Celebrating Our Beautiful Earth

I was going to have Mari write a "Earth" poem like the one she wrote HERE, or get Lila to draw a beautiful picture celebrating Earth Day—maybe post a few tips on how we could be better about reducing, reusing and recycling, like those I found HERE. I even considered posting Marvin Gaye's "Mercy, Mercy Me," the ultimate Earth Day anthem. Each of these things was meant to remind my MyBrownBaby friends to protect our planet at all costs. After all, we have but one Earth; who are we to do anything but revere all that the Lord has made?

And then I started flipping through my iPhotos and came across some breathtaking pictures—each one of them taken over the past year as our family made a much more conscious effort to enjoy nature and the great outdoors. I'm more of a keep-it-in-the-house kind of girl, but I have to admit that I really enjoyed breathing in the fresh air and admiring the wonders of nature. Here, our year-long celebration of the Earth, in pictures. My hope is that you'll be inspired by our journey, and perhaps create some beautiful outdoor memories of your own.

Snow Balls, February 2010

Lila and her best friend, Maggie, got a kick out of seeing who could make the biggest snow ball!

The Secret Life of Bees, April 2009

When our cousin found a wall-wide beehive nestled in the porch wall of his house, we got a lesson on bees that we wouldn't soon forget. Mari waited patiently while the beekeepers got the job done.

Spring Flowers, April 2009

Who can resist spending quality time out on the front lawn when Spring is in bloom? We sure can't!

Mother's Day, 2009

Sometimes it's the simple things, like watching your children run and play and giggle in the park, that make Mother's Day the most special.

Carnival B-Day Party, June 2009

What do you know about egg races, hoola hoop contests, and water balloon tosses? I can tell you they're GREAT summer party games, especially if you're partying outdoors. This is Lila, dead serious about winning a pack of gummy bears for keeping her hoola hoop going the longest.

Camping Trip, June 2009

A whole weekend outdoors. With bugs. And weird night noises. And campfires with s'mores and lots of great grilling. Not sure I want to do this again—but I will have stories for the grandkids!

Hilton Head, July 2009

Our family vacation in one of the most beautiful towns we've ever visited—full of great history and natural beauty.

Kentucky Wind Mills, August 2009

I shot this picture of the incredible flat lands of Kentucky while riding with The Blogrollers back from BlogHer 2009. Man was that ride fun—matched only by the scenery of our beautiful country whizzing by.

Black Butterfly, August 2009

Black butterfly/Sail across the waters/Tell your sons and daughters/What the struggle brings. (Man, I love that song—that Niecy Williams sure can belt it out, can't she? This butterfly, which we found in our driveway, was a source of endless fascination for the kids.

Gone Fishing, September 2009

The kids had a blast getting fishing lessons from their Uncle Marvin, but it was my mom-in-law, Helen, who schooled everybody when she caught three fish!

Our Garden, September 2009

Every year the girls and I plant and maintain a container garden out on our back deck; the rosemary, thyme, sage, peppermint, flat-leaf parsley, cilantro and basil give our food the best zing, and the colorful flowers keep butterflies and hummingbirds aflutter just outside our kitchen picture window. We tend our garden with love.

Soccer Game, November 2009

The girls stayed active out on the soccer field—the perfect way to get in some exercise and enjoy the outdoors.

Martin Luther King Day, January 2010

This is my beautiful nephew Miles, who volunteered at this year's MLK Day celebration in Atlanta, at the MLK Center, a national historic park site.

The Great Snowstorm, February 2010

We actually got enough snow to make two snowmen. This one, with carrots for eyes and a nose and a random Gap hat (because our snowmen are supa fly!) was pulled together by Mari.

ENJOY THIS DAY, AND EVERYDAY, CELEBRATING THE WONDERS OF OUR PLANET—AND HAPPY EARTH DAY!

Green is the New Black!

So how fly is my sister-in-law/BFF/resident environmentalist Angelou? So fly that she's in Washington, repping her non-profit children's environmental group, Greening Youth Foundation, at a White House Conference on America’s Great Outdoors. Newark Mayor Cory Booker is there. Governor Bill Richardson is there, too, as are the heads of the Departments of Interior, Agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Agency. And sometime today, she's scheduled to meet favorite guy, President Barack Obama!

The conference is part of President Obama's ongoing conversation about the greening of America, and Angelou is onboard to talk about how to include both people of color as well as kids and young adults in the Green Revolution. It is a mission that is a passion of Angelou's, and she's done some pretty incredible things with her foundation: Her team teaches children in a dozen schools throughout the Atlanta area how to respect and protect the environment; she's lined up several summer internship programs for high school and college students in the nation's national parks, and; she's become quite the outspoken advocate on behalf of organizations working to get black folks engaged in green initiatives.



Most heartening is Angelou's work with the babies; indeed, not even 24 hours after Mrs. Ezeilo finishes up in Washington, she'll be back here in Georgia throwing her second annual Earth Day Festival, which will play host to hundreds of kids who'll exchange recyclables for chances to ride and play in Greening Youth's "green" park full of giant bounce machines and slides, mazes, and fun games. Plus, she's got 14 vendors on deck, including REI, Kroger, Nike, and even the Boy Scouts, to carry out the fun festival’s mission to properly dispose of hundreds of pounds of recyclables and educate the students to effective ways to reduce, reuse and recycle.

If the success of last year’s event is any indication, GYF’s Earth Day Fun Festival will make quite a difference for the environment. In it’s inaugural year, the GYF festival collected: more than three tons—6,000 lbs—of large electronic recyclables like computers, printers, scanners, fax machines, stereos and speakers; about 200 pieces of portable electronics, including cell phones, cameras, PDAs and computer games; about 400 pairs of sneakers; about 100 cubic feet of grocery bags and 400 cubic feet of paper and cardboard, and; more than 100 batteries, plus a few odds and ends, including linear fluorescent bulbs, compact fluorescent bulbs and even a car!

And as if she doesn't have her hands in enough projects, Angelou and her team released a video yesterday announcing a new online reality show she'll be producing, which will chronicle the journey of GYF interns set to become one with nature and the national parks this summer. Here's a sneek peek:



For sure, I'm so very proud of my little sis! Check out her Greening Youth Foundation HERE, become a FaceBook fan of her organization (on the right lower side of her foundation's homepage), peep her on the cover of our local county magazine, Our Town, and, if you're so moved, please leave her a few words of encouragement as she works in Washington to open doors and breathe new, fresh life into the Green Movement.

Angie? You're THE ONE—love you, girl!

The Brown Baby Hustle: Going Green, Singing Earth's Praises, and Getting Paid

Okay, so maybe I was being a wee-bit dramatic last week when I posted about how giddy I was that the kids were back at school after a loooooong holiday break. Well, not really—but still. There were some bright spots to Mari and Lila's 15-day torture... er, vacation. Specifically, the two of them figured out how to let their creative juices flow and make a little cash (read: hustle Nick, me, Mazi, and anyone else with a dollar) while doing it. Both my girls opened craft "stores" in their rooms (after I banished them there, of course)—Lila, a sewing shop, at which she made and sold for $1 skirts, tops, and dresses for her Barbie dolls; Mari, an art shop in which she sold handmade-to-order bookmarks, pictures, and poetry, starting at 50 cents a pop. I think I must have spent at least a good $15 between the two "businesses"—so much that by the end of the week, I was scraping loose change from the bottom of my purse to pay for this poem Mari whipped up. It was worth every, dust- and gum-covered coin I handed over for it, for sure. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!



EARTH
by Mari Chiles

All of Earth is a beautiful creation
So many lively things inside of it
—animals, electricity, and of course human kind

A masterpiece of artwork from the gods.

But there are also bad things going on/on the wonderful planet we call Earth.
There are harmful things like global warming.
There are harmful things going on to other people, like war.

If everyone could get along, how much of a better place would this planet be?
Well, let's try it out and see!

How lucky are we to have human kind?
But some people probably don't even mind!

Go ahead, try it out yourself
look at how much it helps
just to care.
All of Earth is a wonderful and beautiful creation.

Help MyBrownBaby Support the Greening Youth Foundation

It’s no secret that I’m a total stan for my sister-in-law, Angelou, and not just because she’s smart, accomplished, passionate and fly. I can’t say it enough: She’s an inspiration (and she lets me rock all her shoes, purses, and cute tops!). An attorney by trade, Angelou founded a little over a year ago her own non-profit environmental education program for kids, GREENING YOUTH, to help encourage and teach children—particularly kids in communities of color—how to be stewards of our Earth. She’s got literally a rainbow coalition of kids from the third grade through college preaching the virtues of recycling everything in sight, taking two-minute showers to preserve water, shopping with recyclable bags, learning how to clean up and preserve everything from historical sites to unused green space, and, most importantly, learning how to appreciate the lands that God made.



To further her mission—and to raise funds for her FREE six-week, hands on program that takes environmental education directly into classrooms throughout Georgia—Angelou is having her second annual GREENING YOUTH FOUNDATION GREEN CARPET FUNDRAISER. This year’s fundraiser honors the next generation of leaders in the green movement and highlights the myriad of partnerships the foundation has formed over the past two years to help enhance its work, including the Atlanta Job Corps Center’s Culinary Arts Institute, the Georgia State University AmeriCorps, the Atlanta Job Corps Center, the National Park Service, and Atlanta’s Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site.



Green Carpet attendees also get to hear from Atlanta Falcons fullback Ovie Mughelli, who will be announcing the winners of the Ovie Mughelli "Eco-Challenge," in which participants in GYF’s 12 school-based programs were asked to present creative campaigns to tackle an environmental challenge in their community.

The Green Carpet fundraising event, which is being sponsored by REI, promises to be a fabulous evening with great food, live music and basket giveaways. The November 14th gala will be held at the Georgia Tech Student Success Center, 19 Uncle Heinie Way in Atlanta.

Tickets are $55 per person; $500 to sponsor a table of 10. To purchase tickets, make a donation, or get more information, click HERE, call 678.252.2187, or email Catina Fynn at cwhite97 at aol dot com.

Wordless Wednesday—A Black Butterfly's Pretty Wings

I'm no fan of bugs—not even genteel lady bugs or butterflies with pretty wings. My girls, however, don't hesitate to get up close and personal looks at creepy crawlies (as I recounted in Girls Are Made of Snakes and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails, Too!), and so when they found this colorful Monarch fluttering about in our driveway, they couldn't resist picking it up and giving it a looksie. Isn't it lovely?

One Fish, Two Fish: Out On the Lake With a Bunch of Trout and the MyBrownBaby Crew

I don't do fish. I mean, I'll eat 'em. But I'm not baiting hooks—ew, worms!—and I'm definitely not pulling those suckers out of the water and watching them flap around in a bucket and then taking them back home to be beheaded, scaled, and filleted. Uh uh, no ma'am—not me. (Honestly, I don't know how I would have survived the olden days on the farm—shout-out to Ms. Sharon in the fish department at my local Kroger for making it so all I have to do is rinse, season, and toss the tilapia in the pan. I'm just sayin'.)

Anyway, I don't have a problem standing around and watching other people fish, especially if it involves watching kids who've never been. On a recent weekend visit to my mother-in-law's brother's house, Nick's Uncle Marvin took the entire family on a fishing trip to a fish farm, where the bass and trout were hoppin. Here, a recap of our Sunday morning fishing jaunt:

The fish farm, in the suburbs of the city of LaGrange, GA, was so beautiful and peaceful and serene. Though there were 11 of us there, Uncle Marvin had only two fishing poles, so he borrowed some bamboo sticks from the fish farm owner and MacGyvered them into working fishing poles. My brother-in-law James, Angelou's husband, also purchased $2 worth of worms and let the kids make quick work of ripping them in half (to make them last longer) and skewering them onto their fishing hooks. Of course, no fishing trip is complete without a friendly wager: Everyone put $1 in the pot; whoever caught the biggest fish would get all the fish and the loot. Game on!













The kids were amazingly patient—who knew they could stand quietly and perfectly still for so long? Of course, neither Mari, Lila, Miles nor Cole were fast enough for the little buggers, which kept eating the kids' worms and getting away before they could tug them out of the water. James even replaced the wiggly worms with a tub of slimy liver—supposedly harder for the fish to grab—but it was of no use: the kids had no luck. My mother-in-law, Helen, on the other hand, is a fishing pro. She caught three fish—boom, boom, boom, just like that. Wherever her bamboo poll was, the fish seemed to hop on—so much so, that even Uncle Marvin abandoned his favored spot for Grandma Helen's much hotter one. Yeah—didn't work. Alas, Grandma Helen was the one who took home all the fish and the pot of cash. (BTW: We're not really clear why, but the fish farm housed a small fence full of Emu. Strange. Very, very strange.)

















When it was all said and done, everyone seemed to have a fantastic time—including me and my father-in-law, who sat back, watched the action and proudly proclaimed our "city roots" a little too, um, delicate for the country life. (Frankly, I'm still a little traumatized by our camping trip with Angelou's Greening Youth crew.) But Papa Walter was going to be privy to some good eating, courtesy of his country girl wife—the Fisher Queen.

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