The Los Angeles Visionary Association, founded and directed by art historians Kim Cooper and Richard Schave (who are also the owners and operators of the amazing Esotouric), has been holding monthly salons for nearly two years at historic Clifton’s Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles. I’ve been a member since the beginning, but this was the first time I’ve managed to attend a salon. It was wonderful fun.

The opening event was a set of original songs performed by the Ukulady, Thessaly Lerner, and her band (on mandolin and electric autoharp). The Ukulady evolved her act during her years as a student and then a teacher at Wavy Gravy’s Camp Winnarainbow Circus and Performing Arts Camp in Northern California.

Next up was a slide show lecture by the gorgeously attired Dr. Paul Koudounaris, professor of art history at California State University Dominguez Hills, to introduce his book The Empire of Death, a lavish collection of his photos and research on the world’s forgotten charnel houses, ossuaries, and reliquaries.

After the salon, we all trooped out after Richard Schave and Nathan Marsak, who gave us a rousing walking tour and lecture on Victorian Los Angeles.

I particularly loved this wonderful old building and our guides’ tale of how it was saved from destruction by fire by a brave and dedicated elevator operator.

Kim pointed out that the building's elevator grills had little demon’s heads in the filigree.

Even the view out the side door of this building offered a dream scene.

Downtown Los Angeles fascinates with unapologetic Victorian grandeur, …

…ambitious, passionate murals,…

…and unexpected entertainers (that’s a banjo player on a bicycle trailer).

On December 15, 2010, FM YOKOHAMA’s beloved radio personality Mitsumi aired her interview of me on her show “Ine! Good for You!” She translates my answers to the interview into Japanese, but you can still hear some of what I said in English. If you speak Japanese, you will have even more fun listening to the show. It’s 17 minutes and 14 seconds long.  You can listen to it here.

May 13, 2011. Today the t-shirt and towel that I illustrated (both designed by Aiko Shiratori of environmentalist non-for-profit arts organization Artist Power Bank in Shibuya, Tokyo) were posted for sale on their Kurkku shop website. Both items are fundraisers for the survivors of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters, and will be sold at the annual music festival Artist Power Bank produces each summer to raise money for its projects.

On each of the webpages, if you scroll down, you’ll find my statements of intention, in both English and Japanese, which I wrote in response to a request from Artist Power Bank.

Here’s the t-shirt web page.

Here’s the towel web page.

OK, birthday candles are in order. The 40th anniversary of the first edition of Living on the Earth (The Bookworks, Berkeley CA) was in September 2010. The 40th anniversary of the bestselling second edition of Living on the Earth (Vintage Books, Random House, NYC) was in April 2011. It’s still in print as a hardbound library edition. The 40th anniversary of  Mariko Fukamachi's translation of Living on the Earth (Soshisha Ltd., Tokyo) will be in April 2012. It’s still in print as a paperback book.

It sold somewhere in excess of 350,000 copies, and it’s still selling in English, Japanese, Korean and maybe Chinese (I forwarded a letter of intention from a Chinese publisher to the book’s current publisher, Gibbs Smith, Publisher, in Salt Lake City, but I have not seen an actual Chinese copy yet). I heard a rumor that the Provos in Amsterdam made a bootleg translation back in the 1970s (I’ve never seen one of those either, but I would LOVE to have one if it exists!!)

LOTE’s illustration and design style was so revolutionary when it first came out that Publishers Weekly devoted two pages to acknowledging this with an article in handwriting, illustrated with drawings selected from LOTE. I scanned and posted the PW piece here.

LOTE’s illustration and book design begat The Massage Book (and the Random House/Bookworks series), The Moosewood Cookbook series, The Vegetarian Epicure series, Handbook for Survival into the 21st Century, and numerous others. More recently, motivational writer/speaker SARK told me that Living on the Earth’s illustration and design had helped launch her graphic style as well.

Soshisha, Ltd, in Tokyo released a Japanese translation in 1972, with a blurb on the cover from Japan’s poet laureate, Shuntaro Tanikawa. It says, “I want to do everything in this book. If I can’t do everything in this book, then I want to dream about it, because I know that if I do, I will be a better person to the marrow of my bones.”

Tokyo fashion designer Aya Noguchi (her company is Balcony & Bed) and I have been collaborating for five years now, so, when the Tohoku triple disaster struck, we agreed to collaborate on a garment to raise money for the people stranded in the shelters, both of us donating all of whatever we would have made from this project.

I asked Aya to send me a few of the resulting shirts to sell in the USA, so that my friends could both donate to help the survivors and enjoy one of our collaborative pieces.

The jersey shirts are half cotton, half lyocell, an environmentally friendly and nontoxic wood pulp fabric, also known as tencel. Aya intentionally made a diagonal hem at the bottom, and blended illustrations and text from Being of the Sun with a newer drawing of a bird from a notebook of drawings she commissioned from me in 2009. She added appliqué daisies to the finished shirts after silk-screening on the art.

The t-shirt size would be a men’s medium or a woman’s large. I have both gray and black shirts.

Aya’s price tag says 10,000 yen (about $123). Shipping within the USA is $5, $7 to Canada, $11 elsewhere. You can send me payment via Paypal or by postal money order. Please send me an email or a Facebook message, and I’ll send you the information you need to complete your purchase and donation.

Upon receipt of your payment of $123 plus postage, I will make a $123 donation in your name to United Earth, and enclose a copy of the international bank wire transfer when I mail your shirt. United Earth is a Japanese social action collective that formed in response to the 1994 Kobe earthquake, and offers long-term support for rebuilding, in addition to donations of supplies to survivors and aid workers, in Japanese communities destroyed by earthquakes. Donations to United Earth are not tax deductible in the USA.

The hot weather is coming back, and it’s time for another cool vegan protein recipe.

Kim cheese was inspired by a spread I tasted at the Maui Four Seasons Hotel’s restaurant about 20 years ago. Theirs was a spread served with thin slices of a dense, dark bread with walnuts in it, and it was made from cream cheese, mayonnaise and kim chee, Korea’s fiery pickled Napa cabbage. Pacific fusion cuisine, I guess. I liked it.

I already knew I could make a vegan sour cream or cottage cheese by blending tofu, Veganaise and ume vinegar in the food processor. So I added kim chee to this, and liked the result.

I realized, though, with the sour and salty ume vinegar and the pungent kim chee, I didn’t need the extra flavor of the Veganaise, and I substituted olive oil, and liked it even better.

I use this spread on baked potatoes, steamed cauliflower, puffed brown rice cakes, cucumber slices, or whole grain pasta.

I vary the consistency from dense to runny by the type of tofu I use. Extra firm tofu makes a thick spread, better for crackers or cucumber slices. Silken tofu makes a runny sauce to pour over pasta or vegetables.

Here are the ingredients:

One 8 ounce block of tofu (from organic, non-GMO soybeans. SprouTofu’s my fave.)
One 8 ounce jar of spicy kim chee (preferably organic, certainly without MSG)
2 tablespoons of organic extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons of ume vinegar (Japanese plum vinegar, made from the pickling of unripe plums. It is salty. You can skip it if you are avoiding salt. You can certainly add more if you prefer a saltier taste to your kim cheese.)

Place them all in a food processor and blend until smooth. Chill until serving.

I’m playing slack key guitar and singing hula music at 3 PM on Sunday, May 1, 2011 at the Puna Music Festival at Kalani Honua Oceanside Retreat on the Big Island. May Day is Lei Day in Hawaii, and I’ll be wearing flowers, for sure. (That's me in the blue and white mu'u mu'u on the poster.)

Not only do I perform, but, at 1 PM, I'll be teaching a one-hour slack key guitar class.  Admission to the festival is $25 per adult and $10 per child for the whole day (10 AM to 8 PM).  If you want the guitar class, that's an additional $15. Kalani Honua grows its own fruits and veggies organically and their chefs make delicious super-healthful meals. I recommend making a reservation to have dinner at their restaurant.  I certainly will.

The festival falls on the day after the grand finale of the annual Merrie Monarch Festival at the Edith Kanaka’ole Stadium in nearby Hilo (and, for many years, on KITV. This year it’s televised, plus streaming on the Internet, on KFVE).

I think of the Merrie Monarch as a sort of Hula Olympics, a competition of the best of the best, plus pageantry, floral arrangements and aloha galore.

All of the very uncomfortable cement seats of the stadium are always completely sold out five months in advance for all three nights. The girls in the audience scream like rock fans at the end of each hula. It is Hilo’s glory weekend for visitors. But the TV footage, with gorgeous closeups of the dancers, is, IMHO, a better view than the one from the bleachers. So, unless I find myself watching it with friends on their TV, I will watch it on my laptop. I always weep with joy watching hula kahiko; the earthy spirituality of this ancient dance overwhelms me.

However, I'm not a trained in Hawaiian chant; I sing songs, so my hula set with be all hula auana. The hula dancers for my set include Richard Koob, founder/director of Kalani Honua, and Kalani Honua staff members Lynda Tu’a and Jonathan Kaleikaukeha Kimo Lopez, plus Robbie McGrath, who teaches hula at University of Hawaii Hilo, and four of her students.

Lynda promises to do a couple of “rascal hulas,” that is, sexy, naughty and funny interpretations of standard hula choreographies. “We gonna kolohe da house,” she told me.

If you are interested in what’s happening today in rural communal living in Europe and in the USA, you will want to watch these three DVDs (A New We, Visions of Utopia I and Visions of Utopia II) offered by the Fellowship for Intentional Community.