Jan 13: Sierra Club monthly meeting: Wood!

From Irian Jaya to the G-20 Summit, Tropical Wilderness to Pittsburgh’s Parks - It’s All About The Wood.

Two very different presentations will be included in the Allegheny Group’s monthly meeting.

For the past several years, life-long birder and world-traveler Gerry Kruth has been living out a dream of going into the tropical rainforests of Indonesia as part of a professional birding expedition to capture bird and other jungle sounds for posterity. This is the wildest remaining part of the planet… but it’s literally under the axe. The forests are coming down around the birds. Kruth and his colleagues were recording what is disappearing, probably forever. If you want to prepare for this talk, read Jay Griffiths’ astonishing book, .

Some years ago, Teresa Heinz took a unique leading role in preservation of tropical forests by having the spectacular Heinz Foundation offices at the top of the CNG Tower on Liberty Avenue built with the first sustainably harvested tropical hardwoods. She lent her considerable influence to the movement to preserve these incredible treasures. John Metzler of the Urban Tree Forge in Pittsburgh, on the other hand, is lending his talents to making use of the trees that have grown right here on Pittsburgh’s hillsides. His remarkable talent was recognized just prior to the G-20 Summit when Richard Piacentini, director of the Phipps Conservatory, commissioned John to build 110 linear feet of table tops for the G-20 formal dinner to be held at Phipps. The problem was he only gave John 12 days to do the entire job! John went into high gear and met the challenge, entirely from Pittsburgh’s own hardwoods, with some gorgeous artistic treasures. You can see a bit of his work on the Urban Tree Forge web site.

Join these two Pittsburghers and hear their remarkable stories– two adventures of entirely different sorts. We’ll have refreshments afterwards and time for conversation with the speakers.

7:30-9PM in the Phipps Garden Center, Fifth and Shady Avenues, Squirrel Hill. Free and open to the public. To see a summary of previous Sierra Club meetings and events, click here. For more information, contact Donald L. Gibbon (412-362-8451) or dongibbon at earthlink dot net.