Mayor for A Day

It’s true. For roughly nine hours last Saturday I was honored by Baton Rouge’s real mayor - the Honorable Kip Holden - to stand-in for him. (I wasn’t handed the paperwork until mid-afternoon, otherwise it could have been an all-day affair.). We took our new ‘SoLa’ film to screen for an annual conference of L.E.A.N. (Louisiana Environmental Action Network) and even before they saw the rough-cut, apparently someone leaned on the mayor’s office for the honorific. Included in the award was a certificate announcing that Saturday, September 26 was officially ‘Jon Bowermaster Day’ in Baton Rouge; needless, I carried both documents with me all day long, just in case I needed to bail myself - or any of my friends - out of trouble.

Spent Sunday with my friend Dean Wilson, roaming around the Atchafalaya Swamp in his flat-bottomed metal boat. Since we were there with him earlier this year, and last August, he’s had some good successes in his full-court press to protect the swamp, particularly the cyprus trees which have until recently been logged to make garden mulch. That practice, says Dean, has been stopped. Next up? Making sure that his activist ways are included as the state and some of its big environmental group allies include him at the table as protection plans are made, and money distributed. Over a late lunch of deer stew (Dean and very-pregnant wife Kara live just a few feet above swamp-level and are as self-sufficient as any family I’ve met) we laughed about his role in our new film. “You made the swamp look very good … and you even made me look good, which is not always easy.”

Terra Antarctica Screening at NGS

SoLa: Louisiana Water Stories Film Screening in Baton Rouge

A Clean Ocean Is Good Business

Trash Tracking

Welcome to … Shark City!!