Or Celebrate the Boss’s 60th Birthday! Happy Birthday, Bruce Springsteen!
Today, September 23, 2009, is Bruce Springsteen’s 60th birthday.
If you’ve followed this blog at all, you know that our house holds a trio of HUGE Springsteen fans. So tonight, we will light a candle, sing happy birthday to Bruce, and wish him many more!
To see why, go to the posts linked to here.
Live Blogging Tony Robbins Keynote 140/Twitter LA: celebrate for no reason
We’re all waiting for Tony Robbins to begin his keynote to kick-off today’s session at the Twitter Conference, and while we’re waiting, they’re taking suggestions which include having name tags during sessions for who’s speaking. That’s especially useful for those of us, like me, watching on UStream.
That’s right, I’m not stuck in traffic racing to get to the Skirball Center on the constantly congested 405 freeway.
I’m home, dressed this day, drinking my tea, waiting in the comfort of my own home for Tony Robbins to inspire me.
Yay–he’s being introduced right now! And there’s a standing ovation! Not even Biz Stone got a standing ovation–and Biz is Mr. Twitter.
Who is Tony Robbins? He’s got over 1 million followers! And, he’s one of the TOP PAID speakers in the world–a guy who appreciates Twitter so much he’s gifting his talk today!
Tony Robbins: I came here for one central reason–twitter is a community.
But, he says, “Imagine my frustration with 140 characters.” He says, he wants to go deep and understand: How is it that we have so much and so many are so unhappy?
Why are we here at this conferene, he wants to know. Business? Social media? Change your life?
Who tweets for Tony Robbins? “It’s me.”
“I try to bring something to inspire people. Here’s the rule for twitter: add more value! That’s the rule for life! Read more…
As much as I would like to be, no I’m not there live blogging at the 140/The Twitter Conference LA being held today and tomorrow at the Skirball Center in LA. (You kidding? $429??)
But I’m listening along and sometimes even watching using UStream right from the comfort of my own home drinking tea from my own cup and, you know it, still in my bathrobe. I might even listen to it while I do some yoga or go soak in my hot tub.
The best part? I didn’t even have to get in the car for the 50 mile, two hour morning commute drive from Ventura to LA. But honestly, I would rather be there. For me, a conference is one of the most exciting places to be. If they invited me, I would show up tomorrow. In clothes even. I really love live blogging (for evidence see the live blog posts from WordCamp 2008 and 2009, from the Wine Bloggers Conference 2008 and 2009, MacWorld or the Cultural Tourism Symposium!)
Right now it’s twitter leader Biz Stone talking about “what we’re doing with twitter.” Who’s Biz Stone? He co-founded, Twitter, Inc. “the real-time, one-to-many network that is changing the way people communicate around the world.” Before that, Biz helped build other popular social media services Xanga, Blogger, and Odeo.
And I figured if I was going to take some notes, I might as well live blog it for you. Up to a point. I do do other things than blog, believe it or not.
According to Biz Stone, Twitter is about the triumph of humanity, not the triumph of technology. Read more…
Happy New Year! Welcome Fall! Welcome Spring! plus a late summer poem
midtown late summer vision
these late summer nights
window open after a long hot day
fog bursts in damp air
sycamore leaves crackle
light outside flicks on
two possums wander the yard
It’s summer no longer around my home town in the northern hemisphere: it’s now officially fall and winter has turned to spring in the southern hemisphere. The days are equal in length, and for many cultures, including the Chumash, it’s the mark of the new year, a time for new beginnings. Once the Man goes up in flames, it’s the New Year for Burners, too! For more 2009 Burning Man photos, check out these FROM CARNIVILLAIN– aka Mr. Nightshade http://theblight.net/09/bm/
According to Astrology.com, Read more…
A Virtual Poetry Reading
Last Tuesday, I posted that I would be the featured reader at the San Buenaventura Artists Union Gallery on Tuesday, Sept. 15, and I promised to post the links to my reading. So here we go–a virtual poetry reading! Since everything that I read that night has been written and then published in the past 18 months on this blog, I am linking to those posts along with some commentary. I hope you’ll stick around for my virtual reading!
I started the reading by saying I’d be presenting 10 poems: two from my 50 States Project, three from the Shishilop Project, three from the 3:15 Experiment, and two poems published on my blog, and that in my work right now, and in several of these projects, I am trying to capture naturalized language and life, to find poetry in the moment.
I began with 50 States: The State of Optimism (posted 9/1/08) which set a particular tone, and which closes with the lines “Let us all be from somewhere./Let us teach each other everything we can.” Poetry does this for me, and I wanted to present that idea out front. Here’s the video:
I followed this with three poems from the Shishilop Project. The first Shishilop Project: Third Day of Kindergarten & Chumash Folkways (posted 8/21/08) continues with the idea of teaching, learning, and with being grateful for the opportunity to be given the stories that I use in my narrative poems. Read more…
International Day of Peace, Monday Sept. 21
Monday, September 21 is International Day of Peace which is celebrated and honored throughout the world. A few years ago, my students and I put on an event at Ventura College which included European spoken word performer and dj Emil Brikha (who mixed a spoken word piece of mine text, mp3 here “I Want to Be That Man”) plus poet and translator Jen Hofer from Los Angeles. We had copies of a drawing of a dove which students colored, cut out and “flew” while the music and spoken words flowed in the quad, thanks to funding support from Poets and Writers.
Events large and small are going on around the world; you can view a live broadcast of events at cultureofpeace.org or internationaldayofpeace.org! The broadcast was produced through the efforts of Unity Foundation and their partners at PeacePortal.mobi, GetZooks.biz and Pathways to Peace. To add it to your Facebook profile, go here and add the Livestream application, and the Peace Broadcast will play directly on your profile! You can EMBED the broadcast anywhere… on your own website, blog, myspace, etc! By doing so, you will help make this broadcast viral and create more awareness about the International Day of Peace!
Waging Peace Now Available
Here’s another way to commemorate International Peace Day: check out this online book, Waging Peace with poems, narrative and artwork. Go see Waging Peace online or to Lulu.com and purchase a hard copy of the book. As noted in the introduction of Waging Peace, contributors are amateur and professional, young and older, representing multiple religions, ethnicities and geographic origins.
In closing today, a poem: Wendell Berry’s “The Peace of Wild Things” which I found in Robert Bly’s News of the Universe—
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Decompression: A Little Bit of Burning Man off the Playa
Miss the playa? Missing the playa? Find out where a Burning Man 2009 Decompression Party will be and plan to be there! It works to take the edge off–guaranteed! Better than looking at scores of pictures–even if they’re at good as the ones by Carnivillain, including this one of the Man going off. More info follows.**\<>/**\<>/**\<>/**\<>/**\<>/**\<>/**\<>/**\<>/**\<>/**!We fully know how hard it is to re-integrate yourself into the real world. One of the best ways to combat the inevitable (and understandable) disorientation is to seek out a local Decompression event and soak up the goodness of your fellow Burners. To find out about other Decoms and Regional Events in cities near you, see: http://regionals.burningman.com/ and http://regionals.burningman.com/regionalevents_09.html.
So break out all that fun playa wear you didn’t get a chance to wear out there and wear it
We’ll be at the LA Regional Burn in the cornfield near downtown LA (actually it’s a state historic park) from noon until midnight Saturday Oct. 3.
Metropolis: Burning Man Theme 2010–what can the world learn from Black Rock City?
Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.
— Jane Jacobs
Tumult and change, churning cycles of invention and destruction – these forces generate the pulse of urban life. Great cities are organic, spontaneous, heterogeneous, and untidy hubs of social interaction. In 2010, we will inspect the daily course of city life and the future prospect of civilization .
Minutes after the Man met his firey demise, the art theme for 2010 was published on the Burning Man website (we’re crafty like that). The theme for this coming year is “Metropolis: The Life of Cities.” This theme is particularly befitting Burning Man, since we are in the unique position (one could say it’s an urban planner’s wet dream) to be able to create and dismantle a thriving metropolis every year, and to make adjustments that will cultivate community and culture, while supporting essential civic services. Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey writes about it here: http://bit.ly/2cXiOz
And of course what would a Metropolis be without KIDS? Burning Man org assures us that Kids will take a central position in Black Rock City this year. I look forward to see how this manifests itself–whether children and families will be more involved in the planning. I do know that Burning Man org members have been busy spawning a new generation of Burners!
We ought to know how to assemble a human habitat of high quality that … gives children and old people equal access to society’s civic institutions, that produces safe neighborhoods for the well-off and the less well-off, that promotes a sense of belonging to community, that honors what is beautiful, and which does not destroy its rural and agricultural surroundings. This habitat comes down to us from history in the form of villages, towns and cities.
The Age of Stupid: On screens everywhere one night only, Monday Sept. 21
On Monday, September 21, catch the one-night-only premiere of an important new film called The Age of Stupid. Read more…
Wine Blogging Weds. #61: Go to the source & drink the juice–Old Creek Ranch Winery
Thanks to Wine Blogging Wednesday founder and this month’s host Lenn Thompson of the blog Lenndevours: The New York Cork Report who prompts us this month to visit a winery–to taste and blog about a wine after visiting the source with bonus points for actually tasting with the winemaker. Here’s the complete story on his blog.
Where should I go? Well, it wasn’t much of a question as I had limited time available. While I am fortunate to have Sideways wine country practi
cally in my backyard, I simply contacted Michael Meagher, winemaker at Old Creek Ranch Winery, which is about 15 minutes away from my home near the beach and Michael invited me over last Friday for when his first load of grapes arrive–viognier!
To hint at what kind of experience I had: I came home happily covered in grape juice, tasted the delish grenache blanc about to be bottled with the winemaker, and brought home the recently bottled but not yet released and not even labeled yet 2008 viognier!!
A little background: Old Creek Ranch Winery, established in 1981, is up Highway 33 on the Old Creek Ranch between the towns of Ojai and Ventura, California on a historic winery site. On the left is a picture of what remains of that winery; in the foreground is the native food plant, narrow-leaf milkweed, for monarch butterfly larva. 
According to the Old Creek Ranch website:
The Ranch is part of a Spanish 22,000 acre land grant awarded to Don Fernando Tico, dating back to the early history of California. In the late 1800’s Antonio Riva of northern Italy purchased the ranch. He was a chef in Paris, London and later in San Francisco. He built a winery on the ranch at that time.
Wines were made without electricity and utilized gravity as a means to move the wine in the processing. Riva produced wine until about 1942, including the prohibition years. Wine purchasers would leave an order and money on the clothesline and would return later to pickup a jug of red wine left at the base of an oak tree.
My first experience with Old Creek Ranch Winery was with a lovely low RS riesling I brought to a family Thanksgiving many many years ago. Most of my family doesn’t drink much, and I have to admit that when I brought Ridge zins and cabs home, they didn’t really know what to do with them (and they preferred Yuban in a Mr Coffee over the Jamacan Blue Mountain prepared in a French Press that I brought from Peet’s). They enjoyed and appreciated this riesling and were amazed that wine this good was produced practically around the block. The wine was fabulous at holiday meals and I made an effort to bring it when I could.
Until a few years ago, Old Creek Ranch had many acres of vines which they pulled out due to an infestation of Pierce’s disease which the area is prone to and which devastated the wine grape vineyards around. As I liked that riesling, when I tasted their wines in general, I found them enjoyable certainly but a bit thin and not that complex.
I’m really happy to say that that this changed. As Michael Meagher has taken on more responsibilities and vintages as winemaker, and has influenced the winery, the wines being produced just keep getting better; it’s really exciting to think about what he will continue to do at this small (2,000 cases), local winery.
Meagher comes to Old Creek Ranch Winery with excellent credentials. As the story goes, he worked at the local Trader Joes (where he met and fell in love with many wines as well as his wife Anita who is one of the nicest, sincerest parents I’ve met at the school our kids go to!). He has his winemaking degree from UC Davis and he spent eight years at Mt Eden where they worked and lived on the ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains across from Ridge. Sounds idyllic, doesn’t it?
With his own family on the way, Michael and Anita moved back south, and soon he was working with Adam Tolmach at Ojai Vineyards. (If you haven’t tasted Tolmach’s wines, you should. I’ve never tasted a wine of his that didn’t just make me swoon with pleasure.)
As Michael tells it, “I left The Ojai Vineyard at the end of 2004 to start up my own label. I found a home at Old Creek Ranch Winery and began making my wines there. In 2007 their winemaker retired and it was a natural progression to take over Old Creek’s winemaking at that time – the 2007 and on wines are mine.”
Although the grapes are sourced elsewhere in California–from the central coast and on up north–Michael is intimately involved with the vineyards.
It’s a good match–Old Creek Road Winery is very family oriented, with a strong sense of family history and involvement in the current operation as well as the previous one. The photo montage on the right is from their website and shows part of the winemaking Meagher family as well as the Whitman’s who own and operate the winery.
Because our kids were in the same kindergarten class, I got to know the Meagher family last school year, and so we invited to spend a day up at Old Creek Ranch Winery when they were bottling merlot which was really fun, even though I never got to do much in the way of bottling as the volunteers on the line had it under control. I did help some with the lunch–chef made the best meatloaf ever, and there was plenty of Old Creek Ranch Wines to go along with the feast!
That was my first visit–hard to imagine surpassing that, but my second visit did! I had some open bottles of wine from the Wine Blogger’s Conference and I was curious to taste some of it with Michael and get his assessment. In turn, he invited me Read more…
art predator 