Monthly Archives: September 2009

Service Learning News: Give a Day of Service, Get a Day at Disneyland!

The Mouse wants you to give back! Answering President Barack Obama’s National Call to Service, Disney says, beginning JANUARY 1, 2010, when you sign up here to volunteer a day of service with a participating organization (and your service is completed and verified) you’ll get one day admission to a Walt Disney World® or Disneyland® theme park, FREE! Disney wants to inspire one million people to volunteer a day of service.

The bad news is that in 2010 you won’t get into a Park for free on your birthday like you could in 2009. But hey, for those of you with birthdays coming up between now and December 31, you don’t have to give anything except your birthday to Disney to get a free day! Register here to get in free on your birthday.

Today, Monday September 21 is International Day of Peace

International Day of Peace PosterMonday, September 21 is International Day of Peace which is celebrated and honored throughout the world. A few years ago, my students and I put on an event at Ventura College which included European spoken word performer and dj Emil Brikha (who mixed a spoken word piece of mine text, mp3 here “I Want to Be That Man”) plus poet and translator Jen Hofer from Los Angeles. We had copies of a drawing of a dove which students colored, cut out and “flew” while the music and spoken words flowed in the quad, thanks to funding support from Poets and Writers.

Events large and small are going on around the world; you can view a live broadcast of events at cultureofpeace.org or internationaldayofpeace.org!  The broadcast was produced through the efforts of Unity Foundation and their partners at PeacePortal.mobi, GetZooks.biz and Pathways to Peace.   To add it to your Facebook profile, go here and add the Livestream application, and the Peace Broadcast will play directly on your profile!  You can EMBED the broadcast anywhere… on your own website, blog, myspace, etc!  By doing so, you will help make this broadcast viral and create more awareness about the International Day of Peace!

In closing today, a poem: Wendell Berry’s “The Peace of Wild Things” which I found in Robert Bly’s News of the Universe–

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

POETRY: Gwendolyn Alley to feature 7:30pm Sept. 15 at Artists Union Galley

I will be the featured poet tonight, Tuesday Sept. 15 at the Artists Union Gallery, located in Ventura on the Beach Promenade near the parking garage: 330 So. California St. The reading is free but the parking is not.

An open mic follows my featured reading, so bring your work to share also! I look forward to hearing you read! I imagine I will read the poem read above which was selected by the on-line video poetry journal Guerilla Reads last year; I will probably read the poem below also

also as well as some 3:15 Experiment poetry like this one but probably not this one:

Over the years, I’ve published over 3 dozen broadsides in ArtLife Limited editions as well as other publications, and I’ve done readings in most of the Western states. I’ll bring  some of these to sell at the reading.

For more poetry, check around this blog or ride the Monday Poetry Train!