TRANSITION PALO ALTO
Newsletter
February 9, 2011
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UPCOMING EVENTS
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“Portland: Quest for the Livable City” – free film
Friday Feb 10
Free film series on Livable Cities
Portlanders enjoy a thriving downtown, plus national recognition for alternative transportation, emissions reductions, and overall sustainability, thanks to a regional land use process established thirty years ago. Learn about the challenges of maintaining this land use vision and its implications for equity and fairness. .
Friday, February 10
7:00 pm – 9:30 pm
WorldCentric, Palo ALto
http://transitionpaloalto.org/2011/01/13/free-film-series-livable-cities/
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“Changing the Way We Eat” – TEDx online conference – free viewing Feb 11
A one-day TEDx event on sustainable food and farming. It will explore our food system — from what happened, to where we are, to what we are doing to shift to a more sustainable way of eating and farming. In an effort to have as many people as possible participate, the event will be webcast live.
For those of you unfamiliar with TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), it is a small non-profit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, using talks and performances. Thought leaders from around the world are invited to give presentations up to 18-minutes long that explore important topics to society
Come for one session or stay all day. Those of us staying over lunch time will plan to share a potluck lunch together. Bring something simple, seasonal, local – something sustainable – to share with your neighbors.
Saturday, February 11
7:30 am – 3:00 pm
WorldCentric, Palo ALto
http://transitionpaloalto.org/2011/02/06/tedxmanhattan-streaming-party/
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Free group workshop: “Conversation, Community, and Calling” – Feb 15
We’ll be following up our Conversation and Community group with bi-weekly sessions, led by Cecile Andrews of Transition Palo Alto. Admission is open and free. Newcomers welcome.
Based on the practice of good, effective conversation, in this three session series we’ll examine how you can use conversation and community to advance your vision of cultural change. The presenter is Cecile Andrews, author of Circle of Simplicity, Slow is Beautiful, and Less is More
Tuesday February 15, 2011
Time: 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Location: World Centric, 2121 Staunton Ct., Palo Alto (behind JJ&F Market)
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Sustainability talk by Nobel prize winner Elinor Ostrom – Feb 16
“The Challenge of Sustainability”
Elinor Ostrom was an unusual choice for the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
For one thing, she is the first woman to receive the prize. Her Ph.D. is in political science, not economics (though she minored in economics, collaborates with many economists, and considers herself a political economist). But what makes this award particularly special is that her work is about cooperation, while standard economics focuses on competition.
Ostrom’s seminal book, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, was published in 1990. But her research on common property goes back to the early 1960s, when she wrote her dissertation on groundwater in California. In 1973 she and her husband, Vincent Ostrom, founded the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University. In the intervening years, the Workshop has produced hundreds of studies of the conditions in which communities self-organize to solve common problems. Ostrom currently serves as professor of political science at Indiana University and senior research director of the Workshop.
Background on her — http://www.energybulletin.net/node/51790
Date: Wednesday February 16, 2011
Time: 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
Location: Stanford – Gunn Building (SIEPR) [Koret-Taube Conference Room 130 / Koret-Taube Conference Room 120].
http://ethicsinsociety.stanford.edu/ethics-events/tanner-lectures/
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If you want a new community garden in South Palo Alto
We have been invited to attend a meeting of the Palo Alto Parks and Recreation Commission on Tuesday, February 22 at 7 PM in the Conference Room of the Palo Alto City Hall, 250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto. The purpose is to present a request for the city to develop a new community garden in the South Area. Your attendance to show support can go a long way towards making it happen. Parking is available in the basement. Enter from Ramona or Bryant street between Hamilton and Forest and take the elevator to the first floor.
Hope to see you there,
Burt Liebert burtmargie@att.net
Date: Tuesday February 22, 2011
Time: 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Location: Conference Room of the Palo Alto City Hall, 250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto
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SHARING CONFERENCE
A big sharing conference is planned for the end of May in Mountain View. Sponsered by Acterra, Go Go Verde (RC), and other groups, the conference will have speakers, break-out groups and practical ways to start sharing projects.
The coordinator Lynn Strand was eager for ideas and help from Transition people. Right now she is looking for examples of sharing (e.g. Garden Swap, Clothes Swap, Crafts Swap) that she could photograph and use to promote the conference.
Organization is just getting underway. If you’re interested, you can follow the progress on a Facebook page maintained by Lynn:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mountain-View-Coalition-for-Sustainable-Planning/313117274755#!/home.php?sk=group_109932445749887
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SURVEY – HAPPINESS
The concept of “Gross National Happiness” is being advocated by John deGraaf, producer and writer of the documentaries “Affluenza” shown on PBS and most recently “What’s the Economy for, Anyway?”.
John met with Cecile Andrews, Rich Hobbs (SJ activist and community college trustee), and myself, to explain the idea. He was enthuasiastic about the Happiness Survey offered by Sustainable Seattle and Take Back Your Time (his group).
He pointed out that it can be used both by individuals and by groups such as Transition to track their progress.
The survey is free and kind of fun.
Learn more
http://energybulletin.net/stories/2011-02-05/gross-national-happiness-survey
Direct link to survy
http://sustainableseattle.org/survey/GNH/en/wellbeing.php
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SURVEY – TRANSITION
Transition Palo Alto received email from New Zealand, asking for volunteers to take a short survy.
I took it — it was innocuous. -BA
http://survey.otago.ac.nz/TakeSurvey.aspx?SurveyID=l6417m6
“I am an Energy Management student at the University of Otago in New Zealand carrying out a summer research project on Transition Initiatives.
“As part of this I am conducting a short survey of Transition group members. I would greatly appreciate if you could fill out this questionnaire and/or forward this email to other members of the Palo Alto Transition group.
“The survey can be found at the link below. There is additional information about the survey and your rights on the first page.
Sarah Williamson
Department of Physics
University of Otago
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You can access the Calendar via:
http://transitionpaloalto.org/2011/01/22/new-calendar-for-transition-events/
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Contact Bart Anderson (bart AT cwo DOT com)
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