Standing and Watching

A "Herd" of Orchids

National Park (Juizhaigou) in China

Soft Autumn Forest

Dawn On The Fields

Amalfi Coast

Heaven and Earth Become One

Dragonfly Macro

Dawn in the Peaks

 Leading environmentalist and human rights champion Rebecca "Becky" Tarbotton, executive director of the organization Rainforest Action Network (RAN), has died at the age of 39.

According to RAN, Tarbotton died Wednesday on a beach in Mexico while vacationing with her husband and friends. The coroner ruled cause of death as asphyxiation from water she breathed in while swimming.
Tarbotton was the first female executive director of RAN, and a strong female voice in a movement often dominated by men," quotes RAN in a press release. "Under her leadership, RAN was engaged in protecting endangered rainforests and the rights of their indigenous inhabitants. Most recently, she helped to design the most significant agreement in the history of the organization: A landmark policy by entertainment giant, Disney, that is set to transform everything about the way the company purchases and uses paper."
Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman wrote about Tarbotton’s work this May after RAN activists climbed 100 feet to suspend a banner on Charlotte’s Bank of America stadium, where President Obama was scheduled to make his nomination acceptance speech. The banner read "Bank of America" with the word "America" crossed out and replaced with "Coal." Tarbotton told her: "Bank of America is the lead financier of mountaintop-removal mining, which is a practice of mining which is really the worst of the worst mining that we see anywhere, essentially blowing the tops off of mountains in Appalachia, destroying people’s homes, polluting their water supplies. And that’s even before it gets into the coal plants, where it’s burnt and creates air pollution in inner-city areas and all around our country ... [it’s] the canary in the coal mine for our reliance on fossil fuels."
"Becky was a leader’s leader. She could walk into the White House and cause a corporate titan to reevaluate his perspective, and then moments later sit down with leaders from other movements and convince them to follow her lead,” said Ben Jealous, Executive Director of the NAACP and a close friend, upon news of her passing. “If we had more heroes like her, America and the wor

Meas Verde Shadows

Rough Walking

Moonlight On The River

What's to say?...just look at it !!!

Burano, Venice

Where is it?  The waterfall.

CN...sorry...Yosemite

Hello to all! I am new to this group. My name is Michelle.  I love the lakes, oceans, and mountains.  Since I live in Northern Ohio, I do not get to see the beautiful ocean or mountains...only way I get to see any of the landscapes is when I am on vacation, which is not very much. Hopefully someday I will get to see more lovely landscapes. With the green house gases, it is destroying our Planet Earth. So sad to see it happening.  I have enjoyed looking at the beautiful pictures.

Puerto Rico

Beautiful Cherry Blossoms

Happy Earth Day!!

I love this saying, so true!

A Bit of a Refresher

Autumn at the Bay Lighthouse

“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.”

“There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated. … To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.”

“when the cities are gone and all the ruckus has died away. when sunflowers push up through the concrete and asphalt of the forgotten interstate freeways. when the Kremlin & the Pentagon are turned into nursing homes for generals, presidents, & other such shit heads. when the glass-aluminum sky scraper tombs of Phoenix, AZ barely show above the sand dunes. why then, by God, maybe free men & wild women on horses can roam the sagebrush canyonlands in freedom...and dance all night to the music of fiddles! banjos! steel guitars! by the light of a reborn moon!”