“We’re no longer citizens, we’re consumers,” pointed out Patagonia founder and owner Yvon Chouinard at Ventura College on Earth Day, April 22, 2019.
“Webster’s says someone who’s a consumer is someone who destroys,” he continued.
I took a break from writing my Earth Day piece that was published in the local paper (and reprinted with some addendums and photographs here) to listen to Yvon Chouinard’s wide ranging conversation with his long time friend and business associate Rick Ridgeway. He also engaged with student questions, and gave away copies of his new book, Some Stories: Lessons from the Edge of Business and Sport. Read more…
After being planted by volunteers, shrubs and wildflowers like these lupine naturalized in a vacant lot 1570 Thompson in Ventura CA.
After 20 years, Ventura California’s Midtown Monarch Paradise Park is no more.
RIP Midtown Monarch Paradise Park
On Earth Day April 22, 2019, I watched from my home as the excavator scooped up the remains of the twenty year old Midtown Monarch Paradise Park, a Wildlife Habitat Demonstration Garden in Midtown Ventura CA funded by two Earth Day grants and built by the community on a vacant city lot and hillside near the terminus of Prince Barranca at Ocean Ave Park. This heartbreaking event helps to explain my absence from this blog… the noise alone is enough to break anyone’s concentration.
…a wildlife habitat demonstration garden now dead Read more…
Swing into Spring’s Festival Season! Santa Barbara’s Lucidity, Ventura College’s Culture in Diversity, and more
Coachella may be the biggest around here, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only festival or the best one for you! It’s Earth Month so watch for Earth Day Festivals near you all month!
This weekend is Lucidity near Santa Barbara, California and yesterday and today is the FREE Fourth Annual Diversity in Culture Festival at Ventura College, 4667 Telegraph Road, Ventura CA 93003. The FREE event includes a number of speakers on stages and classrooms around the campus.
We’ll be performing an extended version of our Thomas Fire piece, “What Does Thomas Teach Us” TODAY at just after noon on the Main Stage located by the library. We follow the Student Slam and the announcement of the winner of next year’s poster contest.
Here’s the blurb and our bios:
In the surprising, humorous, entertaining, and award winning “What Does Thomas Teach Us” originally produced for Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theater, experienced performance artists Gwendolyn Alley, Rasika Mathur, and Rosel Weedn present personal, poetic, and eco-psychological interpretations of the events that led to and transpired following the December 2017 Thomas Fire. Read more…
Spring substitute teaching gig then BEquinox!
This winter and now spring I’m on a bit of a sabbatical from teaching at Ventura College but I am substituting a literature class today, so I thought I’d do what I often do when I’m teaching: put up a post about it. Students read these three short stories about death and wrote essays about the techniques the authors used to get their ideas across:
Some of the literary techniques they’ve learned about via a handout that I’m looking forward to checking out. The instructor Lin Rollens describes these literary techniques as “tools in the writer’s tool kit and that you reach for them as easily at you’d get a phillips head screw driver to put the right pieces together.” I love this! She says, “We’ve talked about other things that are techniques–dialogue, repetition, long sentences etc or anything that makes your story work–and they are free to pull those into their pieces as well. I just want them to be able to see how these stories are things made and how art moves/manipulates them so effectively.”
I will also have students share on the board:
— the best thesis
–the best hook or intro
–the best quote from the paper
–works cited
“Honor is not something that we, as a culture, tend to talk about much, and the students often have a difficult time at first delineating what they think honor is and how it manifests, so I generally give a little back ground about nature and history of honor,” she writes in an email with class instructions.
RIP Dick Dale, King of Surf Guitar
But it is worse than that #ClimateChange
Today hundreds of thousands of students around the world followed Greta Thunberg’s lead and
walked out to make a statement about climate change.
students protesting in Montreal, Quebec
Young people are angry. As well they should be. What’s the point of an education if the planet is destroyed?
In a facebook post that went viral, Marc Doll writes that “The IPCC report and the Paris Accord are incredibly overly optimistic and that commits the world to a target that means th death of hundreds of millions if not more.
But it is worse than that.
While I love good movies maybe a bit more than the next person, and while I have eclectic tastes (being the Art Predator and all), for years I have left the serious reviews to my friend Ron Wells, who then shares them with me to publish here as well as a list of ranked and recommended films.
This year, we’ve both been busy and so haven’t posted as many film reviews as I have in the past years, but I’d be seriously remiss if, here on the night of the Oscars, I neglected to post Ron’s Rankings for 2018. See the list of the 91st Academy Awards nominees here.
Put Some Sparkle in Your Life
Do you want to put some extra special SPARKLE into your life? Or the life of someone you love?
While sparkling wine is mighty fine (like these four sparkling wines that won’t break the piggy bank: two from Italy’s Rotari and two from France’s LaVieille Ferme), consider making a contribution to Burning Man artist and pyropainter Deniz Nicole to bring her Karousal Kandeo and Kaleidoscope Kandeo art installations to the LA Bequinox Regional and to the Black Rock Desert for the 2019 Burning Man Festival — and get something sparkling sent to your home as a thank you!
Deniz’s sparkly Kaleidoscopes or charms would make a great SPARKLY present Read more…
Today Let Freedom Ring with “Moodswings–Spiritual High” featuring Chrissie Hynde and MLK
Check out this very uplifting song using words from MLK’s: Let Freedom Ring today!
image by Dianne Bennet
In other years, Read more…
Two sycamores at Arroyo Verde Park in Ventura; the area was hit hard by the Thomas Fire but these trees are recovering.
Tonight there’s a lunar eclipse that will be seen over most of North America — and it’s not in the middle of the night! Unfortunately it’s in the middle of winter with much of the US covered by clouds and a major winter storm with some of the coldest day of the season with temps below zero.
Here on the west coast where we live in Ventura, it’s hazy. While we had a stunning sunset and moonrise, I wonder if we will be able to see anything during the eclipse…
art predator 