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‘The Best There Is’: World Mourns Artistic Maverick David Bowie

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“I’m not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman,” Bowie once sang.

By Lauren McCauley / Common Dreams

The world on Monday mourned the death of David Bowie, the iconic rock star, record producer, artist, and performer whose influence spanned generations and whose ideas constantly pushed boundaries of creativity, sexuality, and custom.

Bowie’s death was confirmed by a post on his Facebook page, which said that the artist died peacefully in New York City on Sunday “surrounded by his family after a courageous 18 month battle with cancer.” He had just celebrated his 69th birthday on January 8.

Bowie, born David Robert Jones in Brixton, south London, was lauded as a performer who was always ahead of his time.   [Read more…]

The Earthships Have Landed: Inside New Mexico’s Off-Grid Community Made from Trash

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By Yes! staff / Yes! Magazine

This short film directed by Flora Lichtman and Katherine Wells for the podcast The Adaptors takes you inside the Earthships of Taos, New Mexico—a community of off-grid homes made from trash.

After studying architecture, Earthships creator Michael Reynolds decided he wanted to experiment with different materials. “We build out of trees, but we don’t want to get rid of them,” says Reynolds, explaining how the project began 30 years ago. “We want to get rid of garbage, so why don’t we try to build out of garbage? It started as kind of a contrived effort to recycle, and has ended up the best way I know of to build, regardless of recycling.”
  [Read more…]

A Brief History of Vagina Worship

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The vagina has been seen as a symbol of strength and fertility—and sometimes punishment

By Carrie Weisman / AlterNet

Despite the prevalence of sexually suggestive imagery in our culture, we’re still a bit squeamish when it comes to vaginas. But that wasn’t always the case.

“Before Western religion introduced the pesky concept of shame, female genitalia were venerated in ancient mythology,” writes Catherine Blackledge, author of The Story of V: A Natural History of Female Sexuality. Blackledge details how skirt lifting, or “ana suromai,” was once thought to help ward off evil and increase crop yields. She points out that 17th-century drinking mugs used to sport depictions of Satan cowering at the sight of an exposed vagina. Meanwhile, the ancient Greeks paraded around cakes shaped like vulvas during the three-day, women-only Syracusan Thesmophoria festival.   [Read more…]

North Of The Fence: Meth Seizures Up, Violent Attacks and Holiday Cheer

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With the horror of the San Bernadino events and PBS reporting that 355 mass shootings took place across the United States in 2015, the South Bay this week also faced its share of disturbing violence and mayhem:

KPBS reported that meth seizures are up at the border since 2009. The drug is now being produced in Mexican “super labs,” staffed by university-educated chemists and supplied by manufacturers based in Asia. This trend is occurring during a time when less and less marijuana is being grown in Mexico due to its legalization in the U.S. The Imperial Beach Patch showed the terrible destruction meth can cause on a young adult.   [Read more…]

Photography Keeps Alzheimer’s Patients In The Moment

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Most people in San Diego know that the Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA), located in Balboa Park, offers exquisite exhibits throughout the year. Lesser known are their outreach programs.

Kevin Linde, Adults Programs Coordinator, has been offering workshops to Spanish language communities in the South Bay for the last two years. Recently, in collaboration with the Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC), MOPA reached out to Spanish speaking seniors who have been diagnosed with various stages of Alzheimer’s.   [Read more…]

Recreational Improvements to Chicano Park Completed

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Ribbon cutting ceremony to be held November 5

By Brent E. Beltrán

It took almost three years to complete but Chicano Park finally received the recreational improvements that I wrote were coming back in January of 2014. New improvements to this local treasure and nationally registered historic site include a skate lane, exercise stations, an added handball court, new children’s playgrounds, a drought friendly water fountain, and other editions.

On Thursday, November 5 at 3pm there will be a ribbon cutting ceremony featuring local dignitaries such as Councilman David Alvarez, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, Urban Corps of San Diego CEO Robert Chavez, Tommie Camarillo from the Chicano Park Steering Committee as well as many others who were instrumental in making Chicano Park what it is and the improvements possible.   [Read more…]

Day of the Dead: When Indigenous Practices Meet Spiritual Traditions

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By Antonieta Mercado

The Day of the Dead celebration is a syncretic mix of Latin American indigenous practices and Catholic spiritual tradition. Families in many Latin American countries and U.S. communities honor the spirit of the dead as the ancestors did by creating altars or ofrendas (offerings), placing favorite foods, photos, special bread (“pan de muerto”) and other items associated with the ones who are gone.  

The traditional cempazúchitl or zempoalxóchitl flower (marigold) that is used in altars symbolizes the color of death (yellow) for many indigenous groups, such as the Maya, Zapotec, Mixtec, and Nahua. It is believed that the yellow color of the flower can be seen by the dead, so its petals are placed forming a road directing the souls to the altar. Abundant marigolds are placed in different forms, either as an arch, or in flower vases around the altar.

European colonization also brought religious syncretism to this custom, and placed the current celebration on November 1st, to honor the souls of dead children, and on November 2nd to honor the adults who had passed. November 2nd is also All Saints Day in the Catholic Tradition. Pre-Colonial festivities honoring the dead used to last from one to three months, depending on the particular group or region. For example, the Nahua, Totonaca, and Maya, believed that the dead would go to the underworld or Mictlán region to meet Mictlantehcutli, the dual male/female deity of death.   [Read more…]

San Diego Celebrates the Dead: Días de los Muertos 2015

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By Brent E. Beltrán

Candles. Photos. Marigolds and other flowers. Some favorite foods. Maybe a beer or shot of tequila. We all remember differently our loved ones who have passed.

Some remember with regret, others with joy, sadness, longing. But we remember.

Death is but a natural part of life. We carry our dead with us in our hearts and some are hoisted upon the bony blades of their forbearers. But we remember.   [Read more…]

Turista Libre Teams Up With Tijuana Photography Festival

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Turista Libre tour of Tijuana Photo Festival captures border town’s moment of change

By George Howell

What better way to get to a photography festival than to sit in an old school bus with the artist-organizers and a handful of curious Americans, listening to booming dance music while the eastern hinterlands of Tijuana whiz past your window?

On Saturday, October 3rd, I hopped on board the bus tour co-sponsored by Turista Libre, the Tijuana-based tour operator, and the coordinating team of the modest, but highly ambitious First International Festival of Photography Tijuana (FiFT). As artist Rebecca Goldschmidt told me, “We don’t just want to take people to the sites where the festival events are taking place. We want a dialogue.”   [Read more…]

“Express Yourself”

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Acknowledging the Playwright Project’s
“Deborah Salzer Excellence in Arts Education Award”

By Ernie McCray

Being recognized
for any contribution
I’ve made to the arts
is like being recognized
for breathing
a breath,
like being identified
for being myself –
as I was raised by a mother
and a grandfather
and a great-aunt
and cousins
and a church
and more than a handful of neighbors
and a teacher or two
at a segregated school
to,
in the spirit of the Golden Rule:
Express myself.   [Read more…]

Escondido’s Secretive Appearance Committee Decides What’s Art and What’s Not

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By Wendy Wilson /Alianza North County

“There is no Federal constitutional issue more grave than the effort by government officials to censor works of expression and to threaten the vitality of a major cultural institution, as punishment for failing to abide by government demand for orthodoxy,” said U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon in the case, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences vs. City of New York.

When the City Manager of Escondido, Clay Philips, turned a city committee called the “appearance committee” into his own personal censorship group, First Amendment advocates started to pay attention.  This committee was originally created to regulate what color downtown business owners could paint their buildings in the downtown historic district.  

Under Clay Phillips office, with the consent of Mayor Abed and council people Gallo, Morasco and Masson, this closed committee has transformed into a tool for city censorship.  This taxpayer funded city committee meets to decide city regulations with no publically elected officials and no publically posted or published meeting times.   [Read more…]

Ta-Nehisi Coates, ‘Unflinching’ Voice on Racism, Declared MacArthur Genius

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‘Writing without shallow polemic and in a measured style, Coates addresses complex and challenging issues such as racial identity, systemic racial bias, and urban policing,’ declared the MacArthur Foundation.

By Sarah Lazare / Common Dreams

Journalist, author, and leading voice on anti-black racism in America, Ta-Nehisi Coates, was revealed Tuesday to be one of 24 recipients of the 2015 MacArthur Genius awards.

“Writing without shallow polemic and in a measured style, Coates addresses complex and challenging issues such as racial identity, systemic racial bias, and urban policing,” declared the foundation. “He subtly embeds the present—in the form of anecdotes about himself or others—into historical analysis in order to illustrate how the implications of the past are still experienced by people today.”   [Read more…]

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