More than just faces in the crowd

WARWICK — Warwick resident Patrick Gallagher urges everyone to wear polka dots, connect the dots and come to the Doc Fry/Warwick Community Center, 11 Hamilton Ave. on Saturday, May 5, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

“We will be running another community photo event revolving around climate change and severe weather in our immediate area and worldwide,” he said. “We will take a community photo at 12:45 to record the event. All ideas or ways to promote this are welcome but just showing up if you can in time for the photo is most important and can have the most impact in the long run. We hope to have some live music and a quick BYO picnic.”

Gallagher is also hopeful this event at Doc Fry will mirror the one held in 2007 that ended with 125 people in an historic photo of Warwick residents coming out to show that they were aware of climate change and the impact of carbon emissions on climate and weather.

Gallagher, who installs solar water heating systems, argues that it’s climate change, not global warming, that’s responsible for the recent record setting weather.

“I did not project the politics of it last time,” he said, “and don’t want to do that this time. But I want to appeal to a broad group of residents to get the message out that if you like clean air and water, maybe continuing with pollution and emissions is not the right path and that we as a community are willing to say so in a photo so that other folks who care about their children and grandchildren and future generations can try to have preventive measures that can clean up the air, water and atmosphere we depend on. We need the earth, the earth does not need us is the practical message not the political one.”

The photo will be taken on May 5 at 12:45 p.m. For information, call Gallagher at 258-0749.

- Roger Gavan