Forecastle Fest

My problem with keeping a diary or a journal has always been that if I fall behind on updating it, I just give up. The of you who know me know that there isn't much "down" time in my life, and unpaid writing is hard to squeeze in. But I'm committed to keeping up this blog, so have decided to make entries on interesting stuff even if it's a few weeks old. And even if the pictures have to be added after the text is posted, as we'll have to do now (I'm not in town to get the photos).

Case in point - Forecastle Fest. I never knew Louisville had so much going on until I went down for this festival. We went the final day of a three-day festival, which involved over 60 bands, a bunch of visual artists, environmentalist groups, film screenings, panels on the music industry and other relevant topics and an extreme sports area.

When we went, we were able to hear Robert Kennedy Jr. speak about the environment. One of the main themes throughout his speech was poisoned fish and birth defects/autism called by mothers who ate too much contaminated fish. He talked about how whole mountains are being illegally razed to rubble by the coal industry and how nothing is being done about it because of powerful coal lobbyists.

Kennedy made a number of good points. One that stuck with me was in reference to the oil industry's short-sighted solutions of off-shore drilling and drilling in Alaska and President Bush's comment regarding what he (Bush) called America's addiction to oil.

Kennedy put it well: "You don't cure a crack addict by giving him more crack."