lindseyandhaley: snow creature

Showing posts with label snow creature. Show all posts

Tuesday, 20 May 2014

Scary LA: LIONS! Don't visit this summer

Xochitl, Ashley Wells, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly; Ipagn28 (buzzfeed.com)

"I met some Los Angeles people once. I hated them." The Grumpy Guide to Life (Chronicle Books). See Grumpy Cat live, Monday, Aug. 4, 2014, 6:00 pm, at Kitson, Santa Monica Place, Ste. 120 and Aug. 5, 2014, 6:00 pm in Las Vegas, Nevada (shopkitson.com)

L.A. with its own Himalayan foothills (Nat'l Forest) just behind the megalopolis (buzzfeed)

Sightings of big cats in our "Central" (Griffith) Park have been confirmed near the Hollywood sign. They are peaceful but not safe for children or crouchers. (Burma Charwoodland/Firstfire53/flickr).

According to the last census, Los Angeles is the Most Densely Populated Urban Area in the US. At nearly 2,000 more people per square mile on average than New York, we can’t compare Manhattan to Culver City and call it a day.

"Entering a space of privilege and prejudice"

Where does anyone think the traffic comes from? It’s people, commuting from one place to another. It has already been pointed out that due to the lack of a center, people move from where they live to where they work or play. It is a great expanse to cover, and most of it is covered in concrete and asphalt, which facilitates travel. It is actually just much more evenly distributed in terms of density than east coast cities.

A dozen Southern California fires rage destroying Pendleton military base. Arson, sabotage, Pentagon incompetence, Santa Ana winds? Mother Nature avoiding violence? (scpr.org)

Post-Native Los Angeles, Old Mexico

What L.A. really is is BIG. It’s massive. It's not a metropolis but a megalopolis. It is widely spread out, spilling into neighboring cities and counties...

And there are A LOT of people there, too, distributed in hundreds of communities, living in any number of configurations, speaking hundreds of languages (the L.A. Almanac says 224). More

After the earthquakes and the toxic petroleum street spill, there were some fires.

Traveling up Beachwood Canyon to the old Hollywood sign, circa 1932 (weirdca.com)

Hollywood sign with 8-ft. long nocturnal predator lurking in the dark (Maya Sugarman)

On ridge above the lights of Los Angeles, a male cougar labeled P-22 made his way from the Santa Monica Mountains to Hollywood's Griffith Park -- an island of habitat surrounded by homes and freeways (Steve Winter/National Geographic/scpr.org)

Preliminary DNA evidence shows that P-32, one of three cubs recently born in the Santa Monica Mountains of the City of Los Angeles, is inbred (National Park Service/SCPR.org)

Not fit for cat food -- massive LA fish die off over the weekend. Rat poison runoff? (LAT)

Know why L.A. has so much smog? So the God can't see what we're doing down here.

Thursday, 10 April 2014

Land of Snow: Buddhist art of the Himalayas

Dhr. Seven and CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Norton Simon Museum of Art

The world-famous Norton Simon Museum of [Buddhist] Art, Pasadena, California

The road to the top of the world, be it K2 or Everest, is the path-of-practice (RTI/WQ)

In the Land of Snow: Buddhist Art of the Himalayas

Buddhist Goddess, 1450 Nepal (NS)

This is the Norton Simon's first large-scale exhibition of Himalayan Buddhist art.

It will bring together exceptional Indian [Ladakhi, Sikkim, HP], Nepalese, and Tibetan Buddhist sculptures along with significant thangka (wall hanging "flat field") paintings from throughout the Himalayan region from the Museum's permanent collection and generous loans.

Himalayas (MickeySuman/flickr)

One monumental thangka, which measures over 20 feet in height, depicts the "Buddha of the Future," Maitreya, flanked by the 8th [NOTE: We are currently at the 14th] Dalai Lama, Jamphel Gyatso, and his tutor, Yongtsin Yeshe Gyaltsen. This is only the second time this extraordinary painting has been on view at the Museum.

The exhibit runs from March 28-August 25, 2014, but three related events begin tomorrow (see below).

Himalayan Maitreya, the Buddha-to-come, Diskit, Ladakh, India (PaPa_KiLo/flickr.com)

1. MANDALA MAKING (Family Art Night)

Bhavacakra (thangka-mandala)

Date: Friday, April 11, 2014, 6:30 pm-7:30 pm

Mandalas are cosmic diagrams that help us understand how the universe is organized. Create a mandala of your world with yourself at the center, surrounded by the people and things that are important to you. Meets in Entrance Gallery (FREE with admission), designed for families with children ages 4–10. No reservations needed

2. TOUR: Buddhist Art of the Himalayas
Date: Saturday, April 12, 2014, 1:00 pm-2:00 pm

Maitreya thangka, Tibet 1793 (NS)

Join a Norton Simon Museum educator for a one-hour tour of the exhibition "In the Land of Snow: Buddhist Art of the Himalayas." Meets in Entrance Gallery (FREE with admission).

3. LECTURE: Enter the Mandala: Cosmic Centers and Mental Maps in Himalayan Buddhism, Saturday, April 19, 2014
Jeff Durham (Asian Art Museum of San Francisco) Mandalas are geometric maps of Vajrayana Buddhist visionary worlds. Appearing in both painting and sculpture, mandalas typically consist of nested squares and circles. These geometric forms define the center of the cosmos... 3:00-5:00 pm

Wednesday, 11 December 2013

Russia hires Shamans to ensure snow (video)

R-sport (en.rsport.ru, Dec. 2, 2013); Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

VIDEO: The Olympic flame was welcomed in by shamans and village folk in Yakutsk with the algys traditional rite. The torch-bearers rode on caribous and on dog sleds (RIA Novosti).

Modern shaman (hamidsardar.com)

GORNO-ALTAISK, Russia - Not content to merely watch the weather forecast, Russia’s winter Olympic organizers took matters into their own hands Monday, arranging for dozens of shamans to pray for snow in Sochi.

As the record-breaking 65,000-kilometer torch relay entered Russia’s remote Asian region of Altai, where ancient shamanism is still popular, traditional holy men and women greeted the Olympic flame in full traditional dress.

Siberian shaman 1692 (Nicolaes Witsen)

“Altai shamans held a special ceremony to make sure everything’s fine with the snow at the Games in Sochi,” Olympic organizing committee chief Dmitry Chernyshenko said on Twitter.

A lack of snow forced the cancellation of some test events in February, putting the weather into focus as a possible problems for the February 7-23, 2014 Olympics.

Sochi snow (Anton Denisov/RIA Novosti)

Fears of unseasonably warm weather in the Caucasus Mountains have prompted organizers to store nearly half a million cubic meters of snow in huge refrigerated reservoirs ready for deployment on the ski slopes if the clouds fail.

The Vancouver 2010 Games were afflicted by spring-like conditions, and snow had to be trucked into Cypress Mountain ahead of the event.