WildNotes: Environmental Art, Visual Music and Oil Trains! – January 2016
WildNotes – January 2016 (Link)
Much is happening out in the wilds, but if you can get to San Luis Obispo on Feb 4-5, you are needed to speak out against a proposal to bring volatile and toxic oil trains throughout communities in California. Also read about the environmental-art movement Geo-Fauvism, the pilgrimage to heal the drought in the Eastern Sierra and David Bowie collaborator Brian Eno’s Ambient Visual Music — and much more.
WildNotes: Utopias Past and Future, Mexico’s Dia de los Muertos, and LA River in Transition – October 2013
WildNotes – October 2013 (Link)
In our October newsletter, we examine past and future utopias, including Songdo, South Korea, and the Farm in Tennessee. The fight against extreme energy continues across North America, in particular a move to ship tar sands via rail to ports across the US for refining and export. We look at the makeover for the Los Angeles River proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers and efforts to go more ambitious. As well, we offer a classic film version of B. Traven’s “Macario,” a journey to the other side on the Day of the Dead in Mexico.
WildNotes: Indigenous Baja California – Plastic Ocean – The Art of Urban Farming – July 2013
WildNotes – Indigenous Baja – Plastic Ocean – Art of Urban Farming
In our July newsletter we feature some reflections on Baja California’s history of conquest of the natural wonders, the first of a longer discussion on development of the desert. See Lakota Sundance Chief Marvin Swallow’s art in Venice next week, and watch a Huichol documentary at the end of the month. Read about the latest ongoings with the Orange County Toll Road to Nowhere and the continued fight to Save Trestles. As well, read about the convergence of art, society and ecology with Urban Farming, and the tragedy of the Plastic Ocean.
WildNotes: Urban Farming – Mythic Dystopia in Film – Gonzovision – 14 August 2012
Saludos! Stay cool and read about a plan to revitalize Detroit featuring urban farming, reforestation and something called Innovation Landscapes. As well, we present a few dystopian films from different cultures and eras…Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” Chris Marker’s “La Jetee,” and the Maya Creation Myth Popol Vuh. Finally, we come out of the smoke and hype on a trip to Hollywood with Hunter S. Thompson. A bumpy ride, but follow that with a sojourn to the magical California coast at Big Sur with visionary composer John Adams, inspired by Kerouac’s Buddhism.
WildNotes: Indigenous Energy – Fasting – Be-Bop Literary Beats – 11 July 2012
Greetings! The summer heat has converged, and the haywire climate reminds us to step into the wild and remember what we may have forgotten. We feature the beautiful and inspiring Tantoo Cardinal speaking on connecting with the power of Earth’s “natural force,” an indigenous response to the threat of tar sands oil devastation. We can’t resist adding WildNotes on nuclear threats in Japan and California as well as the lack of alternative transportation options we continue to face.
Step into the wilderness, or just your living room, and fast, cleanse, detox. And listen to some orchestral jazz or Harry Partch’s improvisations and allow Jack Kerouac’s visions of the open road inspire you to overcoming all that ails.
Capitalist Utopias – Chumash Healing – California Water Wars – 1 June 2012
Greetings Wild Ones! Here at WilderUtopia, we have been watching some dangerous “developments” in post-coup Honduras, one of our favorite (somewhat tarnished) utopias. We also lost enigmatic Chumash medicine woman Cecilia Garcia, one of the strongest standard bearers of indigenous healing of the mind-body-soul with native plants, prayer, ceremony, community, and laughter.
Sustainable Biofuels – Garifuna Ritual – On Shamanism – 30 April 2012
Terence McKenna, psychonaut and writer, gave a lecture in 1994 which encapsulated the psychedelic era into the future, with shades of indigenous knowledge and a critique of the Western mind. Called “Eros and Eschaton, Living in a State of Twilight Imagining,” it was considered one of his best lectures. Yes, he is crazy. That’s the point. “We have no tradition of shamanism, no tradition of journeying into mental worlds. We are terrified of madness. We fear it because the Western mind is a house of cards, and the people who built that house of cards know that, and they are terrified of madness.”
Ecological Urbanism, Zero Waste and Mountain Lions: WilderUtopia.com – 22 March 2012
The world’s population continues to grow, forcing about a million people a day to migrate from farms and small towns to metropolitan areas to look for work. Resources get exploited, air and water polluted, climate-confused and biodiversity suffers as species continue to disappear in droves at the hand of humans. What can we do? We must demand a retrofitting of our urban environments to live together more efficiently, giving credence to community, allowing space for the open wild in us and them.
