Green Apple Festival April 17-19 - New York (and around the country). This year, the Green Apple Festival expanded it's programs from an awareness raising musical event into a full-on ACTION effort. The goal was to make it America's Largest Earth Day Action. As I mentioned before, I was working for about a month, to help register non-profit organizations to do environmental actions over the course of last weekend. Ten cities were involved (NYC, Boston, Washington DC, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco, LA, Austin,. and Atlanta). Unfortunately, some of the cities had some problems. Denver had to cancel all the actions due to 2 feet of snow, and Austin was hit with heavy wind and rains that pretty much negated most of the actions there as well. That's really disappointing for the people of those communities. So much effort and good intention was put into this weekend. Someone made the comment, "It seems that mother nature is pissed, and just doesn't want our help!"
On Sunday night, in each city, there was a special "Thank-You" Concert held for the volunteers. I was on the production crew in New York, for the show with Deep Banana Blackout at the Bowery Ballroom. It was great to reconnect with Jen (Durkin) as we had hit it off pretty well at 10KLakes last summer, and then again at the Vibes. She has moved to the Southwest since we last saw each other, but I may have planted the 5Rhythms seed into her head, so we have lots to talk about! Chris Barron (from the Spin Doctors) opened up the show with an acoustic set, and DBB came on at about 10:00, and played until 12:30 or so. There was some heavy, heavy funk goin' down, but I suppose we must have exhausted all of the volunteers in NY, because the turn out was pretty low. The last time I saw Deep Banana at the Bowery the place was packed, so I know that had to be the case. I have some ideas about scheduling which might help adjust the situation for next year, so the volunteers can be truly thanked, and the band can play to a packed house of happy, greener, people!
The Green Apple folks I worked with throughout this process were all great. Jon was my 'go-to-guy' in the preliminary work, and it was great working with him. He lives in SF and as it turns out knows my friend Theresa, from Rex Foundation. (yet another small world realization) Rai was the "Volunteer Coordinators Coordinator" in NYC, and she was a real ball of fire. She had to juggle all the volunteer coordinators for all the actions and also coordinated her own actions. She's got tons of positive vibes just oozing out of her and is just great to be around.. Rock on, Rai! Pam was the main hospitality goddess for Green Apple at the Bowery. I worked with her, liaising with the venue and the bands at the gig on Sunday night. She and I made a pretty good team, so hopefully I will have an opportunity to work with her again in the future.
Last week I had 2 great interviews with a very worthwhile organization (who shall remain nameless at this point, just in case things don't work out). I felt really good about how they went down, so I'm keeping my figers crossed the folks doing the hiring will decide that i am, indeed, the right person for the position. I related well with both interviewers, but I know they had about 70 applicants for the position, and were interviewing at least 15 or 20 other people... possibly more. I take heart in the fact that one of the men said to me, "Maybe we'll find another former-teacher, deadhead, hippie-chick.... but who knows." It just sounded like a positive endorsement.
I'll keep you posted.....
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