Womantree 2024 at night in Black Rock City, NV

Made from casts of real women, Womantree “is a meditation on the lives and legacy of women, their stories, and our connection to them,” says Burning Man Honorarium artist Valerie Mallory. While this is the 10 year anniversary of the Womantree concept, “every time Womantree goes up, it’s necessarily different than the first one,” said Valerie. “It’s not made from a template; it grows organically.” Womantree grew first in Nevada in 2014, then in Sacramento and Utah in 2023, and in San Francisco at Vesuvio in April 2024. Read more…

The Man and the Moon: Burning Man 2024 Curiouser and Curiouser 

One again, Black Rock City has risen from the dusty lakebed of the Black Rock Desert. Winds with gust of up to 40mph followed by several hours of rain that closed Gate but did not deter the artists and builders from co-creating this magical place once again. There is no city like it on Earth and I am grateful to have found my way here again to Burning Man along with 70k or so fellow Burners; this is my 22nd burn in 32 years of being a Burner. (Scroll down for stories of the early days from a depth psychology perspective). 

As I write this, I am sitting in the red circus tent that is home to Minstrel Cramp. A young man with the playa name “Yard Sale” stopped by to tune the drums, and we talked at length about music and creativity and finding a purpose that we have a passion for. Now Steve, a professional pianist from the Bay Area, Read more…

my mailbox from  Burning Man 2023

Going to Burning Man in Black Rock City Nevada this year? Did you know you can send and receive mail? It’s easy, especially if you bring a mailbox like mine pictured above!  Just like any city of 80k people, Black Rock City has postal services where you can receive and send out mail. For example, if you come by the Post Office camp at 8:00 & Esplanade and fill out a postcard complete with a correct address, it will be mailed for you! Post offices are also BRC3PO located at the 3 o’clock plaza and BRCPO6 located at Center Camp.

“Over the years, we’ve honed our craft into the immersive, improvisational theater experience it is today! At our best, the BRC3PO Post Office is a surreal, unpredictable wonderland, with interactions that deeply connect and stretch our postal patrons in unexpected ways,” says BRC3PO on their website.

BRC3PO

 You can gift someone the experience of receiving or sending a postcard back home!

Read more…

Curiouser and Curiouser: Burning Man 2024

The first time I went to Burning Man I remember driving in the pitch dark night for hours from my home in Reno out into the Great Basin desert. No cars on the road just the occasional owl, cow, coyote. The evening was warm and at one point I pulled over to pee on the side of the road and pick some sage in bloom which I put on the dash of my Toyota truck. I followed the directions and pulled off the highway onto the Black Rock Desert which was periodically punctuated by flag poles. I followed the dirt track on the empty dry lake bed feeling like I was floating in a sea of black until I saw in the distance a neon green blur. Read more…

Curiouser and Curiouser: Burning Man 2024 theme

Back from three weeks in Italy on a wine press trip for Wine Predator (more on that soon!), this Art Predator sees that summer is certainly heating up with lots of fun activities on the horizon here to help get over missing Europe! Standout events coming full blast this June are The Batette Follies of 1939 in LA running from June 6 through July 14, 2024, the Live Oak Music Festival in San Luis Obispo over Father’s Day Weekend June 14-16, Garagiste Wine Festival in LA June 22, Lucidity Festival June 26-30 and on the same weekend, the X Games returning to my hometown of Ventura, plus free music all over, Dead and Co are still at the Sphere in Las Vegas, and then looking toward August, Burning Man in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert about two hours northeast of Reno. Here’s a bit about a few of  Art Predator’s June highlights and art I’m looking forward to at Burning Man with more details and reports to follow!

The Batette Follies of 1939

June 6-July 14, 2024
The Batette Follies of 1939: A Dark Night Parody, Montalbán Theatre, Hollywood, CA Read more…

Antonella Manuli practices regenerative organic farming

“Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature,” pointed out Rachel Carson, author of the 1962 ground breaking book Silent Spring. “But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself? [We are] challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.” 

Earth Day began in 1970 as a teach-in to understand how we are altering and destroying nature– and we are still learning how to live more lightly on our planet. Read more…

Bruce Springsteen tour 2024

A LITTLE CAFE by Ron Wells

There’s a little cafe. Down San Diego way. That cafe plays music all night, and all day. That cafe holds big ideas and small ideas, big dreams and small. That cafe holds human beings drinking and singing, and carrying their burdens into it with them.

Bruce Springsteen has been there. He remembers it vividly. 

Read more…