Quench your terrible thirst this weekend at the H2O Water Festival and Symposium, the first edition of an annual event presented jointly by Santa Fe's Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA) and the Earth Works Institute. The event combines film, education and community arts into a three-day extravaganza designed to highlight issues related to everyone's favorite chemical compound.

Delmas Howe's Passion doesn't look a thing like Mel Gibson's. Howe's painting series, Stations, is loosely inspired by the Catholic Stations of the Cross, a series of 14 iconic images commemorating the final events in the life of Jesus Christ. Howe's artistic vision, though, is set in the '70s on the piers of New York City and depicts a very different kind of passion.

Chamber Music Albuquerque kicks off its 64^th annual June Music Festival with the internationally acclaimed St. Petersburg String Quartet. This Friday, June 10, the quartet will perform works by Glazunov, Bright Sheng and Tchiakovsky. On Sunday, the program will feature Shostakovich, Mendelssohn and Dvorak. The festival continues with two performances by the St. Lawrence String Quartet and the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. A lecture on composers and works will be offered one hour before each concert. The festival runs through June 26. $18 to $36 for Friday evening performances and $19 to $38 for Sunday matinees. Various discounts available. Call 268-1990 or log onto www.cma-abq.com for details.

The 19^th Annual Festival Flamenco, presented by Albuquerque's National Institute of Flamenco, features stellar dancers and musicians from across Spain, Mexico and the United States, including Yjastros, Andrés Marín, Úrsula López, La Familia Farruco, La Familia Amaya and La Familia Fernandez. The closing performance on Saturday, June 18, will map flamenco styles, from the interpretations of gypsies in Granada to the new, urban modes of Sevillanos. The Flamenco Expo, a two-day professional and semi-professional competition, will include dancers, guitarists, singers and percussionists from around the country. The festival begins Friday, June 10, and runs through June 18. For more information, call 277-1865 or log on to www.nationalinstituteofflamenco.org.

One of Jared Diamond's UCLA students once asked, "What were Easter Islanders saying as they cut down the last tree on their island?" A more basic version of that question drives Collapse: "How can societies be so blind as to destroy the resources that keep them alive?"

Like muscle cars and bomber jackets, they don't make them like Philip Caputo anymore. Born outside of Chicago, educated in Vietnam, he is the face of American storytelling that's been on the frontlines. While John Updike stayed home and wrote about life in suburban Pennsylvania, Caputo reported from Beirut in the '70s, hung out in the Hindu Kush in the '80s and traveled across Africa in the '90s.