More good Straub stuff: Tonight, 5/29, and Thursday 5/31

TONIGHT! Tuesday, May 29, 2012 6:30-8:30 pm

Climate Series:
Home Energy Savings Course

Straub Environmental Learning Center

The second installation of our Climate Series brings Gerry Munzing, a trainer with Conservation Services Group and Energy Trust of Oregon, to discuss Home Energy IQ. He’ll educate homeowners about energy efficiency, conservation, your house as a system, and the behavior changes that lead to reductions in energy use and energy-efficient improvements. He’ll discuss topics such as: the importance of weatherizing for health, comfort, safety and savings; water heating savings; energy efficient solutions; heating more efficiently; and figuring out which solutions are right for you. Munzing delivers educational workshops to consumers throughout the Pacific Northwest and is a primary driver in the delivery of online and classroom based training initiatives. Munzing proudly represents Energy Trust of Oregon by providing homeowners and residential professionals with education to make homes more energy efficient, comfortable and safe. The class is part of our six-course climate series but is open to the public. Class is $5. RSVP to 503-391-4145 or fselc@fselc.org.

Thursday, May 31, 2012 7:00-9:00 pm
Soil: What’s in it for me?
Straub Environmental Learning Center

In this two-hour workshop, Geercrest Farm owner Jim Toler will define healthy soil in terms of chemistry and biology and explain how and why organic or naturally grown foods are healthier than most of what we buy at the supermarket. Toler founded Willamette Organics LLC in 2003 to provide support for organic farms and landscapes. He began working with Oregon Tilth in 2006 to create an Accredited Organic Land Care program similar to the one introduced on the east coast by the Northeast Organic Farmers Assn. That program was introduced here on the west coast in 2010.

He is also president of GeerCrest Farm & Historical Society, a 501 (c) (3) non-profit based at the historic 1847 Geer homestead east of Salem. The non-profit is primarily engaged in preservation of the farm, local history and agrarian culture. Much of their activity is centered on farm-life experience classes for school aged children. No RSVP is required, but space is limited. Seats given on a first come, first served basis.

The Most Important Job Posting in a Long While

If you seek a job with meaning and a chance to do some world-class good, here's one:

HEALTH CARE for ALL - OREGON
Job Announcement: ORGANIZER

Are you ready to make history?

Health Care for All-Oregon is a new coalition of 45 organizations (and counting) mobilizing to win a unified, equitable, publicly funded, comprehensive health care system for everyone in Oregon and the United States. We have active chapters around the state, thousands of contacts, and a solid leadership structure, all of which has been built by volunteers. Now we are ready to hire our first paid organizer to help us solidify our organization and build our momentum.

Duties include but are not limited to:

1. Create leadership development program to identify, train, and support leaders in HCAO chapters and member organizations

2. Organize new HCAO chapters in priority areas

3. Assist existing chapters and member organizations in developing greater capacity through assessment, planning, leadership development, training, and ongoing support.

4. Assist board and executive committee in developing and implementing strategic plan, regional and statewide meetings

5. Coordinate maintenance of supporter database

6. Collaborate with Communications committee to produce effective communications to supporters and the media

7. Collaborate with Fundraising committee to raise funds through individual donors (major and minor), monthly sustainers, organizational contributions, events, grants, etc.

8. Perform other related duties as assigned by HCAO Executive Committee.

Requirements
· Minimum five years experience in grassroots organizing, including all aspects such as fundraising, coalition-building, leadership development, strategic planning, communications;

· Ability to work independently and under supervision, prioritizing numerous and varied tasks;

· Ability to inform and inspire others through public speaking, meetings, and one-on-one relationships;

· Experience developing new programs and projects;

· Valid driver’s license and dependable vehicle (mileage to be reimbursed);

· Willingness to work long hours, including evenings and weekends, and travel statewide.

Additional desired attributes

· Background in health care policy and advocacy;

· Experience working with diverse constituencies, such as rural communities, communities of color, low-income communities, small businesses, etc.

Compensation:
Salary of $40K+, depending on experience; health insurance; paid vacation.

To apply, by June 18, 2012
Send cover letter, resume, and three references as Word attachments to singlepayoregon at gmail dot com, with the subject “Organizer application."

For background on Health Care for All-Oregon, see the (soon to be replaced) Oregon Single Payer Campaign website: http://oregonsinglepayer.org/.

For those with more gardening urge than space

From the good folks in Marion-Polk Food Share's Community Gardens program:

Hello folks.

A few gardens in the area still have available plots. See below for gardens with availability. Contact the listed coordinator to rent a plot. Plot sizes and prices vary.

For gardens outside Salem/Keizer, scroll down.

Salem & Keizer

Northeast Salem

Fuente de Vida
3295 Ladd Ave. NE
Coordinator: Pamela Lyons-Nelson
plnelson@teleport.com

Hammond Community Garden
4900 Bayne St. NE
Coordinator: Michelle Bertholf
hammondptc@yahoo.com
503-463-5975

Highland Neighborhood Garden
Corner of Hazel and Columbia NE
Coordinator: Cassy Hedberg & Karen Hill
chadcassy@comcast.net


South Salem

Julie's Garden
590 Elma St. SE
Coordinator: Cindy Kimball
whiteoakridge@juno.com
503-385-1876

Southeast Salem Neighborhood Garden
410 19th St. NE
Coordinators: Marcia Hoak & Nicole McDavid
marcia25@comcast.net
971-208-5402


West Salem

West Salem Boys & Girls Club Community Garden
925 Gerth St. NW
Coordinator: Erin Boers
boers.erin@gmail.com
503-779-5912


Keizer

John Knox Community Garden
452 Cummings Lane N
Coordinator: Mary Jo Emmett
mj.emmett@comcast.net
503-393-9447

Whittam Community Garden
5205 Ridge Drive NE
Coordinator: Kathy Whittam
kwhittam@comcast.net
503-510-9926


Marion County

Silverton
Silverton Grange Community Garden
601 Division St.
Coordinator: Leonide Martin
lenniem07@yahoo.com

Woodburn
Planting Communities Gardens
950 N. Boones Ferry Rd., other locations
Coordinator: Ian Niktab
considrpeas@gmail.com

Mt. Angel
St. Joseph’s Community Garden
925 S. Main St.
Coordinator: Sister Marcella
503-845-6147

Mill City
Mill City Community Garden
Kimmel Park, Mill City
Coordinator: Susan Chamberlin
503-949-5965


Polk County

Dallas
Common Grounds Community Garden
775 E. Ellendale Ave.
Coordinator: Landon Pegg
503-999-1339
garden@dallasalliance.org

Grande Ronde
Grande Ronde Community Garden
825 Grande Ronde Rd.
Coordinator: Angella McCallister
971-241-1719
grcrcfoodbank@yahoo.com


Ian Dixon-McDonald
Community Gardens
Marion-Polk Food Share

T: 503-581-3855 x329
C: 503-798-0339
F: 503-581-3862
E: imcdonald@marionpolkfoodshare.org
1660 Salem Industrial Drive NE
Salem OR 97301-0374
www.marionpolkfoodshare.org/

Maybe worth some time: Oregon's Kitchen Table

Hard to say whether this will turn out to be an innovative idea or just another way to chew the same ideas over and over -- why not sign up to take part and push it towards actually discussing meaningful ideas?

Go here to sign up:  http://oregonskitchentable.org/

Thought for a Lifetime

http://howtosavetheworld.ca/

THOUGHTS FOR THE MONTH

From the Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity:

Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money, then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present, the result being that he does not live in the present or the future. He lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.

Taming the Zoning Monster : Casaubon's Book

http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/2012/02/facing_the_zoning_monster.php

Hugely important insight:  Salem, like nearly every city, likes to toss the word "sustainability" around but it's absolutely against sustainable practices by residents.

Yay! Pop some corn in celebration

Department of Good Stuff
Web MD - Popcorn, already known to be a good source of fiber, has higher levels of healthy antioxidants than some fruits and vegetables, according to new research.

"Based on fiber, whole grains, and antioxidant levels, popcorn is the king of snack foods," says Joe Vinson, PhD, professor of chemistry at the University of Scranton. 

Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay

The losing game

The one thing we should NOT be doing is buidling more autosprawl . . .

NY Times's Frank Bruni:

 

 What if we have it backward? What if the 310-pound man trying to jam into the middle seat and the 225-pound woman breaking into a sweat only halfway up the stairs aren't the undisciplined miscreants of modern American life but the very emblems of it? 

 

What if fatness, even obesity, is less a lurking danger than a likely destiny, and the surprise isn't how many seriously overweight people are out there but how few? . . .

Following in the heavy footsteps of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," "The End of Overeating," "The End of Food" and much else, "The Weight of the Nation" makes an especially persuasive case that gluttony isn't Americans' problem. Agriculture and abundance are.

Over the last century, we became expert at the mass production of crops like corn, soybeans and wheat — a positive development, for the most part.

We also became expert at feedlots for livestock and at processing those crops into salty, sweet, fatty, cheap and addictive seductions. This has downsides.

Densely caloric and all too convenient food now envelops us, and many of us do what we're chromosomally hard-wired to, thanks to millenniums of feast-and-famine cycles. We devour it, creating plump savings accounts of excess energy, sometimes known as love handles, for an imagined future shortage that, in America today, doesn't come. . . .

John Hoffman, an executive producer of the documentary, told me: "Evolutionarily, there was no condition that existed when we were living with too much fat storage. We've only known a world of plenty for maybe 100 years. Our biological systems haven't adapted to it."

This is probably summed up best by Michael L. Power and Jay Schulkin in their book "The Evolution of Obesity." "We evolved on the savannahs of Africa," they write. "We now live in Candyland."

Our systems aren't just rigged to gorge. They're also rigged in many cases to rebound from weight loss and put pounds back on, as Tara Parker-Pope explained in a cover story for The Times's Sunday magazine last year. So we're fighting againstthat bit of nature, too. . . . 

 

 If we're going to wage a successful war against unhealthy weight gain and obesity, we need to understand all of that. We need to stop vilifying obese people, who aren't likely to be helped by it
And we need to rethink and remake our environment much more thoroughly than we seem poised to do.

The kind of consciousness-raising and corporate prodding being done by Michelle Obama — laudable as it is — won't be nearly enough. Neither will the extra green space for exercise that cities like Nashville have commendably created, or New York City officials' admirable exile of sugary sodas from public school vending machines.

These important steps, plus others under consideration, are just the start. Let's move, yes. But let's do it a whole lot faster, because what we may be trying to hold back is a near inevitable tide.

What hideous company we keep -- Oregon should join the civilized world and abolish the death penalty

Death-penalty (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty will sponsor a free discussion and showing of the documentary film “Race to Execution,” beginning at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 9, at Ike Box coffee house, 299 Cottage St., in downtown Salem.
   
    Despite Gov. John Kitzhaber's November moratorium on executions, Oregon taxpayers are still paying over $20 million annually to maintain a flawed death penalty system.  In these times of DNA evidence freeing more and more wrongly convicted inmates of crimes they did not commit and of fiscal austerity, a discussion is long overdue.

    Guest speaker will be Frank Thompson, former superintendent of the Oregon State Prison, who supervised the only executions in the state in the past 50 years.

    Rachel Lyon's film, “Race to Execution,” is an original and compelling exploration of the death penalty and of how race infects the nation's capital justice system. The film reveals potential racial biases of victims and perpetrators alike in the media, particularly as such depictions may bring out any prejudices in jurors' minds.

For details, see the website for Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, www.oadp.org or call (503) 990-7060

More on schools and their willful blindness to the impending changes

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-04-04/education-post-carbon-world

Imagine the world decades from now, during an era of collapse to a post-carbon world with a new and changing climate, with former fossil-fuel addicts thrashing around trying to find food and water and other stuff, but not understanding who/what caused all this pain and suffering or what to do about it.  That's a world in which the education system has failed miserably to do its most important job:  prepare people for the future based on a factual understanding of the past, combined with tools for the real (not virtual) future.  The author of this article is one of the damn few educators who gets it.
cheers anyway,
Tooj