They call it the most important number in the world.  Modern science tells us that we need our carbon dioxide level to be less than 350 parts per million, if we are to maintain atmospheric equilibrium.  We entered the new year at 387.35, they say.

That’s the impetus of 350.org, the organization promoting an international campaign for CO2 reduction. 

On October 24th, 2009 the 350 campaign called for an international day of climate action.  At more than 5200 gatherings, in 181 different countries, people showed their support in various ways.

In Hong Kong, people blocked traffic.  In New Zealand, divers made a viral video pun with a sunken ship.  On YouTube, supermodels stripped their clothes off. 

Where were you?

(Photo: Johnny Kilroy)

I was in good old Eugene, having one of my patented “Eugene moments.” 

At the Hult Center, the city’s most prominent venue for the performing arts, several hundred townies congregated for 350! Artists for Climate Action put on by city officials and local performers. 

It was a well-organized event, almost like an artists’ conference.  At the same time it was laid back and celebratory, like a street fair but more kempt.

(Photo: Johnny Kilroy)

The town puts together events like a hillbilly college student does a potluck dinner:  anything delicious is welcome and no spice is spared, however it may jar the stranger’s palate.  Chili mac, banana bread, jalapeno taters, leftover Irish cream…whatever.

Our feast included jazz, gypsy, brass, and woodwinds, folk, black-clad dancers, Zimbabwean song and dance, and a thirty-piece mobile percussion ensemble.

The performances followed closely on the heels of each other.  When one ceased in one part of the lobby, almost immediately, another would strike in.

Danail Rachev cued his Oregon Mozart Players.  The room went adrift with the cellos as they undulated through Beethoven’s 7th, second movement.  It started in a rolling and mournful dirge, but lifted up with hopeful swells. 

Its misery-inspired melody represents not only napoleonic history, but in this moment it seems to represent the sentiments of every climate activist present:  defying oppression with a celebration of beauty.

For a moment, Eugene was Vienna. 

The crowd cleared a large space in the middle of the floor for about a dozen dancers, all young women in black pants and tops that closely fitted their athletic bodies. They did some kind of interpretive dance routine.  They moved spasmodically.  They walked, strode, flailed, head banged, and posed, in no apparent sequence.  They yelled out numbers; eventually “350.”

It reminded me of the episode of South Park in which the children danced in black leotards to synthesizer music in a non-denominational holiday play; expressionism at its finest.

Halfway through the rollicking acts, the evening’s tone got serious.

Professor Mary Wood stood at the podium, and gave a speech about impending climate disaster and the part that we each play in the future.  Her rousing delivery captured the attention of everyone there, even more so than the artists.’ 

“Do any of you want to live on a transformed planet?” she demanded.  A little girl in front, wearing a red dress, stood up and stomped, “NO!”

She touched on the challenge of political polarity, stating that although reducing carbon to 350 ppm is ambitious, it is a non-partisan issue. 

There are too many people in office, she said, who simply are uneducated about the climate issue.  “They’re not deniers, they’re just distracted.”  But Wood believes that persons holding public office should understand the concept of 350.

She congratulated the people in the audience for taking some action, and encouraged more.  The climate crisis needs “victory speakers,” said Wood, like the activists and the government that rallied people to buy war bonds during World War II. 

With motivation surging, everyone returned to partying with the Vakasara Mbira group. 

A slender blonde woman emerged, barefooted and dressed in traditional African garb.  She balanced a hari, a Shona ritual vessel, on top of her head.  She moved very slowly at first, in a “deeply ritual dance.”  She knelt to the floor, prostrated, and set the hari directly in front of me.

The dance then changed tempo, turning from ritual to entertainment, and gaining in speed and intensity.  Shedding her outer garments, she revealed maraca-like shakers strapped to her legs.

(Photo: Johnny Kilroy)

The dancer’s name is Jennifer Kyker, and she performs with several dance groups.  In Eugene, she teaches the singing and dancing that she has studied in Zimbabwe.

Jennifer danced with vigor, leaping and thrusting, to and fro, throwing her arms out in wild gestures, and moving her legs in a kind of primeval running man.

She is an artist who gives back to the community.  In Zimbabwe she runs a nonprofit called Tariro, which educates young women who have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS in order to help prevent the disease from spreading.

The energy grew with every act, and echoed in the massive room.  Still, the climax was yet to come. 

The final group was the largest, loudest, most all-inclusive, Eugene-ist of them all.  It was Samba Ja, Eugene’s iconic bateria, or drum group, a staple of the city’s events from the Country Fair to elementary school shows.

(Photo: Johnny Kilroy)

 

Leading them off was Julia Holtzman, a dark-featured girl who did a migrating dance around the room, in a sort of invitation for everyone to join in.  Curls of black hair fell over her eyes, jostled loose by her fancy footwork and dampened with sweat.

Before long, people joined in the dancing, entranced by the beat that blended elements of traditional Brazilian, hip-hop, marching band music, they formed a circular dancing train.

It was hard to resist the welcoming synergy.  It caught us and stirred us together, all kinds of us:  a little boy in a little vest and bowtie; a familiar girl from the bike shop; high schoolers; a grey haired lady in a revealing lace top.

(Photo: Johnny Kilroy)

   

We danced ourselves dizzy, grabbing shoulders to keep from tumbling, grinning from ear to ear. 

Striding widely into the crisp October autumn evening, the townsfolk left the Hult Center electrified, and in euphoric pleasure from having danced to a sweat.

Admittedly, we came together that day to just cut loose.  In his October 22 prelude to the event in the Register Guard, Bob Keefer speculated that Eugene may be “truly the world’s greatest city” in the arts and the environment.

In hundreds of other places, the prevailing interpretation was to stand a bunch of people in a giant “350” and take an aerial photograph—how original. 

In Eugene, we just get radical.  Yet there was a palpable sense of the common goal of 350 day. 

“This is all hands on deck time,” said Wood.  “Do something, do anything…just don’t do nothing.”

(Photo:  350.org)