Santa Barbara Writers Conference Archive

Featured Stories

• Miskitu Stories: ‘Crazy Sickness’ and the Duendes of the Wild
  Posted on June 12, 2019 | No Comments

  As outbreaks of "crazy sickness" continue to afflict Nicaraguan Miskitu towns and villages, we revisit the story of the Duhindu of Kambla, or how the community overcame their first case of this "culture-bound syndrome," blamed on the dark supernatural forces out of the wild bush.

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• ‘Medicine Walk’ Featured in Santa Barbara Literary Journal
  Posted on June 3, 2019 | 2 Comments

  Santa Barbara Literary Journal releases Bellatrix: Volume 3 this June, which among adventurous fiction, poetry, essays, and lyrics, features an excerpt of Jack Eidt's psychic-animism fiction, Medicine Walk. Join us for readings and other entertainments in SB on June 14.

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• Miskitu Legend: The Mangoes of the Dead
  Posted on May 28, 2019 | 1 Comment

  A story from the Nicaraguan Miskitu People about the mango trees planted to feed the dead in the cemetery, and the fear of stealing the ripe fruits.

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• Wild Sonoma’s ‘Valley of the Moon’ – Living with the Land
  Posted on May 15, 2019 | No Comments

  The Sonoma Valley in Northern California is known for it's world-class wine, gentle hills, and year-round temperate climate, where novelist-gentleman-farmer Jack London set up his ode to wild sustainability one hundred years before it became a thing. Flying over in a hot air balloon, hiking the protected hillsides to find a precious Pinot Noir at one of the 425 wineries, sailing off the coast, there are many ways to get lost in them hills.

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• The Pagan Spring Fertility Origins of May Day
  Posted on May 1, 2019 | No Comments

  May Day (May 1) marks the return of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere, with origins in ancient agricultural rituals to ensure fertility, handed down from the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Later permutations included the Celtic festival of Beltane and Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night. May Day falls exactly half a year from All Saints Day (November 1), and cross-quarter day with pagan overtones. Today, this ancient festival survives, including gathering wildflowers and decorating a May tree or Maypole, around which people dance, and some use it for political protest in association with International Workers Day.

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• Pauline Oliveros and her Beautiful Canopies of Sound
  Posted on April 15, 2019 | No Comments

  Pauline Oliveros was a vital creator of new music, a renowned electronic art music innovator and composer, an accordionist, the founder of deep listening and other experimental practices, a genius inventor of sound-making software, and a fearless champion on issues of gender, race, ability, and sexual orientation. Following is an essay on her "Sonic Meditations."

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• Los Angeles Steps Up Transition Toward 100% Renewable Energy
  Posted on February 21, 2019 | No Comments

  The LA Mayor declared the city won't spend $5 billion to re-power three aging natural gas plants, and instead called for transitioning the nation's largest municipal utility to 100% clean, renewable energy: but how will we get there?

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• 12 Reasons to Try Elliott Abrams in the International Criminal Court
  Posted on February 15, 2019 | No Comments

  Donald Trump appointed Elliott Abrams as “Special Envoy to Venezuela” to help facilitate regime change in that country by the United States. This nod marks Mr. Abrams' third assignment in U.S. Republican administrations. The following is a brief background of his career, summarized by Rachel Bruhnke.

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• Ecological Amnesia: Life Without Wild Things
  Posted on February 9, 2019 | No Comments

  We have forgotten the flocks of passenger pigeons that blotted out the sun, the herds of bison that shook the ground, and the untamed places in which we destroyed them. This is ecological amnesia. This capacity to forget, this fluidity of memory, has dire implications in a world dense with people, all desperate to satisfy their immediate material needs. Yet, the way forward is land and water protection and regeneration, permaculture, and community reconnection with the wild.

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• Coup Redux in Venezuela: ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’
  Posted on February 3, 2019 | 1 Comment

  As we see another coup against Venezuela's democratically-elected government, we revisit the 2002 coup attempt in the documentary, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (a.k.a. Chavez: Inside the Coup), which briefly deposed Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. A television crew from Ireland's Radio Telifís Éireann happened to be recording a documentary about Chávez during the events of April 11, 2002.

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