Please join us on Wednesday in toasting the women winemakers of the world! And please share–Who are your favorite women winemakers?
As March is Women’s History Month, and
Saturday March 8 is International Women’s Day
, what better time to focus on women winemakers than now?
That’s the idea of the tweet-up on the first Wednesday evening of March–to taste and tweet about wines made by women March 5, 2014. We’re going to get started at 5pm Pacific Standard Time.
All you need to to do
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Since I don’t get out to see films that much (although last night I did get to the $3 theater to see Hunger Games: Catching Fire which I loved and we saw the Lego movie opening weekend which we also loved), I’m always grateful that Ron Wells does AND that he takes the time to write about them so I can share his reviews here.See if you agree with Ron’s ranked list of the Top 30 films of 2013–plus his worst films and why. Let us know in the comments–which film did you think was best and worst and why?
For me though, nothing matched 12 Years a Slave. Brutally honest and hard to watch (as reported by the LA Times here), but necessary for people in this country to see.
Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
so claims Elmore Leonard in the book Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing which I read about today on the blog Brain Pickings.
Leonard was a novelist but most of his rules still apply to writing in general. If you want to read the why and the wherefore and his stories that generated these rules, you’ll need to go to Brain Pickings, or even better, buy the book Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing (public library) illustrated by Joe Ciardiello.
If you just want the basic rules, a taste of what he has to say, and some ideas of how they apply to academic writing, read on! Read more…
Muir: The sun shines not on us but in us.
As we’re heading into some stormy weather here in southern California, it’s important to remember that, as John Muir put it, “The sun shines not on us but in us.” Image by Sheila Piala who made this lovely shareable jpg and found the source too: “Mountain Thoughts”, written by Muir during the 1870s, were collected by Linnie Marsh Wolfe and published in John of the Mountains (1938).
We’re making progress on Earth Day with more meetings this week and some important announcements on the horizon!
What will YOU be doing at Earth Day 2014?
Join VC Earth Day 2014 On Facebook
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
– Margaret Mead
What will you do for Earth Day 2014? Read more…
What Are YOU Doing On Earth Day 2014?
Every year on April 22, over a billion people in 190 countries take action for Earth Day. Why not you?
Because LIFE is NOT a spectator sport. And if we want to maintain life on earth as we know it today, we ALL must participate. Read more…
On Being A Watcher of Vowels and a Master Procrastinator of Words
“For me and most of the writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird (page 22)
“The writing we most admire, the writing that takes us into other worlds, the writing that allows us to live the experience of others, the writing that influences our thoughts and emotions has evolved through a process of exploration dna discovery. That process is both frightening and thrilling for the writer since progress is made, as it is in science and sports, by instructive failure.” Donald Murray, Craft of Revision (page 3)
“Most writers manage to get by because, as the deadline creeps closer, their fear of turning in nothing eventually surpasses their fear of turning in something terrible,” writes business blogger “Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators” which is based on her brand new book The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success
(2014 Viking). “Failure,” McArdle states simply on her website, “is what makes success possible.”
“Work finally begins,” says Alain de Botton, “when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.”
In “Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators”, McArdle argues that fear of failure or even just the fear of writing something bad paralyzes writers. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, one of the best-known experts in the psychology of motivation and who has studied how people react to failure, agrees. However, Read more…
Proud to be: America the Beautiful
The National Congress of American Indians published “Proud to Be” just before the Super Bowl saying, “Watch the #BigGame commercial the NFL would never air.” They suggest viewers, now well over a million of them, get involved by contacting the Washington Professional Football Team, the NFL and the Washington Post.
The Super Bowl did allow this ad from Coke to air, and it sure stirred up a lot of controversy, especially on Twitter and other social media sites. It’s had over 10 million views.
However, Coke missed a few languages which provided the opportunity to create this follow -up ad:
In my college classes, we’ve been discussing discrimination including racism and sexism, and students are working on their first essays on these topics and more. I wonder if any of them will engage these videos as texts for their papers–along with readings from N. Scott Momaday, Sherman Alexie, Brent Staples, Mike Rose, and Gloria Anzaldua?
In many ways, it all comes down to Seth Godin’s question: what is school for?
When I told the extraordinary poet and children’s book author about some of my teaching strategies, including those she had influenced, Lucille Clifton said, in her beautiful rich voice, “Goooood. You’re teaching them how to be huuuummmaaaann.”
To me, that is what school is for: to teach us how to be human. Together. The best we can.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
2/11/14: The Day We Fight Back Against Internet Surveillance
BECAUSE
- The NSA “has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world.” — The New York Times
BECAUSE
- The NSA collected “almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks” in one month in 2013. — The Guardian
BECAUSE
- The NSA is collecting the content and metadata of emails, web activity, chats, social networks, and everything else as part of what it calls “upstream” collection. — The Washington Post
BECAUSE
- The NSA “is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans.” — The Washington Post
BECAUSE
- The NSA “is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world.” — The Washington Post
BECAUSE
- The NSA “is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ e-mail and text communications into and out of the country.” — The New York Times
- The USA Freedom Act curtails NSA surveillance abuses.
- The FISA Improvements Act attempts to legalize bulk data collection of phone records.
We need to tell Congress to pass the USA Freedom Act and amend it to make it even stronger.
- Attend an event in your area
- Ask your representatives the tough questions
- Write to your representative about NSA reform
- Download the Reform The NSA app on iTunes
- Share on social media.
- Use the #stopthensa hashtag on Twitter to help spread the word!
Information from The Day We Fight Back: https://thedaywefightback.org/
Today is the day when…
Today February 4 is the day before my life changed. On February 5, 2010, my husband broke his neck and should have died because 95% of the people who break their C2 vertebrae do.
That’s why it’s called the Hangman’s Break: it’s what causes people to die when they are hung–they break their C2 and that’s it. It’s usually what has happened when someone dies and they say that person died instantly.
If you are one of the 5% who lives, you’re in a wheel chair. And you’re paralyzed, usually from the neck down.
Of those 5% who live, 
3% are not in wheel chairs. They weren’t paralyzed but the risk is so great of paralysis while the neck heals, and they are in so much torturous pain, that the vertebrae in their necks are fused together, and they lose 75% of their movement in their necks. But they can walk and run and do everything else.
My husband’s neck was so badly broken that Read more…
art predator 