it’s passing

It’s Thanksgiving week in the US and we have much to be grateful for: “Pay attention. Find the blessing. It’s passing. Everything is a gift, and nothing lasts,” writes Erin Geesaman Rabke. While today is not Semicolon Day, held annually on April 16,  it is the birthday of someone who changed my life, someone who did not make it to Semicolon Day April 16, 2022, someone I am grateful for, someone who took his life April 12, 2022 when he still had a lot to be grateful for.

So let’s talk about semicolons today.  Semicolons have a period on top of a comma; this indicates that the writer might have stopped a sentence with a period, but they want to show the link to what follows so they put a comma underneath the period to indicate a strong connection. To restate this (paraphrasing the image below), a semi-colon means a sentence the writer could have ended, but chose not to; instead the writer chose to continue on writing. 

Semi-Colon Day

Read more…

Torino Train selfie 2022

Who knew 16 years ago when I registered this Art Predator blog and signed up for WordPress that I’d be traveling the world as a wine influencer and blogger? Certainly not me! But here I am, on a train in Torino Read more…

Unite for Water Rights

Unite for Water Rights Nov. 4: 
Looking for an opportunity to do something for our planet? 

Stand With Cuyama Against Corporate Greed

Grimmway Farms and Bolthouse Farms, the world’s largest carrot growers, produce 80% of the U.S. carrot market (an annual crop worth $69 million) and together they pump over 40% of the Cuyama Valley basin’s water supply. Last year they pumped 28,500 acre-feet of water; enough water to supply three cities the size of Santa Barbara with a year’s worth of water. Now they’re suing every Read more…

by Ventura’s MB Hanrahan

It’s Dias de los Muertos!

Last year I was in Ensenada at an international wine event as a member of the press, and it was really special to be there.

OIV Ensenada

I was actually staying in a friend’s castle that she is building! Very cold, windy, and spooky for sure but awesome views of the river and the sea! Read more…

Muir: everything is hitched to everything else

“When we try to pick out anything by itself,” said John Muir, “we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” And that can make environmental problem solving a problem! How do you untangle and choose what to do to make the situation on our planet better without getting overwhelmed?  Are you getting enough NATURE in your life?

Try “The Nature Fix!” Read more…

Books for Book Clubs

How do you know it’s fall? For me, the days are shorter, the nights are longer, and a kaleidoscope of monarch butterflies returns to Prince Barranca and Ocean Avenue Park near my home. By late October, the blooming dahlias provide nectar for the orange butterflies, and as they finish, the brilliant crimson poinsettias take over to offer sustenance. Next out my window are flocks of the beautiful cedar waxwings eating berries from native shrubs, and at night various owls move through or establish their nesting territories.  

As the days grow colder, and we snuggle in to comfy couches with cozy blankets, or settle in to a hot bubbly bath, fall is time to break out the books– and not just school books, but books for pleasure — or maybe they will be both! Read more…

Mighty Zenith at Burning Man

This autumnal equinox weekend Sept 23-24 sees the return not only of monarch butterflies, shorter days, cooler nights, and coastal cleanups, but the Ventura Artwork in downtown and the westside for art, poetry, music, and more at numerous locations including City Hall, the Ventura Museum, Mission Park, and in various shops and streets. (See map below). And I will be participating too by reading poetry at City Hall today Read more…

Burning Man 2023: Man Base Friday morning before the rain

I’m still dreaming of being stuck on playa in Black Rock City. Not because of the mud, but because of the delayed strike and cleanup due to the wet playa, and because of the generator smell. I keep finding rebar in my dreams, and I can’t get camp resources to friends who are bringing it home for me. The struggle to get home with a damaged van left me discombobulated, too, not sure where I was, and wondering which camp I was in when I was in a motel in Bishop, and then home in my own bed. I wake worried what day it is, and about being prepared to teach today, the first day of the fall semester for my late start, hybrid college classes.

I actually have a lot to say about Burning Man 2023, my 21st Burn in 31 years. Read more…

Straight Up Our Alley cover by Karen Aranha

Join  me tonight as we ZOOM “Straight Up Our Alley” at a Poetry Reading tonight, Thursday, May 11, 2023 at 6:30pm.  While the plan was to have both a ZOOM and “room” Read more…