Oh, yeah, gonna be fun! Art Predator hits SF for a wild weekend!!
I loved last year’s SF WordCamp, so once I heard the next one was May 30, I’ve been planning on attending–especially since I re’d that scholarship I applied for! Here’s more on that: WordPress WordCamp 2009–here I come, SF!!
Since I figured out how to achieve escape velocity Thurs May 28, I’ll hook up with fellow Burning Moms at the Piss Clear Book Release Party. For more details, go here: http://www.pissclear.org/party. html
My mind spins considering all that I might do with a day to myself in SF on Friday–check out the new Academy of Sciences? the recently reopened Legion of Honor? MOMA? Ramble the aisles of fav bookstores like Green Apple on Clement? Visit with old friends? Wine tasting? Ride my bike around Golden Gate Park? all of the above?
Friday night in SF I plan to join the Critical Mass ride, then drive across the Bay Bridge for another Burning Man-esque event with more Burning Moms, this one a big warehouse party fundraiser for a large-scale fire sculpture at Burning Man–support the FishBug! <http://fishbug. net/?p=114>
Chimera is a symbol of hope for our next step in the evolutionary time line. By creating a sculpture that includes participatory elements within an enticing form we create a space for participants to be, think, play and imagine. Chimera is a steel-based structure, whose presence describes a living creature at pause in its movement, while it manifests radical visions its simple mind can barely accommodate.
*When:* Friday, May 29th, 2009
*Where: *Acme Warehouse, 1281 30th St, Emeryville, CA
MAP<http://tinyurl. com/qgsq8x>
Saturday’s WordCamp San Francisco starts bright and early with bagels and coffee at 8am and Matt will kick things off at 9am. Mr WordPress warns: “Be sure to register soon. We’ve got a great speaker line-up, free WordPress schwag to give away, and, of course, a BBQ lunch.” And you get in to the 6th year anniversary party for WordPress that night! So if you haven’t registered yet, now’s the time!
You know you can count on me to report on all these events as they occur as best I can!
Gary Snyder's book in the Black Rock Desert
Just in case you didn’t know, Burning Man takes place on a “playa,” which is Spanish for beach, which is an apt enough name considering that the playa is a lake much of the year, with plenty of beach!
I first heard about the Black Rock Desert from friends trying to convince me to go to Burning Man with them in 1992. A few days later I was talking with Gary Snyder at the Squaw Valley Writers Conference about Great Basin National Park and he suggested to me I go see Black Rock, one of his favorite places on the planet, he said. That’s high praise coming from someone like Gary Snyder, author of so many wonderful books of poetry and prose about wild places, including one about Black Rock, not to mention the man featured in Kerouac’s Dharma Bums.
The Black Rock Desert’s playa where Burning Man takes place is in the north eastern part of Nevada. I’ve heard it said that the Black Rock Desert is so large that you can see the curvature of the earth; I’ve also heard that’s an optical illusion. It is one of the largest, flattest areas of land on earth. For miles and miles you see nothing but flat dry alkali former lake bed; most winters it is covered in a shallow slick of snow and water. The amount of water and snow determines the quality of the playa we play on come Burning Man time in Labor Day.
Hint: if there’s not enough water, the playa gets really really dusty, and it can be hard to ride your bike to get around. And if it rains during Burning Man, which it does with a vengence every few years, that dust turns into mudslicks. Walking you get moon boots raising you several inches high as the muck cakes on. The alkali composition means that water just makes every thing slippery; the best way to wash it off is with vinegar.
Have I made you curious? Learn more about the Black Rock desert here: http://blackrockdesert.org/ While you’re there check out the new PLAYACAM which gives you a straight shot onto the playa towards BRC (Black Rock City, the temporary installation of a community which houses 50,000 inhabitants during the Black Rock Arts Festival aka Burning Man. Remember, how it looks now will impact how it will be when we get there!
For more video Burning Man fun, check out LENNY JONES & CLAUDIA’S BURNING MAN VIDEOS which run about 58
minutes in 6 clips, all shot in HD.
http://lennyjones.net/burn2008/burn08video/burn08videomain.html
Burning Man Joins Forces with Social Media
Need to know more than the Burning Man website has to offer? Need to know what’s going on NOW in the world of Burning Man? Need to be reminded that those LOW INCOME SCHOLARSHIP APS are due NOW? (info on that here: Burning Man tix going fast! Low-income & scholarship apps due May 30) Join Burning Man in the social whirl of social media by hooking up via these handy dandy links:
The Official Burning Man Facebook Page:
http://tr.im/bman_fb
Official Burning Man Twitter Account – All Things Burning Man:
http://www.twitter.com/burningman
Black Rock City Twitter Account – All Things BRC:
http://www.twitter.com/blackrockcity
In addition to these official links, there are lots of Burners and wanna be Larry Harveys and more out there in twitter land…some of it well worth following. Oh, yeah–and sign up to follow me too! My link is there in the right hand corner of my home page!
Show your support for gay marriage with a free sticker!
You can get one sticker for free. Buy 5 or 50 stickers from CREDO and they’ll donate the profits to fight for marriage equality. For $5 they’ll send you 5 stickers; for $25 they’ll send 50 stickers. Stickers are 4.5″ x 6″ (about the size of a postcard) and may take 3-7 weeks to arrive.
It’s easy. GO HERE: “I support gay marriage” sticker! Get yours at http://act.credoaction.com/stickers/.
The hard part will be changing the Constitution to support marriage for all. We can do it, and we will. Keep reading for more details on how and why.
According to CREDO,
After a lot of years of devastating setbacks in the fight for marriage equality, it seems like we’re finally moving in the right direction. With marriage legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont and Maine, and the fights going strong in New Hampshire, New York and California, this movement is gaining more momentum every day.
“Code Poet” Robert Peake writes in a recent blog post, “What Marriage Means to Me.” It begins:
The best man at my wedding was, and is, gay. We met several years before I met my wife. We were both fresh out of college, finding our way in relationships.
No matter your position on the topic, go read his words, and please consider them.
Poet Paul Squires emailed me to commet, “No idea why anyone would want to get married but all should be allowed who wants to. Here is the a number one poem on the subject written by Bryan Borland, it is a fantastic poem and says everything that could and should be said at this point on the subject” and offered this link:
http://poeticgrin.com/2009/05/26/wallow/
The ruling upheld a voter-approved ban on gay marriage, but allowed existing marriages to stand.
Why is this critical? Need more convincing? Watch this moving video:
new poem
yep fresh from the sierra that will arrive any minute is the plan
yokoonoTweet your #haiku about British Summer to @kingsplace. Best appear on board at KingsX Station, London UK http://tiny.cc/hai
Yes it’s all true. First I reported on the wonderfully fun magnetic poetry site
Twitter “Magnetic” Poetry Site: a sandbox for verse & 7 new “haiku”
and now this, Yoko Ono judging a Twitter haiku poetry contest. For more info, follow these links:
Yoko Ono Hosts Twitter Poetry Contest
Yoko Ono To Judge Twitter Poetry Contest
Micro-blogging phenomena Twitter is to host the first ever real-time haiku poetry competition, with judges Yoko Ono and British poet Jackie Kay.
Yes, I am following Yoko Ono and so should you. The easiest way for YOU to follow ME is to click on the link on the lower right side of the page! And I will then follow YOU! Happy poetic tweetings!
Burning Man tix going fast! Low-income & scholarship apps due May 30 And why would you apply? check out the links to these cool art installations that will be out on the Playa for Burning Man 2009!
2009 HONORARIUM INSTALLATIONS
Every year Burning Man allocates a percentage of its revenue from
ticket sales to funding select art projects that are collaborative,
community-oriented and interactive. We do this in order to support
the Burning Man art community, and to facilitate the creation of
outstanding art for Black Rock City. The vast majority of art
installations on the playa, however, are not funded. In 2009, a
percentage of your hard-earned ticket money helped to fund the
following art installations, for all Burning Man participants to enjoy.
——————–
Bio*tanical Garden
by Rossella Scapini – Berkeley, CA
Bio*Tanical garden is the avant-garde in biological harvesting. This
innovative greenhouse cultivates human organs and body parts in pots
until they are ready to be trans-planted!
——————–
Carbon Garden
by False Profit Labs – San Francisco, CA
http://labs.false-profit.com/blog/carbon-garden/
Carbon Garden is a garden of flowers made out of carbon fiber (the
same stuff as the stealth bomber, Boeing’s most advanced airplane
wings, and possibly your bicycle fork if you’re extra cool). Each
flower will have a small flame that can change its size up to 30 times
per second from a candle size to about 3 feet. Flowers react to people
around them with ultrasonic range finders, and “talk” to each other in
a language of fire. Read more…
Because the next ride is a Santacon, because Debbie Fox of FoxFine Jewelry has invited us to come by and will provide food and drink, because one of our riders Winston Braun has a show up at Buffalo Records, because a friend Jessica Emerson Lindley is showing at Architexture, and because it’s our 5th ride (!), we’ve decided to shake up our route and go to some of the more unusual sites downtown which showcase art, and end the party with an after party at Bell Arts Factory complete with music, beer, food, and a real pro Santa or two!
Date: Friday June 5, 2009
Theme: A ride for Santa & helpers*
* Santas, Mrs. Claus, elves & dreidels welcome! We will have hats for $1
* helmets required by law for under 18; strongly recommended for all
* headlights, reflectors, flashing red tailights required by law after dark
Meet: 530pm Artists Union Gallery, C St Plaza & Promenade
Ride: by 6pm
Route: Promenade, bike trail, Main, Architexture, Buffalo Records, ???, Fox Fine Jewelry, 643 Gallery, Bell Arts Factory
Santacon Party: Bell Arts Factory 7-10pm
All are welcome!
Ride there with us or join us for music, lemonade, food, & beer from Anacapa!
Donations support VCCool, Ventura Bicyclists Union & Bell Arts Factory
$5/10 kids/adults all you care to eat make your own burrito/taco bar & lemonade
$5 suggested donation per beer from Anacapa Brewpub: bring your own cup or buy one!
Beer donated by Anacapa Brewpub
Learn how to make your own Santa suit, Santacon do’s and don’ts, photos from the Winter Solstice Santacon and more:
Get Your Santa On June 5
Summer Solstice Santacon Rides Into Town June 5
Straws Suck: Just say no straw please
It’s going to be hard to break the news to my little monkey but it’s time to just say no to plastic straws because Plastic Straws are For Suckers!
My friend Marialyce Pedersen invited me to join a facebook group which asks:
What would happen if everyone who ordered a drink politely added “And no plastic straw, please!” ?
What would happen is this…
That straw, that was unwrapped from a paper wrapper and unboxed from a box, unloaded from a truck that drove from the docks where a ship had carried it from faraway lands or a railcar had chugged through the once pristine sands of the Gulf Coast-Home of the US Petrochemical Industry and the petrochemical-contaminated fisheries and the cancers that carry misery on the waters of the once great Gulf Coast-
That straw, that was made from gas Read more…
Many people know that Ventura is home to Patagonia. Not because we’re a big industrial city but because there’s great surf, climbing and fly fishing in the Sespe, hot springs, and mild weather. People can and do climb or snow ski in the morning and surf in the afternoon. You can get to Yosemite or San Francisco in 6-7 hours and LAX or Pine Mountain in 90 minutes. We grow some awesome grapes and make delicious wine around here too!
Because of Patagonia (and the other amenities!), Ventura is also home to a number of related outdoor sports companies. While Grammicci just moved away, Ojai and others are still here, and Real Cheap Sports outlet is open almost every day of the year; they carry Patagonia and other labels and can outfit you for any outdoor sport you enjoy at better prices than you might think!
Maybe my favorite outlet is Deckers, makers, distributors and importers of shoes like Uggs, Teva, and Simple. Read more…
art predator 