Celebrating Zinfandel Day with Lodi Wine at Cantara Cellars
On today’s agenda: tasting zinfandels and other wines from Lodi!
On the heels of #zinfandelday! Getting ready for #lodiwine twitter tasting today! Discover more than great zin! pic.twitter.com/OsiI7fk84w
— Gwendolyn Alley, MA (@ArtPredator) November 20, 2013
What’s my favorite wine for Thanksgiving? ZINFANDEL! It’s magical with turkey and ham, and it can stand up to all those crazy rich side dishes.
So what better time to celebrate zinfandel day but in November as we’re preparing for Thanksgiving and figuring out the wines we want to enjoy on this special day?
Today I’m heading over to Cantara Cellars in Camarillo CA where we will taste zinfandel from the Lodi region as well as other wines from Lodi that you might want to consider sharing with your friends and family on Thanksgiving, or other special occasions. We’ll be posting pictures and tasting notes with the hashtag #lodiwine if you want to follow along.
These are the wines that were sent to…
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A Look at Wealth Distribution
Published on Nov 20, 2012, this video as been viewed nearly 12 million times. It shows up on my Facebook feed every month or so which makes me think that a lot of these views have happened through sharing. It shows infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers pointing out that reality is often not what we think it is. The video uses information from:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2…
http://danariely.com/2010/09/30/wealt…
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011…
http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/19/news/…
This video inspired the following look at the global distribution of wealth:
Published on Apr 3, 2013, this video is closing in on 400,000 and shows how the richest 300 people in the world are more wealthy than the poorest 3 billion combined, and every year rich countries take over 10 times more money from poor countries than they give in aid. Find out more at the website of the advocacy group that produced this video: http://www.therules.org Reference material used in the video can be found: http://www.therules.org/inequality-vi…
and http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opin…
Feliz Dia de Los Muertos! Happy Fifth–no SIXTH?– Bloggoversary!
Feliz dia de los muertos!
and Happy Fifth Bloggoversary to me!
Or is it sixth?? or seventh?
On the urging of the Accidental Novelist Danika Dinsmore and Sophia Kidd, I started this blog the night the time changed in November 2007. Read more…
Tributes to Lou Reed
Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson and John Zorn at the Stone, NYC (Photo credit: wallyg)
On Sunday Oct. 27 we were driving home from a relaxing weekend camping and soaking at remote Benton Hot Springs in the Great Basin Desert on the far eastern edge of California when I read the news on Facebook that Lou Reed had died. We switched the radio to KCRW and listened to Gary Calamar’s tribute, then we listened to Henry Rollins who had changed his line up and went from a canned show to a live one when he heard the news Sunday morning. On Monday, KCRW did another tribute on Morning Becomes Eclectic and the tributes have continued all week including this tribute to Lou Reed from his yoga teacher and this one from Lou Reed’s wife musician Laurie Anderson where she writes:
Lou was a tai chi master and spent his last days here being happy and dazzled by the beauty and power and softness of nature. He died on Sunday morning looking at the trees and doing the famous 21 form of tai chi with just his musician hands moving through the air.
Lou was a prince and a fighter and I know his songs of the pain and beauty in the world will fill many people with the incredible joy he felt for life. Long live the beauty that comes down and through and onto all of us.
And finally, here’s a tribute by Ron Wells, a semi-regular contributor to this blog:
Lewis Allan “Lou” Reed (March 2, 1942- October 27, 2013)
Today (especially!) is Champagne Day!
Happy #ChampagneDay !! A toast to you!! Cheers!
Cheers!
In my book, every day is Champagne Day! But last Saturday was a super special occasion, my husband’s birthday, and Ima Zin’s, so we opened up this grand lady–a 1983 Cristal! (A report on that later!)
Today, Friday, October 25, 2013 marks the fourth annual Champagne Day, where wine lovers around the globe raise a flute to the quintessential wine of celebration, good cheer and toasts everywhere: Champagne. There will be terrific opportunities for Champagne lovers to celebrate in wine stores, restaurants, bars and in spontaneous gatherings with friends.
Share the love! Post about your experience celebrating with the #ChampagneDay hashtag.
In 2011 and 2012, I organized Champagne Day events where we paired sparkling wine with oysters at the Ventura State Beach. In 2011 we raised over $500 to contribute to reopen McGrath…
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Story of Stuff Leads to Stories of Solutions
First, there was the 2007 STORY OF STUFF. This 20 minute video has been watched by over 2.2 million people.:
The Story of Stuff (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-
That led to a few more stories of STUFF, including the 2010 Story of Bottled Water, watched by 2.95 people :
“From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever. http://storyofstuff.org”
And that led, in October 2013, to the STORY OF SOLUTIONS:
In their about, they say: “The Story of Solutions explores how we can move our economy in a more sustainable and just direction, starting with orienting ourselves toward a new goal.
In the current ‘Game of More’, we’re told to cheer a growing economy — more roads, more malls, more Stuff! — even though our health indicators are worsening, income inequality is growing and polar icecaps are melting.
But what if we changed the point of the game? What if the goal of our economy wasn’t more, but better — better health, better jobs and a better chance to survive on the planet?
Shouldn’t that be what winning means?”
What are our GOALS?
How are we going to participate in getting there?
For me, as an ecopsychologist, a Burner, a college teacher, and a writer, I’m interested in exploring ways that I can help get my family and those in my sphere of influence toward a move from MORE to BETTER. I’m interested in how the 10 Principles of Burning Man, and the way many of us live on the playa and the gifts and lessons we bring home can be applied more widely at home–for Burners and non-Burners alike, in a way that is better for the planet and for people. If we do, I also believe we will profit as well…with a better way of life, not more stuff.
After Burning Man, many people experience difficulty adjusting back to the default world. Depression is common as are epiphanies, breakthroughs and major life changes. It can take from a few days to a few months to adjust as it is not unusual for the transformation th
at begins at Burning Man to continue when people get back home. For myself, I used to stay another day on the playa after the event then take my time driving home, camping at night at hot springs along the way. (That was how Burns 2-9 went; for my past 5 burns we’ve had to be at work on Tuesday–but we still made time to stop at hot springs on the way home!) Read more…
Sharon Doubiago
credit: Andrena Zawinski
Mothering and the Military: How Do We Raise Our Children?
by Sharon Doubiago first published in War Crimes Times, Veterans for Peace, Fall 2013, Vol V. No. 4
I went in search of a book for him. I went through the Children section and Fairy Tales, through Parenting and Mothering, through Psychology, Alternative Education, Women’s Studies and Feminism. Then Philosophy, Mythology, Politics, New Age, and War. Nothing even remotely close to what I was looking for.
I wanted a tale of a boy/man hero against war. A Conscientious Objector. A warrior for peace. A tale of a boy with the morality, integrity, intelligence, courage, physical and psychic/spiritual strength to resist our culture of war. I wanted a children’s tale fitting to the culture of peace, art, love, activism and ecofeminism I’ve rooted my life in, and one a growing boy like my grandson could find meaning and inspiration in, could model himself on.
I understood the feminist protest against macho heroes, but I was knowing, again, as I had with my son, a negative side of this protest. To be an anti-war male is an heroic stance. We need such representations, especially for our children, to counter the military’s glorified image of the war-mongering righteous killer for God and Country, and its stereotype of the unpatriotic, cowardly resister of war.
The manager was summoned. She seemed startled as if the thought had never occurred to her, but she understood what I was looking for, and why.
“Such a book does not exist,” she said.
I remember the sinking feeling for humanity, for all life, for the future, for Gaia. Why is there no such book? Why hasn’t the counterculture or any of those History of Consciousness Ph.d-ers, particularly those who are parents, not written and published such?
The sacrosanct heart of Western Culture is individualism, always proclaimed Read more…
Wanna be happier? Here’s how!
Researchers have figured out that one sure way to increased happiness is to express gratitude, to be grateful, and to share that.
This video takes that research and tests it out.
Warning: you might need a tissue.
LEO at Burning Man clown nose by Tex Allen
After watching it, I thought what a great service learning and research project this would be for my college students.
It also made me think about how this relates to Burning Man‘s culture of gifting: Read more…
Happy Birthday, Bruce Springsteen!
“Now on the street tonight the lights grow dim
The walls of my room are closing in
There’s a war outside still raging
You say it ain’t ours anymore to win
I want to sleep beneath
Peaceful skies in my lover’s bed
With a wide open country in my eyes
And these romantic dreams in my head”
Bruce Frederick Springsteen: Born Sept. 23, 1949
Happy birthday to Bruce Springsteen, the man who shined a bright light so that we might keep those romantic dreams alive and in our my heads. The man who sang of not surrendering to the harsh darkness of this world when your soul is on the line. The man who sang that when the walls are closing in, to show a little faith, because faith will be rewarded in the wide open country of our dreams.
No Surrender:
–Ron–
submitted by guest blogger, Ron Wells
Just do a little search here and you’ll find there’s lots here on Art Predator about Bruce Springsteen, much of it written by the talented Ron Wells.
Because, as you can probably guess from this photo, my husband is a BIG Bruce Read more…
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