Later this month, Sonoma Valley’s La Luz Center will launch a new initiative to help emerging Sonoma Valley Latino leaders hone their leadership skills and develop deeper linkages in the community. This program is called the La Luz Latino Leadership Program and is being led... Continue
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The mystic teacher G.I. Gurdjieff wrote of "three-brained beings" and their difficulties. Though his teachings were given during the early part of the 20th Century, the wisdom tradition in which he was steeped - Sufism and Middle Eastern mystic teachings - long taught the nature... Continue
“We’ve been brought here for a very short time—against our will—and we don’t know why.” I love that line. What is the point of all this? Why are we here? What is our true purpose? These thoughts keep some of us up at night; others... Continue
The world has been in trouble before. Every century has had its share of discord, warfare, violence and mayhem, punctuated by periods of creative flowering, knowledge growth and cultural insight. That we find ourselves once again riven by conflict, feelings of instability and worries about... Continue
I once wondered how a modern, 20th century country like Germany morphed into an amoral, industrial-style genocide factory during Adolph Hitler's Third Reich. At the time, conditions in Europe were politically unstable; the aftermath of World War One left economies in shambles, and politics polarized... Continue
It was an inspirational, luminous and searing time. People write about it now or have museum shows about it, but I don’t think there’s enough reference to the 60s as a soul-shaking period of transformation. The summer of love gave us unprecedented unity. It wasn't... Continue
Positively Haight Street, San Francisco --1968 was the year Eldridge Cleaver published “Soul on Ice” (he and his wife Kathleen banked at my teller window and she had the biggest hair I’d ever seen). 1968 was the year of the SDS, the Yippies, and the... Continue
We three standing up here today are a reflection of what this country has to offer. It is a reflection of what this community has to offer and it is a reflection of the kind of impact you all have on this organization. One of... Continue
Amoebas, as you likely know, are one-celled animals you can only see with a microscope. Tiny enough to swim freely in a drop of water, amoebas animate themselves using pseudopods, projections of its cell wall into lobes that move. They surround and absorb the living... Continue
Earlier this year the board of the Sonoma Valley Hospital District reportedly managed to avoid scrutiny by the DA’s office by holding a public meeting to discuss what to do with a few acres of land it owns. Allegedly, it had previously held such a... Continue