Showing posts with label Pasadena. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pasadena. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Save the Trees with Julia Butterfly Hill (7/8)


Evening for the Trees with Julia Butterfly Hill
ABC 20/20: The Story of Julia Butterfly Hill in 3 minutes and 20 seconds

Julia Butterfly Hill . com
Internationally recognized environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill travels to Pasadena to headline a public fundraiser supporting community efforts to preserve 193 trees slated for destruction and removal by the PUSD (Pasadena Unified School District).

Her appearance comes as the school district's tree-removal plans have drawn widespread public condemnation, concern, legal action, peaceful protests and demonstrations, and extensive regional media coverage.

Despite weeks of advocacy, the school district has not yet committed to permanently preserving any of the remaining trees slated for destruction and removal.
Trees at San Rafael Elementary School, including mature and protected trees, were removed during bird nesting season without city tree permits or on-site biological monitoring.
  • Pasadena Presbyterian Church
  • 585 E. Colorado Blvd.
  • Pasadena, Los Angeles, CA 91101
  • Wednesday, July 8, 2026, 6:30-8:30 pm
  • RSVP or DONATE: bit.ly/PUSDtrees
To save trees is to save our planet
Pasadena is honored to welcome Julia Butterfly Hill. She is traveling here to support efforts to preserve the trees of the Pasadena Unified School District.

She is an internationally-recognized environmental advocate best known for her historic 738-day treehouse sit to protect an ancient, giant California redwood, an act of peaceful civil disobedience that inspired people around the world. ​

Join us for an evening hosted by the youth working to protect the PUSD trees.
​Student tickets: $5 (with valid student ID at door)
Adult tickets: $25–$1,000 (pay what you can) ​
Support the cause of saving trees

J Butterfly Hill (Young Heroes)
If not attending in person, it is possible to support this effort by making a donation.

​All proceeds directly support the community effort to preserve the Pasadena Unified School District's trees from destruction to remediate grounds.

Join us in standing together to protect these remarkable trees before more are lost. ​
  • Earth First
  • Trees Foundation
  • Amigos De Los Rios (Altadena)
  • The Jane Goodall Institute
  • Jane Goodall Sprouts Club
(ABC 20/20) The Story of Julia Butterfly Hill
Visiting with Julia Butterfly Hill high atop and inside of Luna the Tree
Not time, accident, tragedy, nor finding true love has not stopped the dryad

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Friday, June 19, 2026

$5 RAVE: Pasadena Summer Solstice (6/20)


Does Pasadena know how to throw a rave? It did in Project X "Pursuit of Happiness" (music video)
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On the Summer Solstice of Saturday, June 20, 2026, from 7:00 to 10:00 pm the LAist is holding a rave at Remainders Creative Reuse. Total price of entry? $5.00 (five USD and 49 cent service fee).

Break out the rave gear and join Remainders Creative Reuse and LAist.com for a night of wild dancing, crafting, and community.


It's on Washington Bl. west of Lake Ave.
DJ Tekfor will be on hand all night bumping the 90’s rave jams and all the other hits. And there will be not one, not two, but three crafting stations with instructors:
  1. Make Your Own Junk Journal with Sarena
  2. Circle Weaving with Courtney
  3. Paper Mâché Sculptures with Aspen

What must non-Southern Californians imagine?
Already have a project in progress? Bring it along! Or if still looking for a spark, we’ll have a pop-up crafting table ready for everyone.

Whether a raver knits, collages, beads, sketches, or basketweaves, this is the perfect excuse to make something while soaking up the ravey 90’s vibes! Come as you are. (Bonus points will be awarded for 1990s-inspired outfits).
So get ready for a night of dancing, crafting, and fun. All ages. Families welcome. BYON (bring your own Narcan lol).
Trip hop is still a rave fave
 
COMMENTS
  • Can I sew my own outfit for EDC '27?
    Is this serious?!?! How...for only FIVE bucks?!
  • It worked! It's SOLD OUT! You snooze, you lose.
  • We wouldn't put anything past Larry Mantle or Pasadena's KPCC 89.3 FM and its long-running battle to seem more relevant than Madeleine Brand and Santa Monica's KCRW 88.9 FM.
  • C'mon, everyone knows Larry is a [bleep]!
  • That doesn't mean he doesn't put on a good show, what he claims is "the largest conversation in Los Angeles." Maybe NPR reporter Josie Huang wants to outdo science journalist... [Science bowl: Can NoHo… | KCRW]
  • Who, Doualy Xaykaothao of NPR via KUNC?
  • No, remember there was that Asian science journalist at KPCC and like the LA and Pasadena Weekly? She used to go to all sorts of parties, festivals, events, write about it, be on the radio all the time. Then KPCC booted her, KCRW picked her up? She lived in a small house in NoHo, the value of which kept going up, trapping her in LA.
  • You mean Cary Harrison? He's over at KPFK (90.7 FM) on Friday morning, unless you mean Emily Kwong or these folks Honor Roll: Asian American Journalists Association? LMU?
  • Oh, you must mean radio turned sex star Sandra Tsing Loh!
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Friday, May 15, 2026

Free: Altadena Spring Fest, Muir HS (5/15)


All of Southern California is invited
FREE. Open to the public. Twice a year, Rhythms of the Village and Oh Happy Day Vegan Cafe sponsor a giant community festival of live music, healing arts, crafts, Aztec dancers, entertainers, and good old fashioned fun. Post Eaton Fire, it is now held on the much larger Muir High School campus on Lincoln Ave. It has grown exponentially. Come try vegan and other food trucks, free spiritual healing modalities, and see Baba Onochie and Ameca plus Vegan John. Keeping the community alive!


2b.alwaysloved's profile picture(2b.alwaysloved, May 5, 2026)  Indigenous, aboriginal, copper-colored people of Turtle Island who are called "American" Indians are misclassified as "African" American Blacks.

Health and wellness at Spring Fest
They are actually the original inhabitants of the Americas and the Caribbean who built civilizations here long before Eurasians, Africans, and Europeans came to Turtle Island. They had kings and queens. Native Americans of Eurasian [Siberian, etc.] descent are not indigenous to the Americas or the Caribbean but rather are descendants of slaves from China, Japan, the Philippines, India, Southwest Asia, who arrived on Spanish and Portuguese Manila Galleons. They also came from Europe, including the UK, and married the indigenous American Indians misclassified as African American Blacks, who were taught in church schools how to be Indians and signed on Indian Rolls for $5 to take over the lands and identity of the indigenous American Indians misclassified as African American Blacks.

References: 1828 Webster's dictionary and the New Oxford American English Dictionary definition of "American." The Library of Congress. The U.S. Census records (Rev 7:9,10). (Posted on Instagram, edited for clarity by Wisdom Quarterly).
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Sunday, May 10, 2026

Alt Music Center: Open Mic Night (5/13)


Instrumental given to LA Fire-impacted musicians? Yes, thanks to AltadenaMusicians.org. Now they are serving the Altadena, Pasadena, South Pasadena (the three Denas), Sierra Madre, and all the foothill and surrounding valley communities.

  • Will the Eaton Fire destroy us?
    Open Mic Night, 7:00-9:00 pm
  • Altadena Music Center (BYP)
  • 1260 Lincoln Ave. #1300
  • Pasadena, CA 91103
  • (Sign up starts at 6:30 pm)
  • FREE to attend, free to participate

Mission
Download on the App Store
Thank you to the amazing Brandon Jay. Introducing Instrumental Giving powered by Altadena Musicians – our registry app where musicians can list the gear they lost in the LA Fires – and donors can help to replace them through gifting or purchasing directly. Think of it like a wedding registry for musicians. (And it’s tax-deductible!) Help Help Musicians - Donate your instruments Who lost it all in the Eaton Fire | Altadena musicians by donating instruments to those who lost them in the Eaton Fire. Download the app to get started: altadenamusicians.org
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Friday, May 8, 2026

Wild Food Foraging Ethnobotanical Walk (5/9)



FORAGING WALK — WILD FOOD OUTING
Guide to Wild Foods Useful Plants
Hosted by prolific plant author Christopher Nyerges, nature guide, and founder of School of Self-Reliance: The Wild Food and Self-Reliance Discovery Meetup Group (with 4.9 out of 5.0 stars with 143 reviews) is leading a nature walk:
  • Wild Food Ethnobotanical Walk
  • Saturday, May 9, 2026 10:00 am
  • $65 (seniors and students $45)
To attend and for exact directions, register HERE. Join us for an outing in Los Angeles where we explore the edible, medicinal, and other useful qualities of many of the native plants found in the environment with many introduced (invasive) plants.
Foraging California (Foraging Series)
Both natives and non-native plants will be seen. This is a leisurely walk in the woods. All will also get a chance to taste some of the plants. We will introduce a few basics of systematic plant identification and ways to start a record of various species.

We’ll bring up an important point: Many of the wild plants we see — especially the non-natives — can easily be cultivated in our own yards for ease of harvesting.

There are also local native plant nurseries where we can obtain native plants — such as toyon berries, ceonothus, oak trees, mulefat (Baccharis salicifolia), elder, and so on — to grow them at home, where we can provide the ideal situation for them.

Wear comfortable footwear and bring water and a bowl for eating. This class can serve as credit towards the the School of Self-Reliance Ethnobotany Certificate. Directions sent upon registration.
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Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Puberty for adults: Brains On, LAist (5/14)


Thursday, May 14th, 2026, 7:00-8:15  pm at The Crawford (474 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena 91105).

Get tickets priced from FREE to $25. Join Molly Bloom, host and creator of the kids' podcast company Brains On Universe, for a live panel about puberty. Featured guests include
  • Dr. Cara Natterson, pediatrician, author, and founder of Less Awkward, a company designed to make puberty a less awkward and more joyful experience
  • Dr. Christopher Miller, a clinical psychologist and the founder of The Boys’ Institute for Growth (BIG), which educates boys about puberty and facilitates healthy conversations between boys and their trusted adults.
The evening will feature a moderated discussion followed by a live Q&A designed to help parents prepare kids ages 7–11 for the changes ahead. More
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Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Earth Days in Los Angeles, April 2026


ALTADENA'S EARTH DAY 2026
Today is Earth Day, so how shall we honor our Mother [Earth]? We can start by calling her Bhumi, Tierra, or Gaia. Then it might help to honor the Goddess as giving so much to us, our very bodies. Sure there's a karmic reason and an invisible alignment/arrangement of particles that make these amazing vehicles we're powering, but it is earth (base materiality) as the "what" these bodies are or appear to be. Is there "spirit" (prana)? Yes! That wind-like thing, the ephemeral airs as explained in Yogic philosophy and detailed in a collection of sacred Buddhist texts referred to as the "Higher Doctrine" (Abhidhamma or the "Dharma in Ultimate Terms"), can be called a "spirit" (pneuma). That's what "holy spirit" in Abrahamic religions seems to be getting at.

We have hardware and software as modern analogies, but in the past the seers had dense mud and invisible air to make the same comparison of the yang (hard) and yin (soft) that is this "self." Self is a persistent illusion, hard to grasp and understand, but the Buddha went to great pains to explain it in two doctrines, one being the Five Aggregates and the other being (in response to the common question, "Well, what is there then?!") Dependent Origination. If one understood the latter, the question of "what is there?" would not confuse the asker to assume there has to be something solid and "real." In the Allegory of the Cave by Plato, there's "something" (shadows), but that doesn't make them real, that is, that doesn't make them what they appear to be.

So this body, this earth, made of soil and the Four Great Elements (mahabhuta, the dhatus, which strangely are not "things" even though they sound like the most fundamental things but rather are qualities/characteristics of materiality, and that material can be reduced to something translated by Ven. Dhammadipa as "particles of perception" or what the historical Buddha called kalapas).

So thank you, Mother! "Where to next, Columbus?" Crass sings. Why? Westerners are imperial menaces in the world...

What is Earth Day?
Pat and Dick and a tree named "Piney" at WH
Earth Day is an annual event on April 22nd to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated across the planet through earthday.org (formerly Earth Day Network) [1], including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries [1, 2, 3].

In 1969 at a UNESCO conference in San Francisco, the peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere.

This day of Nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by him and signed by [Burmese Theravada Buddhist] Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations.

A month later, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970, and hired a young activist, Denis Hayes, to be the national coordinator.

The name "Earth Day" was coined by the advertising writer Julian Koenig [4]. Activist Hayes and his staff grew the event beyond the original idea for a teach-in to include the entire United States. More
Why keep it to a day? Pasadena leads the charge to make it last a whole month.
The Solvang Ranch (280 Crosby St., Altadena, California) is a historic 3,100 square foot craftsman courtyard house built in 1915. Situated on nearly an acre, it has been meticulously restored by owners Rob Bruce and Greg Gill and is known for hosting community events, such as the Soul Force Project's Earth Day Celebration. More
Earth Day Pasadena
Playful goats/kids do yoga
Earth Day Celebration in Pasadena, Los Angeles? These are the foothills of the San Gabriel Valley, one of the most Buddhist places in the United States. Join us and the City of Pasadena as we celebrate Earth Day and the official release of the goats into the Arroyo ("gully," "wash," dry riverbed). This family-friendly event includes goat yoga, a goat petting zoo, educational experiences, and interactive booths from local sustainability organizations. Let's celebrate and find our Flow. How? Goat Yoga in the Arroyo. Enjoy a lighthearted outdoor yoga experience surrounded by playful goats, Nature's great grass eaters. This beginner-friendly yoga session blends movement, laughter, and connection with nature, offering a unique way to relax, recharge, and celebrate the arrival of the Arroyo Goats. More: OneArroyo.org

Goats may save LA foothills
Altadena Earth Day (Colorado Blvd)
The City of Pasadena and the One Arroyo Foundation are set to host a distinctive Earth Day Celebration this Saturday, inviting the community to witness an innovative approach to landscape restoration and wildfire risk reduction. The highlight of the event will be the deployment of approximately 600 goats into the Arroyo Seco ("Dry Gully"), where they will embark on a targeted grazing mission across 100 acres to clear invasive vegetation. This natural method not only helps protect the beloved Arroyo but also offers a fascinating spectacle for attendees of all ages. More: pasadenanow.com/weekendr
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Thursday, March 12, 2026

Zen of Deep Relaxation: Group Sitting


What happens at a Zen meditation? Los Angeles-based groups are growing, adhering to two basic principles. One, keep it cool, laidback, liberal, lowkey, everyday, normal but, two, make it seem exotic. How is that achieved?

One way is to chant in an Asian language, following the customs and ritual procedures of a formal (zazen) group sitting practice -- including both Soto and Rinzai traditions, which rely on koans ("public cases"). They may sound like paradoxical riddles to the Western ear, but they are in Rinzai rather than Soto Zen centers in the U.S.

Groups walk intent on practicing mindful awareness of the present moment with everything going on here and now. This present moment may not always be pleasant, but it is always tolerable when viewed from a dispassionate perspective, such as noting, "Then there's this," as one Western ajahn is fond of saying.

This point-of-view allows us to be the WATCHER rather than the usual, overly-involved "DOER," "RESISTER," or person taking it all very personally in accordance with the Three Poisons of passion, aversion, and delusion (greed, hatred/fear, ignorance).

WHAT HAPPENS?
Practitioners gather in a quiet place that is not completely quiet. They take to zafus and zabutons, cushions, for seating themselves facing the wall or the center of the space.

Then there's chanting in English, Sanskrit, or a Japanese transliteration of Sanskrit, with wooden percussion and/or singing bowl accompaniment. There's bowing and more clacking sticks. Then the group settles in for a sitting (zazen) session of shikantaza, which is often translated as "just sitting."
There's now nothing to do but observe. There's no need to stop thinking or make anything happen other than what is happening now. This is how it is. A bell rings to signal that walking meditation (kinhin) is about to begin, first very slowly then at normal speed, all the while with everyone remaining very mindful. Another bell announces a second sitting session after walking. That ends with a bell, bowing, arranging cushions in a circle, and then discussion begins.

A Dharma talk might mention the paradox of the impersonal aspiring for "self" awakening. Most groups open up a Q&A discussion. This might start a storm of comments or awkward silence, laughs or uncomfortable shifting, and possibly some insight into American Buddhism. Everyone returns the next week.
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Sunday, March 8, 2026

Where can one practice Beginner's Mind?


Dr. Rob Lustig: Science of Happiness
Los Angeles is a big place. There's Angel City Zen Center with Zen priest and artist Dave, who replaced Brad Warner.

There's ZCLA (Zen Center of Los Angeles), which is a little stiff and set in their ways. There's Beginner's Mind Zen Center in Northridge. Now there's another good option, the Pasadena Zen Sangha.

What's good about it? It's local, it's new, it's open, it's run by a fully trained Zen priest certified in Japan who knows his way around Zen.

The Four Noble Truths? I already know them!
On a recent night, practitioners gathered, took to zafus and zabutons (sitting cushions), chanted Sanskrit the Japanese way then English, and started a session of shikantaza, just sitting.

Then came time for kinhin, the relief of getting up to stretch and walk slowly and mindfully before another sitting session. Then the fireworks: question and answer with discussion.

"Those who know don't say, and those who say don't know" is a Taoist saying and sentiment. Many things can be known, and many of them can be expressed. So we hit the meditation leader with two barrels' worth of questions. Next time we finish off with koans of such subtlety and complexity, he stands no chance.
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