Enjoy wine and adventure? Then Wine Tourism Day this Saturday May 11 is for you!
This Saturday, May 11 is Wine Tourism Day, a day to celebrate North America’s wine tourism industry and all those who enjoy the experience of visiting wine country.
According to organizers, “Local wine industry folks in their respective regions — including wineries, hotels, restaurants, and other wine-related businesses — have created special events for people who love anything to do with wine, food, events, travel and fun!”
Events can be anything from wine pairing dinners to music events to structured tastings. Search for an event near you or register for the Great Wine Tour Giveaway.
Or create your own event! You don’t have to visit Napa–head out on Saturday to a winery near you and celebrate! You may be surprised by what you’ll find in a few hours drive. Please post in the comments and tell us which wineries are YOUR favorites to visit?
Read on for Wine Predator’s picks…
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May the Fourth Be With You Today as you enjoy these great parodies of “Star Wars”! Cheers!
Today, May 4, is Star Wars Day!
May the Fourth Be With You today as you enjoy your Saturday–and get a laugh out of this series of Star Wars Parodies, “Wine Wars ” from the AUS wine satire blog Red to Brown They’re the ones who produced these Parker Hitler parodies.
Above is “Episode 1: A Vinous Hope” where in “a short time in the future, in a galaxy not that far away, two diametrically opposed wine making factions face off in a battle that will decide the future of wine consumption in the galaxy.” Of course, the rebels are from the Natural and Biodynamic WIne collective…
In Episode 2: , “C3-PO and R2-D2 have hooked up with promising young wine blogger, Luke Skywalker. Together they have trekked out to a remote vineyard to meet legendary, yet mystical Vigneron, Obi-Wan Kenobi .”
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Wine Predator Wins Wine Blogger Scholarship!
The Wine Blogger’s Conference in Penticton, British Columbia, Canada will be great! Lots of adventures await! Please subscribe so you don’t miss out!
I’m very excited to announce that I was chosen by the Wine Bloggers Scholarship Committee to attend the 2013 Wine Bloggers Conference in Penticton, British Columbia!
This will be my sixth Wine Bloggers Conference: I’ve been to three states so far–California in 2008 and 2009, Walla Walla WA in 2010, and Portland in 2012 and soon to be three countries–US, Portugal (as a guest of Enoforum Wines in 2009), plus Canada in 2013!
Thank you to all the wonderful donors who made my scholarship possible! Especially Tom Wark of Fermentation who matched $500 of the donations and Amy Anderson Gross the Vine Sleuth who matched his match plus $1!
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“Create Yourself. Be Yourself Your Poem.” Oscar Wilde
I love this quote from Oscar Wilde! How are you enjoying National Poetry Month? Are you writing or reading poetry?
“Create Yourself.
Be yourself your poem.”
–Oscar Wilde
Dharma.
Indifference.
I have been working on creating myself and being my own poem for a long time but especially all summer, and more so since August 2011 when I didn’t go back to the college where I usually teach.
Instead, I worked as a nanny at Burning Man, then I started a Yogic Philosphy class at the Ventura Yoga Studio with Bryan Legere, then I started a PhD in Depth Psychology at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara.
As part of my homework for my yoga philosphy class, we are to write down and read and review our dharma every day. And I tell you life has given me many opportunities since February 2010 to ponder it.
We also have to practice a different emotional state each day. Today it’s “indifference” which my teacher also expressed as non-judgement.
Today as…
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I had other plans for an Earth Day post but instead, I am supporting the #StopCISPA Boycott.
If WordPress makes it possible, I will black out my site until Tuesday.
For now, this cat (which you can download and upload to facebook and twitter to explain your absence), video,
and message from Anonymous will have to suffice.
What is CISPA?
Under the guise of cyber-security, CISPA (the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) is a bill that would grant corporations the power to share our emails, Facebook messages, and other sensitive online data with the government – all without a warrant.
CISPA would kill online privacy as we know it – nullifying the laws that require big corporations to keep our information private from government agencies like the National Security Agency. Those corporations wouldn’t have to notify you that they have done this and you wouldn’t be able to take legal action against them if they made a mistake when sharing your information.
While strong information security is critical to privacy and civil liberties, CISPA does almost nothing to prevent this. All it does is give the government access to your information.
We beat CISPA last year when hundreds of thousands of Americans signed online petitions to let lawmakers know that our online privacy rights are not negotiable. But this bill is back and politicians who want the government to be able to read your emails and see what you purchase online are hoping you won’t speak out this time.
Together we can beat CISPA again!
How to save our blue planet: embrace the shadow
For Earth Day 2012: Some thoughts on how to save our planet via a change in consciousness…
As we approach Earth Day 2013, I am working on a Ecopsychological paper for my Post Jungian Psychology class and reviewing the readings we’ve done looking for pertinent quotes and ideas to support my thesis. These quotations from a 2011 essay by S. Nouriani seemed pertinent not only to my paper but to the planet’s Earth Day celebrations so I thought I would share them here.
“We are at a point in the evolution of consciousness and the history of human-kind where we must begin to integrate the collective shadow of humanity—or it will destroy all human life on Earth.”
Nouriani (2011 p. 97) quotes Singer (2003) as suggesting that “to deal with charged cultural complexes, we have to withdraw our negative projections and take in the darkness that we have projected onto the Other…
Our personal and collective shadows can turn anything into a weapon of mass destruction.
Can…
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Today, when many Americans are celebrating Earth Day, I want to call attention to an example of Eco-terrorism. Read more…
Malbec Madness!
Today April 17 is Malbec Day and we’re celebrating with Malbec Madness! Read our reviews of the four wines we tasted in anticipation of today’s events!
A Little Levity for Tax Day
May your Tax Day not be too taxing! If you need a different perspective, read this post!
Need some Tax Day relief?
While I can’t lower your tax bill, I can offer up some poetry, some art, some giggles, and some discounted bubbles!
Above is one of my 3:15 Experiment poems that I turned into a broadside that was published in ArtLife Limited Editions; the tape came from the college where I was teaching and I stapled some on to each broadside which makes the actual broadsides easier to read than this jpg! Read the whole poem.
Next up is a cartoon of the Beatles have an adventure with Robin Hood and singing “Tax Man.”
Plus today only Ventura Wine Company will pay your taxes!
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Chris Jordan: Melting the Ice in the Heart
Raise your Voice (2010): Midway – Message from the Gyre (2009) / Chris Jordan (Photo credit: Ars Electronica)
In a talk on April 9, 2013 at Pacifica Graduate Institute, I swiftly took notes while artist Chris Jordan spoke about how to present the magnitude of trash that we produce in such a way that the scale of consumption and refuse has meaning enough to transform our individual and cultural practices. (View videos and art and read Part 1 here.)
The following day in class and then at our EcoDreamers meeting, Ed Casey spoke about how Chris Jordan is practicing phenomenology. (A few days later, I got to thinking how haiku poets are also phenomenological. I’d already been thinking about how wine blogging is phenomenological.)
A lawyer by training and a photographer by passion, Chris Jordan’s work makes visible the unconscious behaviors that lead to unconscious yet conspicuous consumption. By making the unconscious visible, through this visibility, he makes it part of our consciousness.
Once we are conscious, there is the possibility of transformation. For example, in this image “Whale, 2011″ ( 44×82”, based on a photograph by Bryant Austin) Jordan depicts 50,000 plastic bags which is equal to the estimated number of pieces of floating plastic in every square mile in the world’s oceans. In his talk, Jordan told us that if you take a net through most of the world’s oceans, you will collect more plastic than you will biomass. Scroll down for a close-up of the eye–you can see the bags. Or go to his website where you can zoom in or out.) Read more…
art predator 