Wine Travel Awards 2025: Vote for Me Please!
glamping in Tuscany
Please vote for me in this year’s Wine Travel Awards! You have less than two weeks to do it as voting ends March 31 so please vote now! It’s so easy — just click here! The Wine Travel Awards provide “a unified advertising and information campaign in different countries to draw attention to the nominees: people, regions, wines and local products” with the goal to form “a friendly community of wine & wine tourism professionals created to share opinions, knowledge, and information.” And YOU can vote for ME! After the March public voting period ends, “five nominees with the highest amount of public votes in each category will be forwarded to the WTA Jury Panel, who will have an honourable mission to choose the best of the best.”
hiking in Tuscany beside an organic olive orchard at La Maliosa
So why should you vote for me? Let me count the ways! Read more…
New Worlds in Words Literary Salon at the Buenaventura Art Association Gallery
February 26 – Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
“The land knows you, even when you are lost,” writes Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass (page 36).
“The land is the real teacher. All we need as students is mindfulness. Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world,” writes Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass (page 222).
In February’s Literary Salon at the Ventura Harbor, we will be inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s insights into being connected caretakers of the natural world and see how Braiding Sweetgrass supplies solutions to the challenges of today. Chosen for Ventura College’s One Book One Campus, VC students and faculty fell in love with the message of cultivating a reciprocal relationship with the living world.
In this series, we engage our senses and heighten awareness via discussions and writing prompts led by award winning wine writer and Ventura College adjunct English professor Gwendolyn Alley. February focuses on inspiration from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s insights into being connected caretakers of the natural world from her book Braiding Sweetgrass.
As the sun sinks into the Pacific beside the Channel Islands at 5:47pm, we will arrive and settle in. We will have butcher paper up for discussion questions and favorite quotes from the reading. No need to finish the book before our meeting (or even read it), but please bring a copy of the book with you if you have it for reference as we discuss the book, its themes, and the ways we can apply its lessons to our lives finishing at 8pm. Please bring a notebook and a fast pen or two. You are welcome to bring a sketchbook if you would like to draw.
Register here: https://baa.wildapricot.org/event-6050889
February Frolics: Art! Writing Workshops! Burning Man FUNdraiser at Art City for ORBs! gauvin art show!
Solvang’s indoor troll by George Rose
Did you do dry January? While I didn’t quit drinking, it was WAY TOO DRY around here in Southern California leaving us far into 2025 and still in FIRE SEASON. Smoky, too. And a bit cramped! Now with a solid rain behind and another ahead, I’m ready for a WET February and to get out of the house! How about you? To whet your whistle, here’s a few events and activities that make for a fun February– starting with three events today Saturday, February 8!
My day will get going at the Garagiste Festival in Solvang –with a stop to check out the new indoor troll that’s taken up life there! Danish artist Thomas Dambo with a small build crew and volunteers installed the very first California “Troll” in the Tower Gallery at the California Nature Art Museum.
Tis the Season to Celebrate Everything
Happy and Merry from Ventura
2024 has offered a number of challenges but here we are solidly in the holiday season!
And I am here to wish you a very merry everything and happy happiness too.
merry and bright
May your days be merry and bright!
merry and bright on Christmas Day 2024
I am worried about what is to come with the new administration but for today ENJOY! Take in the light! Cheers!
Cocktail and Christmas lights
Giving Thanks 2024
“I am grateful for” by mb hanrahan
Last Thanksgiving I quoted Erin Geesaman Rabke: “Pay attention. Find the blessing. It’s passing. Everything is a gift, and nothing lasts.” These past few weeks have been challenging for me, and have often felt hopeless as I wrote here. As we live under the shadow of what is to come from the president elect, these are wise words to keep in mind. But today, this Thanksgiving, I am appreciating artist mb hanrahan’s simple approach: to count her blessings. Like mb, I have many blessings I am grateful for, Read more…
Hope is the Thing with Feathers: Time to Fly Into Action
I’m Fine by Ukrainian artist Oleksiy Sai displayed at Burning Man 2024
“I’m fine.” Yeah, right. I’m as fine as this sculpture “I’m Fine” by Ukrainian artist Oleksiy Sai made up of shot up and mangled signs from the war that Russia is engaging in against Ukraine (bikes in front for scale). Current mood:
Art by Michael Mahaffey
In my search for hope, as I search for a way to dig myself out of this depression, I turn to art and authors like historian Heather Cox Richardson who reminds me that more people voted for someone else than voted for him instead of HER. And Rebecca Solnit; more from her below. And Robin Wall Kimmerer. And Emily Dickinson; see below. And Dianne Bennet; see below. And Wendell Berry; see below. And Octavia Butler who said “The very act of trying to look ahead to discern possibilities and offer warnings is in itself an act of hope.” And Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders; read my Jungian analysis here.
“Hope” by Dianne Bennett– I purchased this from her in October 2024
“Hope” is the thing with feathers says Emily Dickinson:
Vote!
Leave Democracy Better
Happy Election Day! This has been one heckuva an election season! For some of you, due to age or apathy, this may be your first presidential election! No matter where you live, if you haven’t voted yet, it is important to vote TODAY before your polls close– usually around 8p– because TODAY is the FINAL DAY to VOTE.
vote is a prayer
In California, if you haven’t already voted, you have until 8pm to vote in person, drop your ballot in a mailbox for today’s postmark, or drop off your absentee ballot at a number of places. Where I live in Ventura County, that includes the Wright Center at Ventura College, the Ventura County Government Center, and Ventura City Hall. You can also vote at any Vote Center in Ventura County.
Didn’t get registered by the deadline? Read more…
17 Years Ago: This Happened
WordPress 17!
“Happy Anniversary with WordPress.com!
You registered on WordPress.com 17 years ago.
Thanks for flying with us. Keep up the good blogging.”
And what a flight it’s been! Burning Man, Italy, Portugal, France, and more! Read more…
Fall for Poetry
Cisneros Quote
“People know when you’re speaking from el Corazon,” Sandra Cisneros writes. “You have that pain. Take that pain and do something with it. That’s very powerful.” Read more…
art predator 