• Karen Gardner, Pennsylvania Manager of the National Young Farmers Coalition, will talk about the Driving PA Forward campaign to expand access to drivers' licenses -- and its intersections with the food system in PA. There's also a petition pressuring Pennsylvania to improve the situation.
• Erin Hart, founder and director of Farm To Table Western PA, will share the organization's work during the COVID-19 pandemic connecting local farmers, area restaurants, and residents of public housing communities.
The next salon -- Food (Part II) will very likely take place on April 17th. In the meantime, a few other events of note: On March 23rd, a virtual teach-in on the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act. March 25th, reimagine a healthier future with the second Bioplastic: Hype or Hope? event. Although the annual Seed Swap can't happen in its usual form this year, the organizers are holding a series of online lunchtime gardening workshops, as well as a seed distribution. More info is here. And a mask update: I still have a few from my second bulk order (read: substantial discount!) of the Breathe99 masks that we featured at November's salon on Pandemics and Air (video), as well as a supply of the new foam liners that address the condensation issue associated with a well-sealed mask. Please email me with mask in the Subject line if you're interested. These masks were selected as one of TIME's 100 Best Inventions of 2020!
For the uninitiated, a Sustainability Salon is an educational forum; it's a mini-conference; it's a venue for discussion and debate about important environmental issues; it's a house party with an environmental theme. Each month we have featured speakers on various aspects of a particular topic, interspersed with stimulating conversation, lively debate, delectable potluck food and drink, and music-making through the evening (though the potluck and the music are on hiatus during the pandemic). 
If you haven't been here before, you may enjoy checking out our roof garden and solar installation (and now apiary!) as well as the many other green and interesting things around our place. If interested folks are online and everything is working smoothly by around 3:30, perhaps I can conduct a virtual tour.
And if you like to make music or listen to homemade music, think back to our evening sings -- we typically ran the gamut from Irish fiddle tunes to protest songs to the Beatles, and a fun time was had by all. Folks would bring instruments, and/or pick up one of ours. Conversations would continue through the evening, as well. With a virtual event this is less likely to happen, but we can share music by turns, reminisce, chat online, and look forward to the post-COVID era!
• Clemmie Murdock III is the Production Manager and Director of Keepin' It Real at Redstart Roasters, a Pittsburgh coffee company focused on sourcing high-quality beans from farms that have earned the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center’s Bird-Friendly Coffee certification. With a coffeeshop in East Liberty and a small-batch roastery in Point Breeze, they're also educating the public about migratory birds and the rainforests where they winter.
• Rhea Homa coordinates ReImagine Food Systems, part of the ReImagine Turtle Creek Watershed & Airshed Communities Plus initiative. RiFS helps households in under-resourced communities east of Pittsburgh establish home vegetable gardens by providing structures, soil, seeds, plants, and education.
• Pamela Barroso has been sharing seeds as a volunteer for Cooperative Gardens, and will talk about seed saving.
Talks and discussion will run from 4 p.m. to 7:30 or so on Zoom (sadly, no potluck supper these days). You're welcome to join the call for informal conversation after 3 p.m., and we aim to start the main program right around 4. If you're new to Zoom, you may find my Zoom Reference Guide helpful. If you RSVP via Eventbrite, you'll receive the Zoom registration link right away. If you're not already on my Eventbrite list, please email me (maren dot cooke at gmail dot com) with salon in the Subject line to be added -- and let me know how you heard about salons!
Past topics have included the legacy of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the judiciary and fair elections, consumption, pandemics and air, election law and activism, air quality and environmental justice, social investment, local economies, the economics of energy, mutual aid networks, ocean health, the rise of the radical right, the back end of consumption, approaches to activism on fracking & climate, air quality, technology, and citizen science, single-use plastics, election activism, election law, whether to preserve existing nuclear power plants, advanced nuclear technologies, passenger and freight trains, consumption, plastics, and pollution, air quality, solar power, youth activism, greening business, greenwashing, the petrochemical buildout in our region, climate/nature/people, fracking, health, & action, globalization, ecological ethics, community inclusion, air quality monitoring, informal gatherings that turn out to have lots of speakers, getting STEM into Congress, keeping Pittsburgh's water public, Shell's planned petrochemical plant, visualizing air quality, the City of Pittsburgh's sustainability initiatives, fossil energy infrastructure, getting money out of politics, community solar power and the Solarize Allegheny program, the Paris climate negotiations (before, during, and after), air quality (again, with news on the autism connection), reuse (of things and substances), neighborhood-scale food systems, other forms of green community revitalization, solar power, climate change, environmental art, environmental education (Part I & Part II), community mapping projects, environmental journalism, grassroots action, Marcellus shale development and community rights, green building, air quality, health care, more solar power, trees and park stewardship, alternative energy and climate policy, regional watershed issues, fantastic film screenings and discussions (often led by filmmakers) over the winter with films on Food Systems, Climate Adaptation and Mitigation, Plastic Paradise, Rachel Carson and the Power Of One Voice, Triple Divide on fracking, You've Been Trumped and A Dangerous Game, A Fierce Green Fire, Sustainability Pioneers, films on consumption, Living Downstream, Bidder 70, YERT, Gas Rush Stories, and food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, and more food (a recurrent theme; with California running out of water, we'd better gear up to produce a lot more of our own!).
Coronavirus update: As you know, people in Pittsburgh and around the world are sequestered at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing is still the rule for most Americans. That's a bit of a misnomer, though -- we need physical distancing to flatten the curve, but technology now allows for rich interactions even so! I believe that community is one of our greatest strengths, so in March as events began to be cancelled, I hosted the first virtual Sustainability Salon via Zoom teleconference -- rather than gathering our usual 50-80 people in a contained space. It went quite well (even engaging participants from hundreds of miles away), and we're looking forward to June's salon! Please be sure to RSVP (via email with "salon" in the Subject: line, or via Eventbrite) so you'll receive the sign-on information.
If you haven't been here before, you may enjoy checking out our roof garden and solar installation (and now apiary!) as well as the many other green and interesting things around our place. If interested folks are online and everything is working smoothly by around 3:30, perhaps I can conduct a virtual tour.
And if you like to make music or listen to homemade music, think back to our evening sings -- we typically ran the gamut from Irish fiddle tunes to protest songs to the Beatles, and a fun time was had by all. Folks would bring instruments, and/or pick up one of ours. Conversations would continue through the evening, as well. With a virtual event this is less likely to happen, but we can share music by turns, reminisce, chat online, and look forward to the post-COVID era!
