On April 14 -- proclaimed a "National Day of Climate Action" by the amazingly energetic Step It Up 2007 campaign to, well, DO something about global warming -- my family and I made the short trip over to downtown Asheville to catch the local rally. There were something like 1,400 rallies all over the country -- pretty good considering that this campaign's only just beginning to get revved up.

We had brilliant Blue Ridge sunshine for our event, which was a big success. There were good words, good old-time music, and evidence aplenty of Asheville's unusually well-developed green economy (We just moved here recently from New York, and have found that where other communities talk about developing a more sustainable way of life, this small city is actually doing it. Smart-growth planning, biiodiesel stations, green builders, a hugely popular local-foods movement -- Asheville's just way ahead of what I've seen elsewhere.)

But my favorite thing of all was this moment: A gust of wind plucked a laminated placard off a nearby table, setting it down not far from my daughter Evan, all of 18 months old. She snapped it up and paraded around with it for the next 10 minutes:

Clearly a natural, right?!