, as much as I love you,
dear heart, cure my loneliness,
wherewith she touched his cheek to reassure him
that she did not mean to hurt him with this truth.
And the man is not hurt exactly,
he understands that life has limits, that people
die young, fail at love,
fail of their ambitions. He runs beside her, he thinks
of the sadness they have gasped and crooned their way out of
coming, clutching each other with old invented
forms of grace and clumsy gratitude, ready
to be alone again, or dissatisfied, or merely
companionable like the couples on the summer beach
reading magazine articles about intimacy between the sexes
to themselves, and to each other,
and to the immense, illiterate, consoling angels.