We had rain, hardly enough to do anything but wet the street and sidewalk. After, the sky was painted with spectacular clouds and bonus moon sightings!
At the lagoon.
After the lagoon, walking up the hill, homeward bound.
#WordlessWednesday
“Every time we eat, we have the power to radically transform the world we live in.” Ed Winters
From the amazing and dedicated Earthling Ed:
“Happy #WorldVeganDay everyone. I hope that you can take five minutes today to tune into my new short film which will be live on my YouTube at 6pm (GMT).
It would mean the world to me if you watched the film and shared it with someone in your life who still consumes dairy products. World Vegan Day would be a wonderful day for them to make the change.
Thank you so much for your support as always, I’m so proud of this project and incredibly honoured to have worked with so many kind and talented people on it.”
Earthling Ed (Ed Winters) is a vegan educator, best-selling author, public speaker, and content creator, widely known for his viral debates, speeches, and video essays.
In 2018 Ed announced the opening of Unity Diner, a non-profit vegan restaurant in London where all of the profits go directly back into helping animals.
He was a guest lecturer at Harvard University in 2019 and 2020.
In 2020, Ed founded Surge Sanctuary, a forever home to abused and unwanted animals on an 18 acre site in England. The sanctuary is currently home to more than one hundred rescued animals.
Learn more about him and being vegan at https://earthlinged.org/
This is the time when the veil is thin…
Between our world and the spirit world, there is something known as liminal space. The word liminal stems from the Latin “limen,” meaning “threshold.” Liminal space denotes a time and space between the physical world and the spirit world. This is what we call the Veil, and from the end of October through the beginning of November, the days surrounding Halloween and Samhain, (pronounced ‘sow-en’) that veil is at its thinnest, making it the most natural time to connect with Spirit.
Veils are also thinnest in places where ecosystems and elements (Earth, Water, Air, or Fire) meet. This includes sites like waterfalls (Earth and Water) and volcanoes (inner Fire and outer Earth). There are places in the world where the veil is perpetually thin, making it easier to connect with the spirit world year-round. Generally speaking, the larger the space, the thinner the veil can be, but not always. Larger areas where the veil is lifted or even non-existent are known as vortices. Some of these places may sound familiar – Sedona in Arizona, Ayers Rock in Australia, and Stonehenge in England – just to name a few. Also, where ley lines (a grid of the planet’s magnetic fields) cross, it seems to denote places on earth where the veil is thinnest, Stonehenge being one of them.
To the ancient Celts, Samhain signified the last harvest and the beginning of a New Year. It is the space in time between summer and winter, the time of the harvest. Although we celebrate both Halloween and Samhain in the days between October and November, you may start to feel the veil thinning as early as September. After all, September is Virgo season, the sign of the Harvest Maiden.
This is the optimal time to connect with spirit, to speak to our ancestors, and those that have crossed over.
There are not only places but spaces in time where your own personal veil is lifted, allowing you to connect with the spirit world: when alone or having a quiet moment, when you’re in your own element (near Fire, Water, etc.), and for some, while running, swimming, or even in the moments between awake and asleep or vice versa.
The time of day can also help you feel a lifted veil – dawn and/or dusk – the lineal space between night and day. At all of these moments, your intuition can be heightened, and your connections will come easier.
Have a happy #vegan Halloween and Samhain!
(Curated from California Psychics blog/photo credit to http://www.facebook.com/PermanentlyVegan/)
Having a lazy afternoon looking through old photos of a sailing regatta on Shilshole Bay near Golden Gardens park in Seattle.
I love the shades of gray and blue with white sails. It wasn’t very windy, so these were slow moving boats.
Not like my Jewish ancestors wandering for forty days and forty nights in the desert but that’s what it feels like when I can’t find my car in the parking lot.
Others seem to be in the same predicament; we are all wanderers in the concrete jungle.
I guess my mind was on other things and I didn’t MINDFULLY pay attention to where I parked, but this time I almost thought that my car had been stolen, but it hadn’t been…it was in the stall exactIy where I had parked it and then I must have completely lost my train of thought as my brain was on to the next thing.
Part of the problem is that when I initially pulled into the spot, the lot was fairly empty, but when I came out of the store, it had gotten full and things looked a bit different and that was slightly disconcerting.
Anyway, it all turned out fine, the car was located, I laughed at myself and drove home.
Has that ever happened to you?
Even if you’re not #vegan, don’t skip this recipe. I bet you’ll find it’s worth a try, especially if you love chocolate as much as I do.
It was so good, I’ve made it twice. The first time I used only five ingredients:
*Sweet potato, one cup cooked and mashed
*Nut butter (I used almond), 1/2 cup
*Maple syrup, 1/3 cup
*Vanilla, one teaspoon
*Cocoa, 1/3 cup
Blend all ingredients by hand or in a food processor. Spread in a pie plate or small square baking dish.
Bake at 350 degrees for about twenty minutes. Let sit until completely cool. If you have the time, the flavors get even better if it’s refrigerated or even frozen. I cut them into bite-sized pieces ‘cos it’s really rich.
You don’t actually NEED frosting, but who ever said no to more chocolate? Here’s my best baking hack for that…https://enchantedseashells.com/2014/09/17/best-baking-hack-ever/
The results were a bit dense, so the next time, I added 1/2 cup flour, and that made all the difference. I used regular white flour, but it would be so easy to blend some oats for oat flour, so that’s definitely an option.
YUM. Delicious AND healthy!
P.S. This recipe isn’t overly sweet, so if you want to add more maple syrup or even a LITTLE sugar, go ahead. I thought it was perfect without any additional sweetener, but I’m a choco-holic.
I’m not sure why, because there’s not any water in my pond right now, but the garden was full of little dragonflies today, which made me extraordinarily happy.
The temps are up again, nearly ninety degrees, so hot it dried the sheets on the line in about half an hour, but the humidity is low with these Santa Ana winds. It’s way more pleasant than the heat/humidity wave we experienced a few weeks ago, and the nights are blissfully cool.
“I heard the wind whisper and the earth sigh, it made my soul smile as I walked by.”
Michelle Schaper
A few sprinkles of welcome rain over the weekend made perfect timing for a beach walk.
Look at this GIGANTIC skeleton for Halloween. Not too scary, right?
Then I saw some literal beach bunnies on the upper sidewalk.
Beautifully overcast, no whales or dolphin, but the ubiquitous surfer reigns supreme.
As I slowly emerge from the last two years, in my more melodramatic moments, I feel it’s akin to crawling out of a cave, eyes blinkblinkblinking against the light after being stuck for months in the dark.
The vagaries of life are such that one day I’m reseeding my lawn completely demolished by my wild bunnies (most likely a futile exercise); the next day I’m interviewing Tonya Mantooth, CEO of the San Diego International Film Festival.
Does the name Tonya Mantooth ring a bell for you? It did for me, and I followed a twisty windy Google research path to satisfy my curiosity.
A while back I wrote a post about my journey through the side effects of my Covid vaccine which included being enamored once again with the TV show Emergency! and its lovely cast, including Julie London, Bobby Troup, Kevin Tighe, AND Randolph Mantooth. Could it have been a coincidence with that unusual name? Well, it wasn’t. Tonya is his sister!
Long ago when I had visions of being somehow involved in the film biz, I used to write for the Theater Arts Guild newsletter and knew all of the talent agents in town. In that other lifetime I acted in a few things and was a production coordinator for a while, too…
Back to present day reality…
-The 21st Annual San Diego International Film Festival includes the return of in-person Opening Night Film Premiere & Reception, the Night of the Stars Tribute, Culinary Cinema, plus more parties. Looking for something memorable to do in San Diego? This is IT, a definite must attend event and there are plenty of films for every cinephile. Check out their website: https://sdfilmfest.com/
Honestly, where else can you meet meet filmmakers and actors, participate in dialogues and ask questions?
-I learned that not only will there be a screening of (MGK) Machine Gun Kelly’s film, Taurus, but he will be there IN PERSON to accept an award from CEO Mantooth. (I confess that I didn’t really know who he was, but a few of my younger demographic friends asked about him and were extremely thrilled to learn they could see him up close and personal.)
As we chatted, Tonya was excited to share with me the addition She Said, the film adaptation of New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s 2019 book on their investigation into Harvey Weinstein. This is the story that helped launch the #MeToo movement and shattered decades of silence around the subject of sexual assault in Hollywood. Produced with Brad Pitt, it stars Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan.
I’ve become fascinated by women who follow their passion — like Tonya Mantooth. It’s inspiring and empowering, don’t you agree? I plan to interview her more fully after the festival, but for now, I encourage you to attend this amazing San Diego International Film Festival.
According to Tonya Mantooth, attending the SDFF is an opportunity to participate in shared humanity, to bridge the divide, not increase the divide.” Viewing a foreign film “offers a glimpse into other cultures” as well as how important it is to “connect with community” and “explore fresh perspectives.”
Here’s a brief bio of the Festival’s CEO, Tonya Mantooth:
A ten-time Regional Emmy award winner with over 60 International Telly and ADDY awards,Tonya began her career as an Executive Producer when she became Director of Acquistions for CRM Films.Tonya co-founded and was President of The Dakota Group, a highly regarded film and post-production company in Southern California.Tonya has produced National TV campaigns and award-winning documentaries for Fortune 500 companies.Tonya launched Mantooth Studios and expanded her production scope to Entertainment Projects. Under Mantooth Films, Tonya Executive Produced four feature films, including GRAVE SECRETS, which became the pilot for a Nickelodeon Series. In 2012, Tonya took over the San Diego International Film Festival with a vision to bring international cinema to San Diego and grow the San Diego International Film Festival into a significant contributor to San Diego’s economy. Today the San Diego International Film Festival has grown over 500%.The spectacular six-day Festival features 120+ film screenings, panels and a red carpet Celebrity Tribute honoring actors such as Annette Bening, Adrian Brody, Geena Davis, Lawrence Fishburne, Sir Patrick Stewart and countless others.Tonya is steadfast in her belief that the experience of film allows us explore issues of global impact, to create dialog, and ultimately to develop empathy and understanding in an increasingly diverse and complex world.(From the SDFF website)
Enchanted Seashells | Princess Rosebud 