Art With An Environmental Impact
Los Angeles-based artist Cynthia Minet deploys post-consumer plastics to build illuminated sculptures of animals. Read more…
Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera UCSB 2/1
The 2015-2016 U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera heads to UC Santa Barbara Mon. Feb 1 for a FREE reading at Campbell Hall at 7:30pm. A performance poet and a children’s book author as well as a poet of the page, this will be a remarkable evening for those who love and appreciate poetry. For those who have their doubts, it will be eye-opening: this is likely NOT the poetry you were taught in school.
Let Me Tell You What a Poem Brings
for Charles Fishman
Roshi Egyoku: Trust your awakening.
On the one hand, we desire comfort which leads to complacency, compliance, consumerism. On the other hand, we desire excitement, to heed David Bowie’s suggestion to try the deeper waters. Will we be spectators in life? or pARTicipants? Read more…
RIP Alan Rickman 2/21/46 – 1/14/16
As if it wasn’t enough to have David Bowie pass on at 69 from cancer this week, so we also lost Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman (21 February 1946 – 14 January 2016). Guest blogger Ron Wells writes:
RIP David Bowie, 1/8/47-1/10/16: Go a little bit out of your depth…Do something exciting
David Robert Jones aka David Bowie (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016) said that “If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”
Each day we have the opportunity to do something exciting!
David Bowie, like his character in the film, The Man Who Fell to Earth, really did seem to come from someplace outside this world. His records and films allowed him to shape shift into anything he wanted to become. As such I never completely understood him, but I bought many of his records because they were very, very good, no matter what persona he was in at the time.
Maya Angelou: This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen it before.
This is a wonderful day! It’s still the start of the new year, Sweet 2016, and today’s the first day for classes for me. Once again this semester I am teaching English 1A, college composition, the Ventura College transfer course. My challenge is to keep us out of the box –and the classroom– as much as possible while still covering the required material. Read more…
Today Is Your Birthday: It’s My Birthday Too
T.S. Eliot:
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
Today’s dawn: do you see the heart? Read more…
Want to help monarch butterflies?
Many people know to plant milkweed to feed monarch caterpillars (be sure to plant the one local to YOUR area–to find the Milkweed species best suited for your garden, go to the USDA Plants Database entry for Asclepias, and click on “State Search” on the left hand side, then look at the range map for each species available in your state).
But did you know that instead of trashing that poinsettia that decorated your house with its festive red and green foliage and golden centers, you can plant that poinsettia in the ground and provide nectar for full grown hungry monarch butterflies? Read more…
I’m Dreaming of a White Blissmas…
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On Saturday January 9, 2016 from 6pm – midnight is the LA Regional Burning Man 4th Annual Blissmas held this year at the ArtChurch in LA.
- Dress in white, of course.
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At this BEquinox participation grant fund-raiser, browse through the proposed projects for BEquinox 2016 and vote to determine how much of the $15,000+ grants will go to each participating project.
- Each person who buys a $20 ticket to Blissmas gets 10 tokens that may be used to vote for one, or several of the projects represented.
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Attendees at Blissmas will also be voting on the Effigy that will burn at BEquinox.
“The Big Short”: movie review by Ron Wells
The Big Short, Adam McKay’s film based on Michael Lewis’s book, is a fantastic companion piece to Charles Ferguson’s documentary, Inside Job, with the difference being that McKay’s film takes a look at the few men who saw the 2007-2008 collapse coming. Amazingly, McKay has found a way to take a very humorous approach as he follows this fascinatingly small group of men who decide to bet big on the eventual fall of the housing market and all of the shenanigans put forth by the big banks, Wall Street, and even the government. What these men could not have imagined in the beginning was that the collapse would nearly take down the economy of the entire world.
The Big Short’s often humorous approach works because the audience is being educated along the way into the devious machinations used to produce a bubble of epic proportions. Read more…
art predator 