Super Bowl Ads Tug at Heartstrings, Brains, Morals
Did you get excited during the Super Bowl watching the 60 second film trailer for the new Crocodile Dundee movie Dundee: The Son of a Legend Returns Home?
You know the one where it’s actually a showcase for Australian tourism featuring a scene at a winery and starring Chris Hemsworth and Danny McBride drinking Australian wine? Read more…
STOP SIGN. Ventura’s Botanical Gardens were devastated by the Thomas Fire
In John M. Synge’s tragedy “Riders to the Sea,” the final words come from the widowed matriarch Maura:
…may He have mercy on my soul, Nora, and on the soul of every one is left living in the world. Michael has a clean burial in the far north, by the grace of the Almighty God. Bartley will have a fine coffin out of the white boards, and a deep grave surely.
What more can we want than that?
No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied.
I don’t know when Ventura College chose to produce the opera version of this classic one-act play, but it is timely. The play focuses on the losses of an Irish family as they struggle against nature, and most specifically, the sea. Like Maura, we grieve our recent losses to nature from fire and flood. Read more…
So you LOVE Burning Man, and you DREAM about Burning Man, and you think you want to go to Burning Man 2018 over Labor Day weekend?
Then you might want to check out the video above by Juan Reyes (with text from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos) or the longer video below that recounts the Desert Cosmonauts 2016 Burning Man experience — mostly in Spanish with English subtitles…
center camp robot photo by Gwendolyn Alley
And if you’re excited about exploring this year’s Burning Man “I, Robot” theme which you can read about here…
And if you know all about Burning Man’s 10 Principles and you’re ready to practice them… (If you need a refresher, check out this Burning Man 10 Principles coloring book).
Then maybe you’re ready to get a Burning Man Ticket for 2018!
But just because you want to make the trek to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert located two hours northeast of Reno (and then deal with 2-20 hours at Gate and another 2-20 hours at Exodus) doesn’t mean you’re going to get one of the coveted tickets. But if you want to try, Read more…
This stone plaque graces the entrance of the Engineering building at the University of Wyoming and inspired the title of John McPhee’s book “The Control of Nature.”
Just north of where I live practically in shouting distance of the Ventura Freeway and the burnt remnants of the Thomas Fire, the 101 through Montecito opened a few hours ago, allowing traffic to travel where the debris flowed just over a week ago.
The opening of the 101 once again shows many how “the control of nature is won, not given.” Thousands of workers first had to search for survivors… and then for the deceased. It took a huge fleet of engineers and public service employees working around the clock for almost two weeks to wrest control back when the river of debris chose to flow along the freeway.
Hundreds of people have yet to return home as water, power, and roads are in various stages of recovery and repair. As our attention has been focused on these human dramas and tragedies, much of the infrastructure damage has not even been reported on. The scope of the debris flow is hard to comprehend.
Historic and geologic time converged when Read more…
Last year, on Saturday Jan. 21, 2017, following the inauguration of the 45th president of the US, somewhere between 3 and 5 million Americans joined “The Women’s March”
the largest collective protest march in US history
As we head toward Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday and holiday on Monday, I offer his words below as well as “Breathe and push,” Sikh-American civil rights advocate Valarie Kaur’s shares her plea against racism in the video above. Read more…
The Good, The Bad, The Funny, The Serious: 2017 in Review
photo by Alan Sailer
Well Christmas has come and gone… and 2017 is following close behind.
Good riddance, if you ask me. Here’s why:
Locally, we’ve been dealing with the Thomas Fire, the biggest fire in California’s history which burned a block away from my home, burned the homes to the ground of many friends and acquaintances, disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and that has superseded the shenanigans in the White House for the past few weeks.
And speaking of the White House, here’s more reasons why I’m ready to say good riddance to 2017:
and more reasons…
Read more…
Dear Satan, Merry Christmas!
Lots of heavy news here on Art Predator, and more heavy news to come as I post some of the writing that my students did about their Thomas Fire experiences.
Demonstrators at the FCC building Dec. 14 protest the end of net neutrality rules. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
And it really feels like the Grinch not only stole the hillsides and Christmas but the internet as well.
But today is Christmas so here’s something that will hopefully lighten the mood a bit.
Or not.
Seriously, though, cheers!
And may your day be merry and bright or calm and bright and have a joyful night. Seriously — Cheers!
(More about Flora Springs Joyful Angel on Wine Predator.)
Merry Christmas Eve from #ThomasFireVentura!
(Photo: STEWART PALLEY/U.S. FOREST SERVICE)
All I want for Christmas is for the Thomas Fire to be contained, for the oil seeps to stop burning, for the rain to come to wash away the ash and smoke that is making us sick, and for the people who had their homes destroyed by the fire to find new ones. Read more…
Happy Winter Solstice! And news from the #ThomasFire in Ventura CA
Today is the Solstice, and here in the northern hemisphere, it is the first day of Winter — and the shortest day and the longest night. It’s a time to reflect and be grateful for the return of the Sun.
“The sun shines along the passage floor into the inner chamber at newgrange during the 2013 Winter Solstice.” Photograph: Alan Betson https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/winter-solstice-at-newgrange-broadcast-live-around-the-world-1.3332820#.WjtbG7rjkrY.facebook
It’s a magical time at many places around the world because people have marked this transition from darkness to light in many special ways like New Grange above where the light shines through this portal.
I’ve been missing in action here on Art Predator because #ThomasFire erupted in Ventura county on Monday December 4, 2017 and spread to Santa Barbara County and before it is through, it is predicted to be the largest fire in California’s history possibly reaching 275,000 acres and not fully contained until early January. Read more…
art predator 