the tropics are such a gaudy joke.

"The tropics are such a gaudy joke: people have to live with every other kind of poverty, but a fortune in flowers, growing out of every nook and cranny of anything. If you could just build an economy on flowers. I stayed in a house that had vanilla orchids growing out of the gutters and a banana tree coming up under the kitchen sink. I swear. There were some kind of little animals too, like mongooses."

(from Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver, p.88)

music!

This most recent project I've been involved in is co-producing a CD to be used in the curriculum of a set of schools in Fiji. These songs all teach human values in some way (you know, respect, devotion, etc) and are to be used in conjunction with other mediums (stories, art, etc) to reach the most amount of kids as possible. This CD is another volunteer's main project, and she recruited musicians to help her put it together (!!).

So. Clearly, teaching about waste management in villages, sometimes sifting through mountains of trash while piglets are running about, is incredibly valuable too. But this project, where I am told to play the guitar all day, think up chord progressions to fit the wonderfully cheesy lyrics of these songs, is kind of like a dream.

We recorded 6 songs this past week, and will get together again in the coming months to make up/record the rest. SO. FUN.