Earth Day Pasadena: Family Fun (video)

Xochitl, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Katrina Hoven; CityofPasadena.net

Most of us now rarely think about where our food comes from. This video documents the story of a small urban lot and what a sustainable farm looks like. PathtoFreedom has an "urban homestead" on a successful half acre in Pasadena.

Earth Day L.A.: Pasadena Earth and Arts Festival 

Earth Day with WQ, Pasadena, California

FREE all-ages event in Old Pasadena... Live music from local bands, dancing, and an interactive drum circle you can join... Singles, kids, and parents get creative with art workshops... Eco-friendly exhibitors will display and sell green products and services... Sample tastings...

Celebrate nature, art, music, and community at Pasadena’s 12th annual Earth and Arts Festival (cityofpasadena.net/earthday) from 11-5 pm, Saturday, May 3, 2014 at Memorial Park, 85 E. Holly St., at Raymond Ave., and across the street at the Armory Center for the Arts, 145 N. Raymond Ave.  Pasadena’s Earth and Arts Festival is one of the biggest free “green” events in SoCal with family-friendly activities, Aztec dancers, drum circle, solar, electric vehicles, wildlife, building better homes, green jobs, gardening and art exhibits, vegetarian food, and entertainment for all ages.
 

North East Trees Earth Day Fest 

FREE admission, free on-site parking, plus 100 free trees to LA homeowners. Come to the Earth Day festival, where local artists, environmental organizations, and sponsors will exhibit and sell at this FUNdraiser for North East Trees. Learn what local environmental groups are doing and ways to can get involved. Be a part of the mayor's "1 Million Tree Initiative."

• Earth Day becomes Earth Fest in the Valley (Woodley Park)

Free Tibet or get a quake

Sharon Stone, 56, sizzles on cover of GQ
Sharon Stone may be 56 years old, but she has never looked hotter! The "Fading Gigolo" actress graces the cover of the May issue of GQ Italia posing in black lace lingerie and black heels. The blond beauty is pictured flirtatiously smiling with smoky eyeliner and tousled hair...

UFO people did it.

Solved! How ancient Egyptians moved massive pyramid stones (LiveScience.com) The ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids may have been able to move massive stone blocks across the desert by wetting the sand in front of a contraption built to pull the heavy objects, according to a new study. Physicists at the University of Amsterdam investigated the forces needed to pull…

Wildflowering L.A. Spring and Earth Day Fest

Xochitl, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Arroyo Seco Foundation (arroyoseco.org); Trails Council

Los Angeles is a flowering desert wonderland as seen at urban Site 37 (wildflower.org)

Wildflowering L.A. Spring Exhibition

There are no birds without bees and trees.

LAND invites all to the Spring Exhibition for Wildflowering L.A. on Saturday and Sunday, April 26-27, 2014 at THE SHED. The exhibition will feature flower cuttings, photos fresh from the project sites, artist-designed posters, educational activities...

 

Earth Month Invasive Plant Removal Volunteer Day

Help remove harmful invasive plant species from the natural streamzone below JPL/Hahamongna/Devil's Gates Dam to protect our native riparian ecosystem (sponsored by SoCalGas).

Native American/First Nations people of California (starknowledgeconference.com)

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Earth Day L.A.: Pasadena Earth and Arts Festival 

FREE all-ages event in Old Pasadena... Live music from local bands, dancing, and an interactive drum circle you can join... Singles, kids, and parents get creative with art workshops... Eco-friendly exhibitors will display and sell green products and services... Sample tastings...

North East Trees Earth Day Fest 

FREE admission, free on-site parking, plus 100 free trees to LA homeowners. Come to the Earth Day festival, where local artists, environmental organizations, and sponsors will exhibit and sell at this FUNdraiser for North East Trees. Learn what local environmental groups are doing and ways to can get involved. Be a part of the mayor's "1 Million Tree Initiative."

The foothills' watershed in the time of the Tongva Natives of Los Angeles (tongvatribe.net)

La Canada Flintride Trails Council is dedicated to preserving, developing, promoting, and maintaining are local and regional trail systems (sometimes with the help of willing horses).

Urban Oasis: turning a home into a natural wonderland (pasadenaweekly.com)

Transition Pasadena: Arroyo Food Co-op

Spring Equinox: Happy First Day of the Year!

Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly  VERNAL EQUINOX 2014

Flowers and fruits are possible thanks to bees (Teacher Julia/tx.english-ch.com)

The fragrant jasmine wafted all over the meditator (mostbeautifulflower.com)

 

In Bangalore (BBclix/flickr)

Happy "New Year"! (In Buddhist Asia, as in most of the ancient world, spring marked the New Year not an arbitrary Gregorian designation ruining a calendar once in perfect sync with Luna/Chandra our Moon, who gives us our seasons, and Sol/Surya our Sun, who floods us in cosmic rays). 

Happy Nowuz from Tehrangeles and Feliz Primavera from Olvera St., formerly Mexico (both well rooted in bustling Los Angeles)!

A new beginning

Meditating on a mandarava flower

With the renewal of Gaia/Bhūmi our Earth we, too, can make a renewed resolve to meditate or at least to be more "mindful" and present as our day unfolds. Today is the first day of the rest of your life, the adage goes, and whether we've heard it before or find it new and insightful, isn't it? If today is, can't we choose to do things differently from now on right at this moment? When else are we EVER able to choose, or do, or accrue karma/merit other than right NOW? So some say, "Now is all there is." Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Ram Dass, the Beatles in India, even the Panchen Lama and his elder would agree. We hear as savakas. We see it. We live it.

Meditation

Reclining meditation (pinterest)

Here is a fascinating meditation to breakthrough to serenity, insight, and self-knowledge. O, what I wouldn't give to be calm! (It helps to begin with a blessing to pre-direct the mind/heart, honoring the Three Jewels of the Enlightened One, the Enlightened Teaching, and the Enlightened listeners/practitioners. This will help if fear arises that one will be unprotected, "open" and susceptible to inimical-influences like spirits, as so many fundamental Christians, Catholics, and Muslims warn).

INSTRUCTIONS: Sit comfortably. Breathe deeply. Let go. Let go of thinking, breathing, sitting, doing, and let it happen. Let what happen? Serenity will happen. Accept the suffering and let it pass right through without holding on. (Resisting is a form of holding on).

When there is serenity, it becomes possible to gain absorption and develop successful insight (east coast) for liberation.