This is our planet Earth during an eclipse. By some fluke, our moon is just the right size for us to experience something sure special.
On Monday, August 21, 2017, every creature on North America will have the opportunity to experience an eclipse of the sun–weather permitting. One of nature’s most awe inspiring sights, the 2017 total solar eclipse will completely cover the sun so that the sun’s tenuous atmosphere or the corona can be seen from the west coast to the east– from Salem, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina. But no matter where you are in North America, you will be able to tell that something is going on.
Seriously though, this eclipse is likely to be the most transformative astronomical event of our lifetimes.
Because an eclipse really is the most spectacular thing that happens in our sky — and it doesn’t happen very regularly. And it rarely comes anywhere near where you might be.
And where will you be? And what will you see there? Here’s what it will look like from Goreville, Illinois,
The 2017 theme for Burning Man (That Thing In The Desert two hours north and east of Reno the week before Labor Day) “Radical Ritual” invites participants to “occupy the ambiguous ground that lies between reverence and ridicule, faith and belief, the absurd and the stunningly sublime”… nothing new there!
Not to be confused with 2011’s “Rites of Passage,” the theme of Radical Ritual “attempts to reinvent ritual in our post post-modern world.” Read more…
Ventura Climate March and RESIST Update: The postcards are coming, the postcards are coming! Plus videos!
Have you received your RESIST or Ventura Climate March postcard in the mail yet? If not, it should arrive any day now!
On Sat Feb 11, 2017, about 200 of us gathered to express our commitment to RESIST as well as to create a line in the sand and to show we are compassionate rebels, we made two hearts. These human banners were photographed on the ground by John K. Golson and from the air by Mike Love and Maxwell Mandell. On that day I promised everyone who made a donation and gave us their mailing address on a mailing label that we’d send them a postcard.
John K. Golson addressing, labeling, and stamping the postcards he designed.
Then at the Ventura Climate March, I again promised postcards to participants who joined us to make a rainbow and a circle to show our unity for justice and jobs then swarmed with us to the Botanical Garden for the Thermo-Climb — and that’s where we collected both donations and addresses.
Well we did one better than simply sending a postcard to participants of each action: we sent postcards to all participants of either action who gave us their mailing address!
a box filled with 500 postcards was dropped off at the East Ventura PO on Weds 7/28/17; postcards began arriving on Thursday 7/29/17
Then we sent postcards to various government officials — regional, state, and national! Altogether we sent out about 500 postcards — and we have another 500 we can send.
- $5 or more donation: we will send you 2 postcards in the mail (one of each)
- $5 or more donation: we will send you 4 postcards in an envelope (2 of each unless you specify otherwise)
- $10 or more and we’ll do both!
- $20 or more donation: you will receive 20 postcards in an envelope in the mail (10 of each unless you specify otherwise).
- $20 or more donation: we will mail 10 postcards in your name to elected and other relevant regional, state, and national officials.
Watch this space and John’s website for more ways to RESIST!
Remembering Jackson Wheeler 7/8/17
“Remembering Jackson Wheeler” is set for Saturday, July 8 at 11am in the PACC Oxnard Room 800 Hobson Way in Oxnard, CA. Please join his friends, family, and fans. “We’re going to get together to remember and celebrate our friend Jackson Wheeler,” says Phil Taggart, Ventura County Poet Laureate and long time friend of Jackson’s. Phil is also collecting images for a video montage. Read more about who Jackson was and why we’re remembering him.
A social worker with the Tri-Counties Regional Center, Jackson worked with the Developmentally Disabled for thirty years.
But for many, Jackson is most well known as one of Central and Southern California’s finest poets.
Published internationally, Jackson was a leader in the visual arts and poetry communities since he arrived in Oxnard from North Carolina in the1970s; he donated his extensive art collection to Oxnard’s Carnegie Art Museum where he the Arcade Poetry Series for many years; in total, the series ran for 25 years. With his co-editorship of the SOLO poetry journal, he brought the eyes of the national literary community to California’s mid-coast. Jackson authored three books of poetry, Swimming Past Iceland, A Near Country, and his most recent, new and selected poems, Was I Asleep.
Below, read a poem by Jackson and watch a video of his friends reading poetry from his recently published book Was I Asleep. Stay tuned for more details about upcoming fundraisers to help with end of life expenses. Read more…
Farewell, Jackson Wheeler
Poet, art collector, community activist Jackson Wheeler
Last night, June 9 before 9pm, surrounded by friends and family poet Jackson Wheeler, 64, passed on from this life experience to the next one. He had fainted on April 21, 2015 and they discovered and removed a tumor in his brain. While he recovered in time and was able to rejoin the poetry community and his Arcade reading series at the Carnegie Art Museum in spring of 2016, by January 2017, the last time I saw him, he was not faring well. Read more…
It can be very easy to overwhelm yourself with how much there is to do in the summer sun — and under the moon! — in Southern California! While the weather is great most of the year, once the June Gloom burns off, summers are full of outdoor music, wine, art and other festivals and concert series, many of them FREE!
For us in Ventura, it’s an hour or so more to drive south to get to various venues in LA and less than an hour to get to Santa Barbara. And Ojai is even closer!
Tonight the world-famous 71st annual Ojai Music Festival commences under the oak trees in downtown Ojai’s Libbey Bowl. If classical or new music is what you crave, this is world class: Read more…
While April is National Poetry Month, this May there’s some great poetry readings to catch in Ventura County!
Tomorrow, Thursday, May 11 at 7:30pm in the EP Foster Library Topping Room (651 E. Main Street, Ventura), join Ventura County Poet Laureate Phil Taggart as he hosts a featured reading by Joy Manesiotis followed by an open mic with readings by local luminaries as well as poets in training and others including my Ventura College Composition students.
Expect the unexpected! I tell my students they can find poetry anywhere. They could submit anything they chose to that they’d written this semester but they can read what they want Thursday night. Above is the cover that Brandon Elliott designed using the title that the students generated and voted for and an image submitted by Maria Sheldon that she took in her photography this semester.
Featured poet is Univ of Redlands prof Joy Manesiotis
On Saturday, April 29, the People spoke about Climate, Jobs, and Justice.
- we spoke with our feet as we marched
- we spoke through our signs
- we spoke with our voices through chants, cheers, song
- we spoke through our actions–
- our circles of unity
- our swarm
- our thermo-climb
- read more about why!
- and more background here
Today’s the day! Time to get your Climate March on! People are already marching around the world to send a message to leaders and community members alike that we need to tackle global warming and climate change in a way that addresses social and environmental justice. Read more about why, where, and how.
It is not only the right thing to do to create a more just world, but the Green Economy is creating far more jobs that the older petroleum and carbon based one! It is time for the US to step forward to renew our commitment to the Paris Agreement, to be inventive and innovative, and not hold the world back.
While it may seem that the weather and the climate is just fine, especially on a gorgeous day like today, 97% of the world’s scientists argue that it is not.
We need to take radical action, and we need to do it now: for our children and for the all living beings on our planet:
If you are joining us in Ventura where we will make a rainbow and a circle to show our diversity and our unity for justice for all at around this HUGE Moreton Fig in Mission Park:
and then we will be at the Ventura Botanic Garden in all of its spring wildflower glory:
At both sites, we will have postcards to decorate and address to be sent. We will be collecting donations to pay for the postage for these postcards as well as a commemorative postcard that we will send to participants who make a donation and fill out a mailing label.
If you are willing to help out, we need 1-3 people to collect donations and help coordinate each color.
We will have water donated from The Water Store as well as juices, sodas, and organic lemonade and organic snacks for sale.
More details here:
Choose a color and RSVP to this FREE event:
https://www.facebook.com/events/275301409589868/
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ventura-county-climate-rally-march-and-thermo-climb-tickets-33914938494?aff=ebapi
Climate march color flyer here to print out.
You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.
— Pema ChodrunUnless it’s not weather but climate change…
On the first day of his presidency, along with a few million others, I marched.
Now on the 100th day of his presidency, along with a million or more, I will march again, this time for Climate, Jobs, and Justice, in an event that I am co-organizing that takes a stand for climate justice and a clean energy economy.
Even for someone like me who considers herself an activist, it seems like it has been non-stop from one March or action to the next, including spelling out RESIST at the beach and waving at cars about education in the pouring rain.
Because times have changed. Just watch this Simpson’s episode if you have doubts. Read more…
art predator 