What’s your spin? What’s your story?
According to Martha Beck, in “Finding Your Own North Star,
“You’re inevitably going to “spin” the story of your life, so you might as well spin it in a cheerful direction…tell yourself a lie story in which you, the hero, are primarily a problem solver rather than a helpless victim.
Neither story is the absolute truth; all our life narratives are based on selection and “spin.”
I just came back from France where I competed on the US Wine Tasting Team in the World Wine Tasting Championship held at Chateau Chambord, one of the world’s most impressive castles, located in Loire, France.
Organized and sponsored in part by La Revue du vin de France, the challenge was to taste and identify six white wines and six red wines. We received points if we could identify what kind of grape was in the wine, where it came from in the world and which region in the country, who made it, and in what year.
The US Wine Tasting Team: Californians Gwendolyn Alley and Sue Hill, and Texans Jacob Fergus and Taylor Robertson.
How To Fill Yourself with Hope: Breathe, Take Action, Build Common Ground
“The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something.
Don’t wait for good things to happen to you.
If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.”
~ Barack Obama
With so much conflict in the world, in our country, in our communities, and even within ourselves, it can feel hopeless. A place to start is to build common ground between different viewpoints and perspectives. To do so, we must periodically ask the question:
How do we build common ground?
Victor Frankl: In Our Response Lies Our Growth and Our Freedom
In these troubling times, we are invited to take action:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom,” argues Victor Frankl.
“You could say that river cleanup was child’s play compared with the melting of the ice caps—and I would thank you for sharing and get back to doing what is possible. Those who say it can’t be done should get out of the way of those who are doing it,” writes Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird, in an essay published this month in National Geographic.
Or, as Abe Lincoln says, “I’d rather be playing video games.”
Fall for Books — Especially Banned Ones!
Today is the first day of autumn — and the perfect day to fall into the leaves of a book as it is also Banned Books Week!
Censorship leaves us in the dark. Keep the lights on!
Godin Defines Art, Anzaldua Discusses Art, Art City Displays Art: Portal at Burning Man
A useful definition of art by Seth Godin
Art is a human activity. It is the creation of something new, something that might not work, something that causes a viewer to be influenced.
Art uses context and culture to send a message. Instead of only a contribution of beauty or craft, art adds intent. The artist works to create something generous, something that will change us.
Art isn’t painting or canvas or prettiness. Art is work that matters.
It’s entirely possible that you’re an artist.
Everyone can be, if we choose.
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Bohemian Rhapsody at Burning Man 2019
“Creative artists … are mankind’s wakeners to recollection: summoners of our outward mind to conscious contact with ourselves, not as participants in this or that morsel of history, but as spirit, in the consciousness of being. Their task, therefore, is to communicate directly from one inward world to another, in such a way that an actual shock of experience will have been rendered: not a mere statement for the information or persuasion of a brain, but an effective communication across the void of space and time from one center of consciousness to another.”
Joseph Campbell, from The Masks of God, Volume IV: Creative Mythology
Take Action to Save Earth: Read a Book!
“Our heart grows cold,” wrotePope Francis in the 2015 Lenten message. “As long as I am relatively healthy and comfortable, I don’t think about those less well off. Today, this selfish attitude of indifference has taken on global proportions, to the extent that we can speak of aglobalization of indifference. It is a problem which we, as Christians, need to confront.” Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, an Eskimo-Kalaallit Elder in Kalaallit Nunaat, Greenland, says “Only by Melting the Ice in the Heart of Man does Man have a Chance to Change and begin using his vast Knowledge Wisely.”
In addition to getting a real strong dose of nature, reading up, finding solutions, and taking action really helps! Read more…
Burning Man: Call the playa (973) 737-BURN
A man who is not on fire is nothing.
That kind of person is ridiculous and two-dimensional.
He must be on fire even if he makes a fool of himself.
A flame must burn somewhere,
otherwise no light shines,
there is no warmth,
there is nothing.
Carl Jung
“Oh the places you’ll go!” — the walking man in 2011
“Omnia mutantur, nihil interit”
(Everything changes, nothing perishes)
― Ovid, Metamorphoses
Here in the northern hemisphere, summer has one more month, but when school starts, like it is today at Ventura College, it feels like fall. Days are getting shorter, nights longer, and we’re back from our summer adventures. The season is changing.
“Energy can be transformed from one form to another,
but can be neither created nor destroyed.”
― 1st Law of Thermodynamics
My summer travel included skiing and hiking trips to Big Bear and Mammoth, plus two days exploring Amsterdam and two weeks in Tanzania with several days trekking to and climbing up Mt Kilimanjaro, which at 19,340′ is the tallest free standing mountain in the world and is known as “The Roof of Africa.” More on that here.
in climbing Kilimanjaro I achieved a lifelong dream
Even before one trip is over, my imagination is already planning future trips, and while I am not sure yet if I’m going to Burning Man this year, many of my friends are– and they are busy “packing all the things” including fabulous art projects built by a group of artists from Art City, Ventura as well as projects by Deniz Nicole of Ventura and Valerie Mallory of Oakland.
the Mutant Vehicle known as the Mighty Zenith
And I can’t forget the Mighty Zenith– the giant TV mutant vehicle that will be prowling the playa days and night and is the creation of sTeVe Knauff and Rosel Weedn. Plus the gifts! Check out these starfish by Maria Lucila:
pendants for gifting at 2019 Burning Man by Ventura area artist Maria Lucila
The theme this year at Burning Man is “Metamorphoses” — from the Burning Man Journal: Read more…
Buen Camino Adventure on Anglesey
A Buen Camino on an Adventure on Anglesey
- Hidden in ferns in a cow pasture near a seaside castle.
- Inside a Wendy House beside a lighthouse.
- At a mile-long sloping campground above a beach in town.
- Inside a caravan full of ivy and snails in the yard of a pub.
- A campground near a vineyard.
- A campground on a sheep’s pasture with views of the ocean and the ferries coming and going from Dublin to Holyhead.
- A garden in a parsonage.
These are all places where we slept as my son and I backpacked for eight days and 90 miles August 2018 going from the Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch train station to the Holyhead train station along the Wales Coastal Path on the Island of Anglesey or Ynys Môn. Read more…
art predator 