Happy Centennial Birthday to the Ventura County Library System and to Ojai’s local library! Happy National Poetry Month!
As part of ongoing celebrations, join local poets and writers at the 6th annual WordFest, a literary arts festival that kicks off Friday afternoon, April 29th, at the Ojai Public Library located at 111 East Ojai Avenue with FREE Writing Classes, and Saturday and Sunday readings and signings by authors including ME with more events scattered around the Ojai Valley. Read on for the line-up. Read more…
“I pledge allegiance to the earth of our beloved solar system
and to all of her creatures for here they dwell
one planet united in harmony
with universal love and compassion for all.”
April is always big for a poet tree hugger like me. But this week is especially big with a week’s worth of celebrations for the 100th birthday of the National Park Service, April 21’s Poem in Your Pocket Day, and April 22 is Earth Day!
Plus locally, at an NPS film fest at Ventura College, and this weekend, Vendana Shiva will speak at a conference at Pacifica Graduate Institute near Santa Barbara, CA on “The Climates of Change and the Therapy of Ideas” as well as at a free talk at Oak Grove School near Ojai, CA. Plus other events I mention in this post on what nature does to your brain!
Keep reading for more details!
This Earth Month: Find Out What Nature Does To Your Brain
This Earth Month, discover what Nature does to your brain! And to your heart! Not to mention your hair! And yes I’m talking more than being outside at Coachella!
“When we get closer to nature—be it untouched wilderness or a backyard tree—we do our overstressed brains a favor,” states National Geographic Magazine in a story by Florence Williams with photographs by Lucas Foglia. Williams quotes environmental psychologists Stephen and Rachel Kaplan at the University of Michigan:
“Imagine a therapy that had no known side effects, was readily available, and could improve your cognitive functioning at zero cost,” the researchers wrote in their paper. It exists, they continued, and it’s called “interacting with nature.”
But research shows that just talking a walk in the woods or even a neighborhood park for as little as 15 minutes makes a difference to your brain and other measurable stress indicators!
Get out and see the wildflowers this month while on the way to taste wine at one of the many events along the central coast!
April always explodes not only with wildflowers around here, but with wine events too. Here on the central coast, it’s a great time to get out and about, see the green hillsides brimming with colorful orange poppies, purple lupine, yellow daisies of different kinds, and mustard. Read on to learn more about where you should go: Hospice du Rhone in Paso Robles, Champagne on Main in Ventura, California Wine and Jazz Fest at the Four Seasons Westlake, and the 34th Annual Santa Barbara Vintners Festival Grand Tasting.
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Ventura College Gets Culture and Diversity
Starting today, Thursday April 7, 2016 Ventura College offers eight days of exciting and meaningful cultural events and activities. Read more…
Lucidity Festival Opens Doors–and MINDS
Following on the heels of the amazing 3 day Lucid University, on Thursday, April 7 2016, Lucidity Festival opens to embrace those who venture through the gates with early arrival passes!
On Friday the Festival begins in earnest– and one of the first workshops offered is my 9am MAKE YOUR OWN MAGICAL MOUTHWASH in the Family Garden! Bring a cup so you can sample the mouthwash we make without wasting resources! (I will have burnable paper cups if you forget!) Bring a small jar if you’d like to take some with you! See the full schedule of Family Garden “Family Lair” and “Fairies Hollow” and other workshops etc here. Print out this one page pdf.
This opening culminates months and months of planning and artistic imagination and expression.
Musicians have practiced and made set lists, healers have focused energy and made schedules, yoga teachers have developed flows… and so much more!
Collaborators like me have created workshops, dragon’s tongues, Read more…
Got Nature? An Earth Month RX
Do YOU need nature? I bet you do!
What better time to discover if NATURE is for YOU than this April, during Earth Month?
As the commercial above shows, getting out in NATURE is not only good for you, but it’s easy! Nature is just right outside our doors and all we have to do is put our media devices down in order to enjoy NATURE.
Even better NATURE IS FREE!
There are endless ways to enjoy NATURE including attending a transformational festival camping out in nature like I will be doing this weekend at Lucidity.
This semester, I have taken my students outside as often as possible, and we have ventured off campus too on field trips to Art City and Bell Arts Factory.
Today we are going to Ventura’s Color Garden (located on Poli at Chestnut just up the hill form the Starbucks on Main by the movie theater). There we will have speakers on researching and writing for environmental problem solving and presentation about Theodora Burr Shepherd. Next we will walk through the Ventura Botanic Garden behind City Hall (Poli at Chestnut). All are welcome to join us! As the parking lot by the Color Garden can fill, consider parking in the City Hall lot by the Botanic Garden. Read more…
On the eve of National Poetry Month, what better way than to celebrate with an offsite AWP event at LACMA during the AWP conference in LA?
Huh? Read more…
What Matters: Care, Feel, Notice, Live
“He says it doesn’t matter if you draw, or write books.
It doesn’t matter if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn’t matter if you sit at home and stare at the ants on your veranda or the shadows of the trees and grasses in your garden.
It matters that you care.
It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
It matters that life lives through you.”
“The firebrand is the person who recognizes what is natural, what is organic, what is alive and vital in life, the person who dares to live, to be, and to create, often in the face of interference, rejection, deceit, and betrayal. The firebrand is a burning ember, life that is in each of us and that 
provides the spark and energy to speak against what distorts, hides, and denies our being and truth. It is that which awakens within us, when we must declare our independence or when we discover a new formula for living.”
–Clark Moustakas
Today is a *Lunar Eclipse* (more on the astronomy here) Full Moon in Libra (more on the astrology here).
Fittingly, it is the day tickets go on sale for Burning Man at noon. And that’s why I included two “up in the air” videos with this blog post.
Because like with the eclipse, you will probably miss out. Sorry!
Those who have submitted a Burner Profile before the Friday deadline will have the chance to get Read more…
art predator 