It’s My Bloggoversary! Happy Birthday to My Blog! Post 1956 in 12 Years 2007 – 2019
Twelve years ago on Nov. 4, 2007, on the night of the time change, in my extra hour, Art Predator was reborn here on WordPress after several years in a local, print weekly.
Art Predator (CC) Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com. Feel free to use this picture. Please credit as shown. If you are a person that I have taken a photo of, it’s yours (but I’d still be curious as to where it is).
Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down: #ClimateCrisis, #MariaFire, #ClimateStrike, #RAWWineLA, and #Poetry too
Ashes, Ashes,
All Fall Down!
I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis.
I want you to act as if our house is on fire. – Greta Thunberg
There is so much we need to do– it can be hard to know where to start.
Twenty-five years ago people could be excused for not knowing much, or doing much, about climate change. Today we have no excuse. – Desmond Tutu
As California burns as a result of a combination of climate change and poor policies, and with a fast moving fire currently less than 15 miles from my house up on South Mountain above Santa Paula near the winery where I have been interning, this weekend offers up glimmers of hope. (Photos from Halloween night about 10pm; taken by my son as I drove him to a sleepover ).
Atop this hill so I can see
My skin boils red and scabs and stings
But I must be witness to everything
Fan the fire or face the crowd
California’s burning down
Sitting in the middle of the sixth extinction
Silently suggesting the investment in a generator
I looked for freedom and I found it on the highway
No other option so I’m peeling out the driveway
Sing those brand new ABCs
ABC 123 LMNO
ABC 123 LMNO
ABCDEFG
I ask myself, “Why was I nice?”
I ask myself, “What should I do?”
But all I know is white centrality
My country served me horror coke
My natural freedom up in smoke
My pre-polluted fetus lead us
Into the obscene, I meanI’m on a desert island and I ate up all the coral
I was so hungry but I know that isn’t normal, oh no
But my behavior isn’t anything but moral
So unhappy, ABC!
From just this excerpt of the lyrics, HMMNN… maybe this person needs NATURE??
My students and I are getting a Nature Fix next Wednesday Oct 30 when we go on our next field trip to the Ventura Botanical Garden located behind Ventura’s City Hall in downtown Ventura… as long as it is approved by the college’s administration!
“In the field of your imagination are all possible flowers.”
Theodosia Burr Shepherd, the Flower Wizard of California.
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…
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