Photo courtesy Louise Foott, Cork City School, Cork, Ireland
As I boarded the plane to Oakland, being away for nine days,
a world of events and experiences took place from coast to coast
and it all was amazing. From the CHALK4PEACE events at the OAS
in Washington and the Arlington Unitarian Universalist Church,
to finding out that Mothers Acting Up, a global activist group
dedicated to the education and protection of little ones, launched
their second CHALK4PEACE event in front of the Boulder Daily
Camera Building on International Peace Day (while I was in town),
this short journey has been as a lifetime in its enlightenment and
experience. To top it off, I visit the Superior Elementary School
in Louisville, Colorado to find that Mike Wojzcuk, the Arts Specialist,
poet and muralist par excel lance, has painted a 30’ peace sign on
their playground that is there for the young artists to chalk up now
every year.
In time, with hundreds such images painted onto the playgrounds
of the world, the curiosity of extraterrestrials who conduct fly-bys
as to the meaning of the symbol may find Planet Earth not quite as
belligerent and neanderthal as their research would initially lead
them to believe. That the organizers step forward to make their
statement about peace more permanent is positively wonderful.
It is doubtful that CHALK4PEACE will ever go away now; it has
become an annual event for many.
The word
chalk4peace is becoming part of the lexicon; and the spirit
that drives the project encourages the most creative, the most
thoughtful, the most enlightened educators, and the most
enthusiastic girls and boys, and men and women, for whom
peace is a compelling and necessary part of their present and future.
How cool is all that?
Each day, photographs come in from CHALK4PEACE sites; by mail,
by email…more than 1,200 so far.
If you had an event, we’d love to see it.
New galleries for CHALK4PEACE sites are posted, so you can visit
the events that happened this month around Planet Earth.
