The Soon-to-be-Great Reskilling and Sharing Expo
Neighbors Sharing Food, Crafts, Skills, and Goods
Sunday,  August 12 11am – 12:30pm      FREE !
Common Ground Organic Garden Supply & Education Center
www.commongroundinpaloalto.org
559 College Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94306

Hop on your bikes with your friends and family for a multiple skill and goods sharing event. Join us to share your garden and kitchen bounty, your extra arts and crafts supplies, beloved (or neglected) books, old clothing, and children’s toys. Bring what you have to share; take home something you don’t.   You’ll also learn to make homemade musical instruments and get a (or learn to do your own) bike tunup. We’ll have demos on kitchen skills and craft techniques on the half-hour, too. Bring your bikes, bike supplies, homegrown fruit, vegetables, eggs, herbs, honey, flowers, paints, markers, books, shirts, skirts, pants, fabric, yarn, paper, sheet music, patterns, books, garden/craft tools, toys, kits and more. Be sure to bring a bag to take home the bounty!

Local Garden Share – Bring extra bounty from the garden (produce, fruit, herbs, eggs, honey, flowers, plants in pots), things made in the kitchen from the things from the garden, seeds, seedlings, tools, utensils, books, magazines. Anything garden and food-related is welcome.

Craft Share – Bring your arts and crafts supplies and tools, and even artistic creations to share.  We’ll have demos on simple crafts you can make, techniques you can learn, a chance to show off your skills, and even a crochet lesson.

Bicycle workshop – Let’s work together to do minor maintenance and make minor adjustments to improve your bike for efficiency, safety and comfort, with Trevor and Katie. They’ll help you with: Tire pressure, Oiling squeaky chains, Seat ergonomics, Adjusting bar position for good wristernomics, Adjusting gears, brakes and headsets. They can also coach you through fixing a flat tire!

Scrapophony– Fun with Found Sounds – Learn to make and play some simple ‘musical instruments’ from things found around the house. Discover the joys found sound and explore the wonders of sound via everyday objects. Humans have been experimenting with ways to make music with found objects (sticks, bones, rocks…) for about as long as there have been humans. Join us in rekindling that sense of auditory exploration which is the wellspring of musical creativity.

Book share – Turn in your old beloved books in readable condition (no pages missing please) and take home a new good read. Any extras will be donated to the library.

Clothes share – Bring something that no longer fits but still looks good (free of stains and tears) and find something that you need to complete your wardrobe. Any remaining clothes will be donated to Goodwill for recycling.

Toy share – Kids bored of the same old toys? Trade them in for something new-to-them, and get the next generation involved in sharing and keeping things out of the landfill. Extras will be donated to a local children’s shelter.

Throughout the Bay Area, neighbors are coming together for sharing locally grown, fresh produce, as well as arts and crafts supplies, and other household items. Our Palo Alto sharing event is supported by a coalition of community ecological organizations and neighborhood groups including: Acterra, Barron Park Green Team, Barron Park Garden Network, Barron Park Assn, Common Ground, City of Palo Alto Community Gardens, Deborah’s Palm, Midtown Green Team, Opalz, Slow Food South Bay, Transition Palo Alto and Transition Silicon Valley.

The Common Ground store is open during the event, so plan to stop in to get any supplies you need to continue your garden bounty or more.  Also, the event is located only 3 blocks from the California Ave Farmers’ Market, which is open from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM.  You will have time to shop or have lunch at the market after the event.

Please take home any excess of what you bring, if you can. Other items such as toys, books, craft supplies and clothes may be donated to local charities and shelters. More information will be posted at http://transitionpaloalto.org

The Conversation, Community, and Calling (a.k.a. Conversation) group welcomed new and old participants on a chilly but glorious evening this past week.  Affectionately dubbed the Transition Palo Alto “support group for activists,” the Conversation group started in 2010 with some sessions that Cecile Andrews did on helping folks identify and pursue their personal purpose (their “calling”). Since then, the group has given support to people exploring new ideas and projects, looked at personal and political activism, and even supported folks with issues in their personal lives. Communication has been a frequent topic, and the group turned to it again this week. Mary Jane Marcus led an exercise in compassionate listening, and Chris Selberg shared ideas from a recent workshop on non-violent communication.

The Conversation group meets every two weeks. For more information, go to the Groups and Project page.

Book group 6 took a week off from our summer reading to enjoy July 4th.  We met behind Acterra in Palo Alto for a delicious potluck, then all 16 of us walked out to the Baylands to enjoy fireworks from around bay.

A great time was had by all!

The book group meets on Wednesday nights and is currently reading The Empowerment Manual by Starhawk. If you’d like to participate, go to go to Yahoo Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com) and search for tpa_book6.

Our local Transition – Slow Money folks teamed with Slow Money Northern California on the fabulous Farm Fest head at Pie Ranch June 30. To join our local Slow Money group, go to Yahoo Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com) and search for tpa_slow_money. And for more on the Slow Money movement, go to http://slowmoneynocal.org/.

Nice article in the Palo Alto weekly about a Transition-tinged giveaway hosted by TPA-er Romola Georgia:

Trading ‘the stuff of life’
Barron Park FreeSale is hub for exchanging ideas and belongings

by Helen Carefoot

On a small Barron Park street lined with patches of wildflowers and dandelions, rows of tables were piled high with items ranging from shawls as delicate as spider webs to stacks of vintage records and weathered books.

Neighbors at the Tippewango Court home of Romola Georgia pored over the myriad items Satuday, June 16, donating their own and taking another in return. But it wasn’t a garage sale; it was a “FreeSale.”

A FreeSale is a pseudo-yard sale in which participants exchange gently used items with their friends for free. Georgia said she hopes to use the event to promote sharing and re-purposing the “stuff of life.”

The tables in front of Georgia’s white picket fence created an appealing aisle of goods. Boxes of blooming sunflowers and fennel plants lured plant enthusiasts to the gardening table; a heap of X-Men trading cards from someone’s childhood was pile upon another. An elaborate six-CD changer stood out among the electronic offerings.

Many items displayed carried personal significance to their previous owners and elicited stories and nostalgia.

More at PA Weekly

CRAFT-BIKE-MUSIC SHARE

Neighbors sharing crafts, repairing bikes, and making music

Saturday, June 23 1pm – 3pm FREE !
Deborah’s Palm
555 Lytton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301

Hop on your bikes and grab your friends and family for this Multiple Event Summer Share. Join us to share your extra arts and crafts supplies and flowers. Bring what you have to share; take home something you don’t. You’ll also learn to make homemade musical instruments and get a (or learn to do your own) bike tunup. Bring your bikes, herbs, flowers, paints, markers, fabric, yarn, paper, patterns, books, garden/craft tools, bike accessories, kits and more. Be sure to bring a bag to take home the bounty!

Craft Share – Bring your arts and crafts supplies and tools, and even artistic creations to share. We’re also sharing flowers and herbs. Put them out on the tables and take home what you want. At  each half hour, we’ll have demos on various simple crafts you can do yourself at home. We’ll also have demos of wind chimes and musical instruments (see Scrapaphony below). Extra supplies will be donated to SCRAP.

Bicycle workshop – Let’s work together to do minor maintenance and make minor adjustments to improve your bike for efficiency, safety and comfort, with Tom Kabat. He’ll help you with: Tire pressure, Oiling squeaky chains, Seat ergonomics, Adjusting bar position for good wristernomics, Adjusting gears, brakes and headsets. He can also coach you through fixing a flat tire!

Scrapaphony – Fun with Fun Sounds – a workshop in making musical instruments from scraps with Herb Moore. He’ll be sharing examples of simple homemade “instruments,” wind chimes from spare keys, a canning jar “water drum.” He’ll also share an approach to exploring sound with found objects.

Throughout the Bay Area, neighbors are coming together for sharing various items, including arts and crafts supplies, and other household items. Our Palo Alto sharing event is supported by a coalition of community ecological organizations and neighborhood groups including: Deborah’s Palm, Midtown Green Team, Fabmo, SCRAP, Opal’z, Transition Palo Alto and Transition Silicon Valley.

Deborah’s Palm is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization which provides a community resource for women and offers classes, counseling, peer groups and more. This location will be in the rear parking lot – please park on the street and walk or bike to the location. The lot is accessible. Seating and umbrellas, as well as light refreshments will be provided.

Transitioners and friends gathered in Los Altos for a marathon lemon marmalade reskilling Saturday June 2. They enjoyed a wild afternoon of peeling, pulping, boiling, stirring, and jarring, making lots of lemon, lemon ginger, and orange marmalade before firing up the grill and retiring to the back yard for food and conversation.

And the results were delicious! If you’d like to participate in future reskilling activities, just sign up for the Transition reskilling Yahoo group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tpa_reskilling/).

Looking for a good read that’s also eco-friendly? Find a Green Shelf near you. A project of the Midtown Palo Alto Green Team, Green Shelves are just that – a bookshelf lined with green paper and stocked with environmentally-friendly reading material for all to borrow and read. Working together with local schools, businesses and public areas, we hope to establish a number of Green Shelves that will carry books on carbon-cutting topics for all ages, nonfiction and fiction alike.

The aim of the Green Shelf is to provide an opportunity to share materials with like-minded people throughout the city as well as to raise awareness and knowledge among the general population. We hope that Green Shelf books will also be the starting points for conversations and building connections in the community. Anyone can pick up a specially-marked book from a green-paper lined Green Shelf, read it and return it when done. You can return it to any other Green Shelf in the city.

The first Green Shelves are at Parents Nursery School (Louis Road and Garland – currently for school-families only) and Philz Coffee (Middlefield and Loma Verde). Be sure to ask about the Green Shelf when you visit these local establishments and others. More locations will be coming.

If you’d like to participate, you can donate books or literature on eco-friendly topics to the Green Shelves. Any books on environmental issues (a few multiples are okay because we can use them at multiple locations), current magazines, kids’ materials, or gardening-related materials (secular materials only) are welcome. You can also participate by suggesting books and locations.

Check out a book at a Green Shelf near you. If you have donations, a suggestion for a book, or would like to have a Green Shelf at your location, please contact the Midtown Green Team by email: midtown (at) pagreenteams (dot) org