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
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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.
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/).
To celebrate completing discussion of the Transition Companion book, book groups 2 and 6 celebrated May 30 with a potluck and screening of the new Transition 2.0 film.
Preparing dinner…
Feasting…
And relaxing for the show….
Over the summer, the book group will be discussing The Empowerment Manual, which is about collaborative groups, from Transition and Occupy all the way to Cohousing and Ecovillages. Then in the late summer and fall, the group will be doing the Low Carbon Diet class (to reduce your carbon footprint). If you’d like to participate, write a note to transitionpaloalto@gmail.com.
And stay tuned for another screening of Transition 2.0. Watch the Transition calendar, or better yet, sign up for the Transition Palo Alto Yahoo group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/transitionpaloalto/).
In the back parking lot of Common Ground, as people perused plants, melodious music mingled with green garden goods and a cornucopia of crafts, with the whirring of bicycles in the background.
The garden share gathered with seedlings and herbs and plenty of lemons.
The craft table was laden with cloth and papers aplenty. 
Tom Kabat (with the able assistance of David Coale) repaired the row of bikes that entered the lot and gave advice on riding comfortably and safely.
Herb Moore displayed his Scrapaphony – chimes made out of keys, pipes from tubing, and drums from jars filled with colorful liquids. 
Annie (of Opal’z) demonstrated how to wrap the soaps she teaches how to make for gifts, and showed her fragrant rose beads. I showed how to reuse envelopes (turn them around, or use junk mail) with decorative hand-drawn labels and make homemade playdough.
The share, on Mother’s Day, was full of energy, with interplay among crafters, musicians, bike riders, gardeners, kids and adults, and everyone wanting to learn and share. Thank you to all who came, especially to those who helped lead these sharings. A special thanks to all the moms on this Mother’s Day.
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
Interested in gardening in the Palo Alto area? Get timely hints from the TPA Garden Notes compiled by Master Gardener Romola Georgia. To get the newsletter and join the Garden Group contact transitionpaloalto AT gmail DOT com .
Below is the latest Garden Notes from Romola.
-Bart
Transition Palo Alto Garden Notes for May
I’ve been thinking this month about the gardener’s role in protecting and nurturing the soil ecosystem. In addition to the visible earthworms and sowbugs that decompose and shred, we must be mindful of the bacteria, fungi, and nematodes that we do not see, but are also hard at work improving the soil texture and nutrient availability. For growing vegetables in our area:
May is heaven for gardeners in the Bay Area
Fruit trees: Don’t forget to thin your fruit. Thinning is an important aspect of fruit tree care, promoting not only healthier fruit, but also avoiding alternate bearing syndrome (a lot of fruit one year and very little fruit the following year.) Apples, pears, peaches, nectarines, plums and apricots will benefit from reducing to one fruit per cluster or making sure that no two fruits touch each other. Stone fruit can be twisted off, but pome fruit should be clipped with your pruners. If you expect a large harvest or cannot use all your fruit, consider contacting Village Harvest http://www.villageharvest.org/ They will harvest your trees and donate a portion to the needy. They also have tips on managing your trees.
It’s feedback time. Transition Palo Alto has been sending this garden note for several months to the “garden interest” group. Please send me some feedback. What has been useful? What has been interesting? What would you like more of? What else would you like to see in the garden note Please send comments to:
Romola Georgia (c/o transitionpaloalto@gmail.com )
The purpose of this group is to share information, resources, questions, and events about vegetable gardening. Our wonderful Mediterranean climate permits us to grow and eat from our own gardens in every month of the year.
To get the newsletter and join the Garden Group contact transitionpaloalto AT gmail DOT com .
MOTHER’S DAY GARDEN-CRAFT-BIKE-MUSIC SHARE
Neighbors sharing food, exchanging crafts, repairing bikes, and making music
Sunday, May 13 11am – noon FREE !
Common Ground Organic Garden Supply & Education Center
559 College Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94306
Hop on your bikes with your favorite mother for this 4 Event Mother’s Day Share. Join us to share your garden and kitchen bounty, your extra arts and crafts supplies. 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, homegrown fruit, vegetables, eggs, herbs, honey, flowers, paints, markers, fabric, yarn, paper, patterns, books, garden/craft tools, 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. At 11:30, we’ll have demos on rose beads and packaging, homemade supplies and envelopes, and more, along with wind chimes and musical instruments (see Scrapaphony below).
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 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, Midtown Green Team, Barron Park Garden Network, Barron Park Assn, Common Ground, City of Palo Alto Community Gardens, 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.
Transition Palo Alto 