We met up with kids in the kitchen in Bethel, AK and they shared with me what's been cooking.

3rd through 6th graders, with their chef hats, on tell me in their own words their experience of Kids in the Kitchen (Bethel, AK - FEB 2011). Check out these video stars!

Recorded and edited on my phone, a primary tool in sharing and inviting all of you to enter the stories where we have had the chance to dwell for a while. I'm no videographer, just a storydwelling song-artist and traveler.

Heatherlyn

Singer. Song-Artist. Poet.
www.heatherlynmusic.com

Bethel, Alaska Artist-in-Residency :: Kids in the Kitchen Hunger Initiative

KIDS IN THE KITCHEN is an innovative hunger initiative teaching children basic cooking skills and a love of delicious, healthy foods. The specific need to empower kids in this way is essential as sometimes even if there is food in the house, parents might be unavailable due to working late or unfortunately, due to alcoholism.

The DIVERSE PARTNERS OF KIDS IN THE KITCHEN :: Bethel Regional Public Health, WIC (Women, Infants and Children), Table of Grace Lutheran Church, Bethel Family Clinic, UAF Cooperative Extension, Bethel Seventh Day Adventist Church

Through a FireStarter Grant from the Alaska Synod, Jana Deiss, from Table of Grace Lutheran Church, was able to invite us to spend a week in Alaska to dwell in the story of Kids in the Kitchen and the community of Bethel, to promote the program after experiencing it first hand, to lend inspiration and energy to the kids and the whole community through music and interactive arts.

This gallery is from our evening with the kids in the program. You'll see them slicing eggs, enjoying their culinary feats and all of us singing together too! BE SURE TO READ THE CAPTIONS!!

This is the first of several galleries covering our week-long 'artist-in-community' in Bethel, connecting into the Bethel community, an interview at the local NPR affiliate (KYUK Radio), a stop at the local elementary school, the Open Hearts to Hunger Benefit Concert at the Cultural Center that raised $2,300 in Bethel and nearly $1,000 at another concert in Anchorage!

Just got to sing a couple songs with this beauteous group of students & family.

I love how courageous they are to sing really loudly a song phrase they are just learning.

Had a great time at the radio station too just before swinging over here. Great ways to start the day.

Love & Light
Wisdom & Wonder
Grace & Gratitude

Everywhere, there's a family who makes you feel at home.

The family that has been showing us around Bethel, AK and making sure we have all we need this week has been absolutely wonderful to us. This afternoon, after visiting a local restaurant, after stopping by the local cultural center and the high school and experiencing an ice road, they made a fire for us to warm our toes and their youngest had a blast with my camera. Smiles.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Btw, the guitar arrived safe and sous with us as well.

Everyone was great about the guitar and I was able to gate check it each time we changed planes. I just handed it over right before stepping onto the plane and picked it up immediately after getting off (like you would do if you're a parent traveling with a stroller). I got to carry it through each airport and I appreciate that no one gave me a hard time about it as was the case in a previous flight experience when a lady was condescending and mean to me about it...man, I can't tell you how angry that made me feel, and I don't get super pissed too often. I was in tears. But this time, it actually seemed like everyone cared. Grateful.

Heatherlyn

And the sun continues to rise over the frozen river.

Bethel, AK ~ 2011 Artist-in-community

Heatherlyn

Heatherlyn on Destination Bethel, Alaska ~ 02.07.2011

We're delighted that our friends in Bethel, Alaska saw how beautifully the heartbeat of our music fits with their mission to creatively address local hunger. Kids in the Kitchen is totally rockin' and we can't wait to tell you more about the community when we get there....

:: PRESS RELEASE :: Check out their local paper article from the Tundra Drums.

:: THE ON-GOING PARTNERSHIP STORY HAPPENS HERE ::

• HEATHERLYN MUSIC on FACEBOOK 
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• HEATHERLYN'S POSTEROUS

 

:: FACEBOOK EVENT INVITES ::

• BETHEL CONCERT ~ SAT FEB 12th
• ANCHORAGE CONCERT ~ TUES FEB 15th

I Believe in Love...

Love...so many ways to think about love. So many meanings to love. So many ways to love and be loved. Every moment a time to consider how we can be open to love and act in love.

With Valentine's Day coming and hardly avoidable if you walk outside or tune into any sort of media, there's all kinds of heartache and romance, cheesy gestures of interest and grandiose expressions of devotion. However you experience the 'holiday', there certainly seems to be an inexhaustibleness to the vastness of love itself. The depth and breath of discovery and possibility for LOVE, itself, must be endless. Love...expressed in kindness, friendship, hopeful responsibility for humankind, compassionate action toward a fellow traveler..Love is what transforms our lives and heals our world.

There are also many ways to sing this song, written by Jonathan Larson. It's originally part of a musical (RENT) and sung in chorus by about a dozen people it seems. So here's a raw take on the five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes that we all have in a year to speak love, receive love, open ourselves to love, grow love, do love, be love....

Enjoy and take care in this crazy month of February.

Beneath the blue. Beneath the gray. Through the calm and in the fray, may all seasons be...