New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Music Fest

Seth Auberon, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; AXS TV

(JazzFest) The 2014 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival runs from April 25-May 4, 2014.

Bigger than Coachella (Indio), bigger than the California Music Fest (Ventura)? At least bigger than Stagecoach (Indio). More traditional than Bonnaroo (Nashville) or Wanderlust (Lake Tahoe)? A lot tamer than Burning Man (Nevada desert), the yoga hippie fests the readers of LA Yoga Magazine attend (Joshua Tree, California), the traveling West Coast Festival, and the twin Made in America concerts by Jay Z and Beyonce.

The original "Jazz Fest" started in 1970 and continues to this day: "Jazz Fest" is a showcase if the most important names in music locally and nationally. Celebrating four and a half decades of musical and cultural memories, the musical fest stands alone in presenting high caliber artists in varied genres like rock, traditional and contemporary jazz, blues, Cajun gospel, blues, R&B, country, zydeco, and much more.

Arcade Fire, Phish, Vampire Weekend, Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin), Sixto Rodriguez, Santana, Eric Clapton, Christina Aguilera, Robin Thicke, The String Cheese Incident, Aaron Neville, Branford Marsalis, John Hiatt, John Fogerty, Foster the People, Better Than Ezra, Chaka Khan, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, Alabama Shakes, Al Jarreau, Soul Rebels, Public Enemy, and more. nojazzfest.com - facebook.com/jazzfest - twitter.com/jazzfest 

• Stagecoach festival shows an embrace of country's cousins
• Stagecoach 2014: Country festival is young fans' kinda party

Aum & Garden's Body, Mind, Spirit Expo

Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; AumAndGarden.com; KPFK.org

Aum & Garden is a retail gathering place in Sherman Oaks, California that celebrates life by offering a variety of products and services for inner and outer sanctuaries. 

Statues for the garden, candles for the home, books for the soul, A&G has much to add beauty to life. Meeting home and garden needs, classes, workshops, and media events in the Valley are all part of a mission to bring the world more peace, joy, and beauty. More

• Aum & Garden, 13363 Ventura Blvd.
• Sherman Oaks, CA 91423, (818) 788-3400

Topanga Earth Day 2014 (April 19-20)

Xochitl, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Moonbeam, TopangaEarthDay.org

3,000-year-old Egyptian PORN found (video)

Ashley Wells and Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Bettany Hughes, History Channel (video)

In this modern sexualized advertisement, a scarlet woman sells fizzy, gooey soda pop (BI).

WARNING: Sex is discussed and crudely drawn, carved in stone, and scrawled as graffiti!

 

People had sex in ancient Egypt? Surely, it was only for procreative purposes! That's what we were taught in school, church, and college. Now we come to find there was *blush* something called the Turin Erotic Papyrus -- shocking pornography from Egypt. The hieroglyphs show penises, eroticism, orgies, wanton abandon, pleasure, even bestiality. Is it the "gods" (devas and asuras), royalty, or ordinary citizens and slaves? Fortunately, graffiti survives from those ancient pyramids, tunnels, and tombs.

• VIDEO: 4,000-year-old PORN found in Bible

Kama Sutra temple (uglypeople.se)

Now that we think of it, does it get any more erotic than ancient India and its temples celebrating -- and depicting -- sex manuals as temple walls? Of course, there are the ancient Greeks who are credited with inventing Western sexuality, and what the Romans were up to (think Caligula), well, who can be surprised that other countries and cultures knew about the birds, bees, and linga and yonis?

A papyrus scroll so hot, so lust inspiring, so puerile and swinger-like... How, Egypt?

David Mamet's "Lost Masterpieces of Pornography" w/ Kristen Bell, Ed O'Neill, Ricky Jay

Native American Walkabout 2014 (March 22)

Xochitl, Pat Macpherson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; ArroyoSeco.org (Facebook)

If the Buddha -- a wanderer -- went on a walkabout, what would he be doing? "May peace and balance be restored to Mother Earth and all who walk upon her" (Eco_Bela/flickr.com)

Buddha Mind, Buddha Body: Walking Toward Enlightenment (Thich Nhat Hanh)

Tim Martinez led hikers to Hahamongna (JPL/Devil's Gate Dam), where they learned about its rich Native American heritage and how to protect it. Comments on the Devil's Gate sediment removal draft EIR were due on Jan. 21, 2014. (See here for more information).

View of flood control basin as it fills from atop Devils Gate Dam with JPL in distance

 

Old Los Angeles (tongvapeople.org)

What better way to celebrate the equinox and welcome spring than to set off on an aboriginal walkabout?

The original inhabitants of Los Angeles were the Tongva, who considered the Hahamongna watershed "sacred" land. The rain that falls in the forest rushes down the mountains and percolates through springs rising before flooding down into the Los Angeles Basin into the Pacific Ocean.

The Foundation

One of the most spectacular accomplishments of the Arroyo Seco Foundation (ASF) is reestablishing the Arroyo chub, a native fish in this major tributary of the Los Angeles River.

 

The ASF mission is to preserve and enhance the Arroyo Seco (dry gulch) from the San Gabriel Mountains down to the Los Angeles River, reforest the region, and promote environmental and cultural (Tongva/Gabrielino and Chumash) awareness of one of Southern California’s greatest natural resources. More

• The Original People of Los Angeles
• A Brief History of the Tongva People
• Our Rain Dance (Wisdom Quarterly)

Hahamongna Watershed Park, next to dam and its usually dry basin (PasadenaWeekly.com)

Happy Lu New Year 2014! (video)

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly; TetFestival.org ASIAN LUNAR NEW YEAR 2014

(Ttinova) 2014 Lu New Year festivities are exotic and integrating into America

 

Tet parade, Orange County (magnumasi.com)

Each year Americans of Vietnamese descent celebrate the coming lunar year with Tết Nguyên Đán, the most celebrated and significant holiday on the traditional lunar calendar, which also marks the beginning of spring.

The Fung Brothers and Priscilla Liang joke and rap about the 626 (predominantly Asian and Mexican San Gabriel Valley) in suburban L.A. to "Thriftshop" by Macklemore.

  

The Year of the Horse (buddhistedu.org)

The community is proud and honored to present annually the largest Tết Festival in the entire world, attracting over 100,000 patrons from throughout the country and abroad. Visitors are immersed with a vibrant array of traditional foods, live entertainment, festive games, and customs celebrating the new year. This year is the Year of the Horse (Năm Giáp Ngọ).

 

Enter the Horse and exit the Dragon, it's spring and a brand new year!

 

By now the country's largest China town is not in San Francisco or Downtown Los Angeles but in the San Gabriel Valley (area code 626) with its massive mainland Chinese, Mexican, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Thai, Korean, Filipino, Latin American, and Indian communities.

(SoCalUVSA) A recap of 2013 Lu New Year celebrations in Southern California

That Tet Festival was held between Feb. 8-10, the Year of the [NSA] Snake.

 

2014 (latetfest.com)

VNCSC Tet Festival 2014

A three-day festival organized by the Vietnamese Community of Southern California at Garden Grove Park starting January 31st 2014 and running until February 2nd. 

San Diego Tết Festival

This year there are 11 beautiful contestants each competing for the grand prize of $2,000 and the title of Miss Vietnam San Diego 2014! Come to the festival... 

2014 Tet Festival moves to OC Fairgrounds

The 2014 Tet Festival is NOT going to be in Garden Grove this year.

Tet Festival - Costa Mesa, California (Facebook)

Famous Tet festival heading to Orange County fairgrounds

Organizers of the largest Tet Festival in the U.S. -- an event long linked... Negotiations between the two sides for the 2014 celebration... 

Holidays and observances in Vietnam in 2014

Garden Grove's popular Tet festival is back on 

(OCRegister.com) Garden Grove gets new operator for Tet festival 

2014 Tet Festival Event, L.A. Tet Festival

(TetFest.net) Event: The tenth annual LA Tet Festival 2014

"Kill Anything That Moves!" (video)

Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Mitch Jeserich (KPFA.org, 01-30-14), The Tet Offensive

(Movieclips) A scene from "Platoon" showing how Christian American soldiers treated innocent Buddhist civilians in a war that had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with money and our peculiar form of war-profiteering capitalism. See you in hell, Charlie.

We are currently doing the exact same thing to Afghans in Afghanistan without ever wondering who gets us into these apparently pointless wars (which are not pointless but based on lies that fall apart under scrutiny). "Truth is the first casualty of war." And "those who forget history are condemned to repeat it" as new White House and Pentagon officials seek more adventures in genocide, slavery, and atrocities in our and/or our God's name.

 

Not the Buddha but the monk and Bodhisattva Hotei (Budai), Vietnam

 

LISTEN: Letters and Politics - Jan. 30, 2014 at 10:00 am

The historical Shakyamuni Buddha (WQ)

Journalist Nick Turse, author of Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (nickturse.com), talks about our previous adventure in American empire -- the U.S. War on Vietnam (and Laos and Cambodia). That was when we began to explain our fear-based massacres with koans like, "We had to burn the village to save the village." 

In the second 30 minutes of the show, Jane Gleeson-White talks about how accounting, bookkeeping, and high finance make everything possible -- including saving the world -- based on historical research from her fascinating book, Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance. (download)