WandaLUSTLeverage. Ubuntu. Sustainability. Transitions.

What South Africa, Clint Eastward’s movie and Morgan Freeman’s Mandela moment can teach the USA. Ten reasons to see the Oscar-nominated film (with Freeman nominated for Best Actor and Matt Damon for Best Supporting Actor).

By Wanda Hennig

Invictus is the story of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, hosted and won by South Africa. The movie is a tribute to Nelson Mandela’s vision and leadership — and a lot more. Go see it and be inspired. Perhaps it will give you new thoughts and insights on Washington politics and the US health care debate. The Top 10 list starts with rugby

Story by Wanda Hennig

This story was first published in Food Illustrated magazine, London, with photography by Richard Jung

A visit to Greens in San Francisco is a celebration of the senses. Dip your spoon into a bowl of butternut squash soup and delight in the delicate harmony of lightly caramelized onions and apple confit blended with a hint of calvados. Feast your eyes on a salad that marries fresh ripe figs with Kodata, Mission and Calmyra olives, melon, watercress and creamy goat’s cheese. Inhale and delight …

By Wanda Hennig

Super-geek and Berkeley–based internet identity guru Kaliya Hamlin mounted her first She’s Geeky ‘un’conference in October 2007 and her most recent, last weekend. They grew from her observation that while women are encouraged to enter the STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — once women leave school and enter the workforce,

Story by Daryl Balfour
Guest Contributor
Photos by Daryl and Sharna Balfour

I spent two hours in a tiger’s den this week, watching her nurse five hours-old newborn cubs — including the first white cub born in the wild in more than 50 years.

An inner journey can be more spectacular — and revealing — than a trip around the world. And a weekend spent doing something you really would prefer not to be doing can change the course of your life.
By Wanda Hennig

Can this really be me writhing around the floor in a large, darkened room with a number of other should I call us crazies? I have my eyes glued shut but I know the others are out there because I can hear grunts and whines and hisses and the odd …

By Wanda Hennig — See full story in Oakland Magazine, November 2009 and Alameda Magazine, November 2009

By guest Africa correspondent Graham Linscott

Photos by Wayne Matthews

TEMBE Elephant Park, a wilderness in the remote north-east of the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, offers visitors the opportunity to step back 200 years into unspoiled pre-colonial Africa.

It also offers the opportunity to spot southern Africa’s largest tusker, a giant bull elephant named Isilo who is about 65 years old …

Vicki Gutgesell loves animals and she loves to travel. She goes to see wildlife, birdlife and marine life au natural wherever she can. On a recent trip she went to cuddle cheetah cubs. Sweet, yes. But it was also about species survival.
Story Wanda Hennig
Photos Vicki Gutgesell

Vicki Gutgesell was doing a volunteer shift at the Oakland Zoo in California when a notice pinned to the info board caught her attention. On it she read that someone near Cape Town, South Africa, was looking for volunteers to help hand-raise cheetah cubs. …

By Wanda Hennig
A veteran print journalist and editor — turned online writer, blogger and social media buff — embarks on a real-life travel writing-cum-social media project and invites you along for the ride. Tips, hints, pitfalls to avoid, good practices to aspire to, facts, fallacies and all the write stuff.

“Dear Wanda
 — Love is in the air at Air New Zealand as the airline prepares for the world’s first Matchmaking Flight. On October 13, an estimated 100 singles will journey from Los Angeles to Auckland, each with the hope of finding a match in air,

On a Saturday morning in late July, just after a flock of white pelicans arrived for an extended stay at Lake Merritt, a group of activists, bloggers, would-be bloggers, vloggers, Twitter gurus, print journalists transitioning to the web in the age of social media, high-tech nerds, and others, gathered at Tech Liminal in Oakland for the East Bay’s first Beast Bloggers Bar Camp.

People at the event, hosted by journalism micro-funding project Spot.Us, Oakland technical hotspot and salon Tech Liminal and Oakland’s must-read independent politics and development blog, A Better Oakland had been advised to arrive:
With coffee mug and a laptop (or notebook and pen);
prepared to talk blogging