Category: Culture

  • Join Rolando Morales and Janice Maxie-Reed at Havana’s this Saturday

    Join Rolando Morales and Janice Maxie-Reed at Havana’s this Saturday

    Rolando Morales Newsletter

    Rolando Morales Newsletter

    Rolando a few years back in Kauai

    September 12, 2018

    ¡Hola, Mi Gente!

    I had turned down FOUR gigs this week, two of them private, because I was scheduled to be in Kauai this week.  Unfortunately, two potential hurricanes had the same idea and were working their way to the islands to hit just after I would have, so I had to pull out at the last minute.

    So I’m still here in Oak-town catching up on work and clients, and resting my back and shoulder a bit before  jumping back into the fray on Saturday September 15 for a special public appearance at Havana in Walnut Creek, with the great Janice Maxie-Reid on keys and vocals.  We don’t get to do this often, so I’m really looking forward to playing in duet with her again in this really fun room!  We’ll probably include a couple tunes for the Queen of Soul.  Details below.

     And the other great duets lined up include the amazing Carlos Reyes on Saturday Sept 22; and Santana rock guitarist Carlos Hernandez on Friday Sept 28, all at Havana in Walnut Creek.  These are all exciting and unique combinations with different repertoires, so if you come to each of them, you will be thoroughly entertained each time and amazed at the different talents each musician brings to the table!  (And maybe by the versatility I possess to shift with the styles each musician brings to the show!)  Details below.

     See you at the show!

    Aloha,

    Rolando

    PUBLIC PERFORMANCES FOR SEPTEMBER 2018 

    Rolando Morales Newsletter

    Saturday Sept 15, Havana Cuban Cuisine, 1516 Bonanza St., Walnut Creek, approx 8:30-11pm. Rolando returns for a special series of duet engagements at this fine Cuban restaurant and live music venue.  Tonight Rolando welcomes the charming keyboardist-vocalist Janice Maxie-Reid, who has shared the stage with Stevie Wonder and Sting; and on guitar, voice and his pedal board of magic, Rolando Morales.  This is a rare opportunity to catch this inspiring duet… Don’t miss it!  www.havanarestaurant.net,   (925) 939-4555.

    Tuesday Sept 18, Maria, Maria Cantina, 1470 North Broadway, Walnut Creek, approx 6-9pm.  Rolando returns to Carlos Santana’s Walnut Creek restaurant for Taco Tuesday.  $1 tacos, baby!  Enjoy Rolando on solo guitar and voice with his huge repertoire and big sound out on the front patio.  He may be joined by a special musical guest.  www.mariamariarestaurants.com, (925) 946-1010.

    Friday Sept 21, Maria, Maria Cantina, 710 Camino Ramon Road, Danville CA, approx 6-9pm.  Rolando finally returns to Carlos Santana’s Danville restaurant.  Enjoy Rolando on solo guitar and voice with his diverse repertoire performing on the patio by the fire pits.     He may have a musical guest sitting in.  www.mariamariarestaurants.com, (925) 820-2366.

    Rolando Morales Newsletter

    Saturday September 22, Havana Cuban Cuisine, 1516 Bonanza St., Walnut Creek, approx 8:30-11pm. Rolando returns to this fine Cuban restaurant and live music venue.  Tonight will feature the incomparable Paraguayan violinist-bassist who has played with Arturo Sandoval and Steve Miller, the great Carlos Reyes; and on guitar, vocals and his pedal board of magic, Rolando Morales.  Together they’ll light up Havana like only they can.  They only do this a couple times a year, so don’t miss it! www.havanarestaurant.net,   (925) 939-4555.

    Tuesday September 25, Maria, Maria Cantina, 710 Camino Ramon Road, Danville CA, approx 6-9pm.  Rolando finally does a Taco Tuesday at Carlos Santana’s Danville restaurant.  Enjoy Rolando on solo guitar and voice with his diverse repertoire performing on the patio by the fire pits.  (925) 820-2366,  www.mariamariarestaurants.com.

    Rolando Morales Newsletter

    Friday September 28, Havana Cuban Cuisine, 1516 Bonanza St., Walnut Creek, approx 8:30-11pm. Rolando returns to this fine Cuban restaurant and live music venue.  Tonight will feature the rock guitarist from Carlos Santana, the exciting Carlos Hernandez; and on guitar, vocals and his pedal board of magic, Rolando Morales.  Together they’ll rock Havana all night long.  Don’t miss it!   www.havanarestaurant.net,   (925) 939-4555.

    Saturday September 29, Pairings Wine Bar and Restaurant, 310 Main Street, Pleasanton CA 94566, 7:45-10:45pm.  After 2 months away, Rolando finally returns to this exciting social hotspot in downtown Pleasanton.  This young, expanding wine bar features fine wines, tapas and now dinners.  Rolando will perform his broad repertoire on solo guitar and voice.  Free!  www.pairingscellars.com, (925) 398-8846.

    CD SALES

    If you would like to order a CD, read on.  If you’d like to order our CD “Rolando Y Qué?!”, you can pick it up at my website, the gigs or by mail.  They’re $15.00 at the gigs, or $17.00 by mail to cover postage and handling. TO ORDER THE NEWEST CD “ROLANDO, Y QUÉ?!” by mail: Send a check or money order payable to Rolando Morales for $17.00 for the CD and postage to Rolando Morales, 9028 Burr Street, Oakland, CA 94605. and I’ll send it to you.  Let me know if you’d like .it signed.

    TO ORDER THE ORIGINAL “PASSPORT: 10th ANNIVERSARY EDITION” CD by mail, send $17.00 to the same address as above. Be sure to include your return address.

    BOTH CDs ARE AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE AT WWW.ROLANDOMORALES.COM

    All other shows are private. Why not hire Rolando for your own private event? He’s available for corporate shows, weddings, parties, concerts and festivals. The Rolando Morales group is available as sextet, quintet, quartet, trio and duo depending on your entertainment needs and budget.

    This email was sent to you for Rolando Morales: RMG, 9028 Burr Street, Oakland, CA 94605

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  • Basic trust in parents is essential for healthy child development.

    Photo by Filios Sazeides
    This boy trusts his father completely.  Photo by Filios Sazeides, www.unsplash.com

    Basic trust that develops through interaction between parents and children is the foundation of a purposeful and content life.  Without trust life is not worth living.  When children are in a trusting environment they learn to relax, count on the people around them,  trust in themselves and trust in their ability to overcome obstacles.  For that reason it is important for kids to learn to trust in the people around them.  This is also the reason betrayal of basic trust, or interruption due to abandonment during early childhood while the essential first trust is build, is so very damaging to the psyche.

    Father-daughter duo Dave and Claire Crosby

    In our modern lives people are not  always available to children. There is  work, travel .  Experts know that being responsive to children’s needs is the Nr. 1 important thing that can done for them.  Their psychological make-up and their outlook during the rest of their lives depends on their ability to know that when they reach their most trusted adults and that they we will be there when needed.  Erik Erikson and Jean Piaget to of the most formidable child psychologists teach that trust in self cannot happen without this basic trust. When kids are able to trust that their parents will respond to their every need they develop this “basic trust” or ‘Urvertrauen” is formed. Without this basic trust a person will develop “basic mistrust.”

    The only way a parent can help a child find that basic positive outlook on life it to respond to their children  in  realtime.  Technology can have a positive or negative effect on our lives.  We can become distracted or we can use the technology the be there for our kids. The choice is ours.

    Smartwatches are a solution that will allow us to stay in touch with those who are most important to us.  We can created phone trees of trusted adults and create a digital circle of love with Family Assistant Apps and Vigilints Kids Smartwatches are a potential for parents to stay connected, regardless of how busy life gets.

  • Fact based Information is a thing of the past: Misinformation is protected by conservative Supreme Court

    Lines are 20 feel long for free food in San Francisco, May 2018
    Lines are 20 feel long for free food in San Francisco, May 2018

    Children who are pregnant because they were molested and raped; young teenage mothers who are not equipped to raise a child – since clearly they are too young to take responsibility for themselves; impoverished mothers who have a hard time raising the kids they already have; they all no longer have a right to fact-based information.

    The conservative leaning Supreme Court ruled that withholding information about options available to people who really may benefit from an array of information will now be misled, misinformed – legally.  There are a lot of women who are not equipped to be a parent they need options with help, not judgment and misinformation.   www.kidscount.org

    Brave New World: 2018 US Supreme Court decided it is okay to mislead pregnant girls and women base on "religious" grounds.
    Brave New World: 2018 US Supreme Court decided it is okay to mislead pregnant girls and women base on “religious” grounds.

    The youngest person on record giving birth after being raped was Linda Medina who gave birth at six years and five months. It is not unusual for 11 to 12 year old girls to ovulate.  If they are raped or their sexual explorations end up in pregnancy they are faced with a very challenging life.

    Now in 2018 the Supreme Court decided that religious extremists have the right to mislead and misinform and lie to women who really need information more than anyone else.  If they were informed they would not be in the plight they find themselves in.  They would not seek help from religious extremists who want to impose their apocalyptic views onto any miserable person that falls into their clutches.

    Already without this debacle 1 in 4 women will go on a welfare benefit program within 3 years of their child being born.  Who will care for unwanted children who are a result of misinformation?  It is clear the Supreme Court doesn’t care nor is that in their job description.  Religious extremists want to abolish insurance, privatize welfare and they want to  mislead people who are ill equipped to be parents to have children.  60% of unwed mothers live in poverty.

    14 Million children in the US go hungry every night.  There is no care for that clearly.  The religious extremists voted for a philandering president who had sex with porn stars.  Michael Cohen handled his behavioral issues of the president and  those of his  friends.   Mistresses were paid hush money and to have abortions.

    The religious extremists clearly don’t have any consistent value system.  They want to control and impose their will on the victims who need help more than anyone. No one is more vulnerable than a pregnant girl or women  recovering from rape or sexual molestation, or even just a mistake.

    The president is  friends, with Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted child molester who was convicted for soliciting underage girls for prostitution. Religious extremists voted in a friend of a convicted child molester and human trafficker.  They  mislead people just as their chosen leader enjoys to do. Important information about options are withheld.  The centers lie to and mislead victims.  It’s official:

    The use of the freedom of speech laws is now used to protect liars. This is yet another low for the US.  This is a country of laws, and now:

    Misinformation is now officially legal in the US. 

    National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, No. 16-1140 has been decided. The conservative Supreme Court voted for misinformation and is against California’s State Rights to handle their own affairs.

     

  • Made in Germany – will it stay a strong brand without the US partnership?

    https://bmw-grouparchiv.de/
    BMW HISTORY

    Europeans are starting to accept that they will have to go it alone and figure out how to deal with their own issues – now that the “Partners in Leadership” pact that lead the world is dead and gone.   Since the end of World War II – Germany gladly tamed its own internal monsters by relying on this partnership with the US.  Germany has followed the US, partnered with the US, implemented US strategies, fully trusting that the promises Reagan, W.H.Bush, Bill Clinton, W. Bush, and Obama made to the Germany and by extension to the EU. Now the world has to come to grips with the current change of direction that sometimes feels like a betrayal by the US. As Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff explained to Juurd Eijsvoogel, in the NRC News.

    “Now Germany is faced with the horrible truths as Germany has no nuclear weapons. The country is completely dependent on the American security umbrella. That awareness was of course there earlier, but only in abstract. Trump’s harsh attitude here has caused an acute sense of complete powerlessness in Berlin. The world is no longer about Europe. The problem why America engages here dates back more than seventy years ago. In itself it is understandable that America wants to shift its attention to other parts of the world. We could have seen that coming. You also saw it with previous presidents.”

     

    Trump’s wishes to focus the US inward.  He wants to cut the country off from the world and seems merely eager to please Putin, Kim Jong-Un, Xi JinPing, and the Saudis.  He welcomed Duterte and Erdogan, and the right-wing leader of Poland and Hungary.  He disregards all the leaders of democratic nations and voices his dislike of most European, NAFTA leaders and Australians.

    The West is floundering.  Blaming immigrants, closing borders will not be the most constructive way to run a country or economic region.  It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about the US or Europe.  The US wants to close its borders to immigration instead of strengthening the middle class. This policy will not succeed regardless of whether the US succeeds in offending the rest of the world and shutting itself into its tiny fortress.  Without a growing population and without international trade every country will move backwards.  The policy of breaking promises and committing inhumane and egregious acts will backfire for many years to come regardless of whether it is carried out in the US or in Europe. All we have to do is watch the Middle East and Africa to see that conflict doesn’t pay many dividends, except to weapons’ dealers, mining operators and eventually construction companies.

    Similarly in the EU, the ill-fated Dublin-Agreement burdens Greece and Italy as the point of entry states with all the problems of integrating immigrants.  Naturally this doesn’t work, it could never have worked.  Without a healthy immigration policy the EU will suffer terrible economic consequences.  It is already a tiny region when compared to China, India, Latin America and North America. Without immigration, the population and therefore the economy  will shrink, burdening the ever fewer young with the cost of caring for an expanding older population.

    Ronald Barazon states in his article in the DWN: ” With a realistic attitude that emphasizes the need for immigration, meets foreigners positively, but does not close their eyes to problems and needs, a constructive policy should be possible.

    The US and Europe are partly responsible for the prevailing chaos. The interventions of recent years – from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya – have been driven by a very positive effort to eliminate brutal dictators in these countries. However, not a flourishing democracy followed, but the abolished rulers were replaced by numerous other brutal actors who are now triggering the waves of refugees. Currently, too many politicians are misusing immigration as a means of concealing their many failures in other areas. “

    Strengthening the middle class works wonders for stability.  That role falls on investors and business leaders. Politicians are too dependent on donors and simply carry forth policies that are in the best interest of a few wealthy donors. Only when global business leaders realize that an eroding middle class erodes ROI, will the world move in a better direction.  Perhaps things have to get quite terrible in terms of ROI before business leaders and politicians get personally affected enough to choose change. In Europe that time is now.