Many people know about the backwaters of Kerala, in the vicinity of Cochin and Alleppey. I spent some time there last week, and the scenery and ambiance were exquisite. The water, as you can see in these eight photos, while full of life, is calming to the soul. This man was treating his boat with fish oil.
I had the great pleasure of trekking for a few hours in the Periyar Tiger Reserve in Thekkady, next to Kumily where I have been staying for the past weeks. These twelve images taken by Santhan and me show much better than I can write of the pristine beauty in this well cared for reserve, and the amazing light all around. The picture that looks like mud is actually a recent print from a young tiger.
Gallery Red Frog, which opened in Kumily last September, presented a new show entitled 'Elephant' that drew a crowd for the opening last night. These twenty-one images capture some of the spirit of the event, along with most of the contributing artists themselves. Bravo, Red Frog and Santhan, who curated this show. The Gallery Red Frog website features some of the elephant images as well as at least one previous show. Manu, gallery owner, and artists Shaji, Martin, and Santhan are shown here relaxing after all the hard work they put in to prepare for the opening.
These thirteen slides span scenes from Trivandrum to Kumily. First you will see the Earth Pledge posted on the grounds of the museum park in Trivandrum, where I met with Latha Kurian Rajeev. Latha is curator of Gallery 360 where an exhibit showing one of the stories of Sita, wife of Rama, just finished. The twenty-seven images on canvas are painted by contemporary artists in the old temple mural style. Shown here is author Paul Molyneaux with Sita.
After my stay in Trivandrum, I headed to Cochin (Kochi) where Santhan and I visited the studio and a worksite of Rajan Krishnan, longtime friend of Santhan and featured artist with Bodhi Art. 
This ten photo slideshow reveals the thrilling inside story of work in progress. We are at Jayan V.K.'s Terra Crafts terra cotta production studio, where students from three local art schools, more than one hundred contributors in all, are helping Rajan produce thousands of clay pieces for an installation that will be included in an Earth themed exhibit at Bodhi in Mumbai in January. I made a couple of pieces by hand, and ate lunch with the students and crew. Jayan is shown serving rice and then standing with his terra cotta creation of Ganesh; Rajan beams light through smiles in a handful of these shots.
Greetings from South India! I arrived in Chennai, in the state of Tamil Nadu, where Kalai and Raju and son Goutha fed me, gave up their beds to let me sleep at odd times, and welcomed me so sweetly that leaving seemed unnatural. Raju and I met squished side by side on a bus last year, and enjoyed our first hour of conversation about his work in sales management at a water purification company, and the Art of Living ashram where volunteers. He was fascinated with Beauty of Water, and we kept in touch. Raju is supporting Beauty of Water in many ways, for which I am deeply grateful.
Here we are in front of the most prominent art piece in their hall: a gigantic, fantastic image of waterfalls; cropped out of the picture for size reasons was an empty box from their just-installed water filter. Ya gotta love synchronicity!
I am back from a SUPERB visit to Germany and the Weimar Summer Courses. These 45 slides show course activities, my instructors and the leader of the program, Burkhardt Kolbmüller, scenes from in and around Weimar, such as Goethe's town and garden houses, Schiller Strasse; a 1923 home and buildings from the Bauhaus in Weimar, an original Rodin sculpture (shown here) that lives in the lobby of the current Bauhaus University, the reconstructed office of Walter Gropius, and his studio, from which you can see the Buchenwald Memorial bell tower in the distance; some of the Bauhaus in nearby Dessau, such as master houses where Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky lived; a lovely dormatory structure where I stayed during the course, an admittedly unimaginative depiction of my visit to the famous art festival, documenta 12, and more.
I have also posted 15 photos I took at the Buchenwald Memorial just outside of Weimar. This concentration camp was the largest in the German Reich by the end of World War II, imprisoning more than 250,000 people over eight years, 55,000 of whom died there.
Fees and services: Fiscal sponsorship services include funds administration and accounting. The fees charged for fiscal sponsorship among these entities range from free to 10% of donations received, with most falling between 6% and 9%, plus a modest annual or quarterly fee.
Additional services offered may include: credit/debit card processing, grant support, fundraising guidance, online fundraising, leadership development, executive expertise, volunteer recruitment, human resource management, payroll, publicity, email marketing, community outreach, tabling at events, networking, technical support, website creation, content management design, database management, online tools such as forums, legal guidance, leases, contracts, insurance, and office space.
Project types: Here is a sampling of different types of projects the fiscal sponsors named above aim to partner with: environmental campaigns and programs, artists of numerous media, international social, economic, and environmental projects, community building, arts and culture, spiritual renewal, ecological restoration that makes a cultural impact by creating progressive change, environmental sustainability, international development, and youth development and organizing.
Simple application processes: While the application processes for each of these fiscal sponsors vary, it seems that the sponsors understand that there is a reason their applicants elect not to form their own non-profit organizations. That is, applicants are probably small and grassroots, hence the need for fiscal sponsorship. Most of the application procedures are relatively simple, which is refreshing and encouraging.
I am also in deep inquiry about WATER, water itself. I have a lot of internal messages telling me to sit with water, Be with water, and explore it on multiple levels. When I go there even just in my mind, I pretend I am a rippling lake, or a meandering river. I feel my weight as a noisy waterfall, or the weightlessness of water streaming upwards in a city fountain somewhere. I expand and become rain, falling onto the ground, forming puddles that children splash into with rubber boots. I am snow, silently floating down onto a mountain. When I imagine how these forms of water feel, personified, I become free, fluid, happy, danceful, and spiritually high. I get that this is important toward guiding The Water Project and understanding its power. We are all water.
I have been staying in Antigua lately, and it is easy to get lost here. An amazing person, who runs a community center that grows leaders who can organize to obtain government funding for projects in their communities, loaned me a CD of children´s art, and I can´t find his place to return it. That may be because he doesn´t put a sign outside of his door, which may be because the good work he is doing could possibly get him killed. So if his center isn´t open it is hard to find.
I visited Tikal yesterday, a famous park that preserves a set of gigantic Mayan ruins. Here are my photos. 
Cheered up by our interaction, I descended the steep steps in pursuit of my next story. I wandered around the side of the temple, and found another area of men working, willing to be photographed. This time they were setting up to bring rocks and water to the guys at the top. What did they use for this feat? A cable system invented by one of the restorers, powered by... well, just take a look.
Here are eleven photos showing Antigua, some drawings, and El Remate in El Petén, Guatemala, where I continue with The Water Project. I have a new camera, and aspire to the greatness of Terry´s photography... this will take practice!
