This is a quick thumbnail of  The Red Rocks in Sedona, Arizona, a place of indescribable  beauty.  Posted by Margaret Hurst.

Back to my Earth Calendar.

Today is a special day for the people of the Baha’i faith. The mission of the Baha’i is is to spiritually unify all the people and all religions of the world. Although painfully idealistic,that’s something I truly believe in myself!

The temples of the Baha’i are really something. The most impressive and beautiful in my opinion, is the Lotus Temple in India.

Pilgrimage to the Lotus Temple

Of course, like most religions, the Baha’i have experienced and are experiencing persecution. If only their message of peace, justice and unity would be HEARD!

-Despina

I thought I’d follow up my last post with another drawing from my reportage of Times Square. I will be posting the rest of the drawings on my blog, so check them out if you have a chance.

post by Greg Betza

a.k.a. the Avenue des Champs-Élysées

This weeks drawing was done on a warm, (really warm) July afternoon while standing on the most expensive strip of real estate in Europe. It’s known in France as La plus belle avenue du monde (“The most beautiful avenue in the world”), a fitting call since it’s just down the street from the stunning Jardin des Tuileries I love so much, (last weeks drawing). To the rest of the world it’s called the Avenue des Champs-Élysée.

The avenue runs for two kilometres (1.25 miles) through the 8th arrondissement in northwestern Paris and it’s name is French for Elysian Fields, the place of the blessed dead in Greek mythology. Up until 1616  it actually was fields and market gardens. It was then Marie de Medici decided to extend the garden axis of the Palais des Tuileries with an avenue of trees. Recognized today for it’s beauty, haute couture, shops and tremendous place in history, this alluring boulevard illustrates French culture on the grandest of scales, a must see.

urban trivia: They say rents on the Champs-Élysée run as high as USD1.5 million per 1,000 square feet (92.9 square metres) of space, pretty remarkable (even for New York standards) …’till next time  - Michele

A few years ago I found myself on a train in France, on my way to Chartre. I knew nothing of where I was headed. I brought a little reading with me to get familiar and have something to connect with when I arrived. One of the passages I read mentioned fields of gold and the uneven spired cathedral sitting off in the sun, a beacon for all those in need. I did a few little drawings on the train, expecting that time would have erased all notions of the quaint village I was learning about. The fields were gone, at least right in front of the cathedral, but the temple stood high above the village and called out to everyone who could see.

Coconut Icy

Right underneath the subway the Coquito Man yells at the top of his lungs, “COQUITO!”
Kids love it, adults love it, I love it. So yes I sat down, drew Mr. Coquito under the rumbling of the subway, and then proceeded with buying myself a large cup of coquito.

Eddie Peña

In honor of the start of the holiday weekend, I thought I’d post a drawing I made at the biggest and most fabulous outdoor barbecue I’ve ever been to, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival! This drawing is of folks two-stepping at the zydeco tent, yee-ha — Happy 4th of July! – Veronica

This is another drawing of the CPDSA skaters in Central Park, making moves and having fun, as usual!  Happy 4th of July!

Margaret Hurst

So, again, I look to my earth calendar and see that today, amongst many holidays observed around the globe by various countries, Somalia celebrates its indepedence. Somalia is in great contrast with the country I mentioned in my last post -Denmark. We don’t ever really get good news coming out of this country on the northeastern coast of Africa .

That being said, I thought I would go ahead and post about this important day for the Somalians. And I wanted to find something positive and/or interesting to talk about. So I read a little about this war-torn country, and managed to find a “positive needle” in the gigantic stack of depressing facts:

Laas Geel is a complex of caves where the earliest known cave paintings of Africa decorate the walls and remind us of the LONG trek our civilization has made. These paintings are said to have been made between 9000BC and 3000BC.! And they are in Somalia.

The paintings are mainly depictions of animals, and of the people who worshiped them. You really can’t look at them without awe. They are beautiful.

So, to commemerate the caves, and the country, I am posting a drawing of animals I made a while back. They weren’t done on a wall (which would’ve been pretty cool now that I think of it!), but they ARE animals found in Africa.

-Despina