Dec 5: Sustainability Salon on Consumption

The 107th Sustainability Salon will continue our early-December tradition of talking about the culture of consumerism (and why and how to step away).  Once again, the holiday season is upon us.  The ongoing pandemic is affecting many aspects of our lives, including how we celebrate:  A lot of folks are forgoing in-person family gatherings and scaling down holiday dinners.  Friends and family are far away, but can at least connect online.  Times are tight for many (nearly 50 million newly unemployed this year);  others are paralyzed by too much stuff.   At the same time, billionaires have amassed over a trillion dollars during the pandemic.  It's all too easy to click over to Amazon for mail-order presents or things for your own home, but please think twice -- Bezos's personal wealth has increased $70B while workers at Amazon (now including Whole Foods) face unsafe conditions and harsh expectations leading to injury and illness.  Meanwhile, small local businesses are struggling, a petrochemical expansion looms over our region, and toxins and junk are spreading everywhere.  The corporate world considers each of us only as a consumer, but is that really who you want to be?  A few ideas on dematerializing the holidays are here and here, along with George Monbiot's excellent 2012 essay) and we'll talk about lots more.  

One way to reduce consumption of new stuff is to extend the life of old stuff.  Why send still-usable things to a landfill?  Starting in the Pacific Northwest in 2013, the Buy Nothing Project is a philosophy, a movement, and a network of local gift economies that use Facebook.  Cosette Cornelius-Bates, who leads our local group, will share her experiences through the growth of this movement here in Pittsburgh (and invite you to join, wherever you live!).

Pittsburghers Against Single-Use Plastic (PASUP on Facebook) was featured at the 92nd salon, a year ago September (lots more commentary at that link).  This time, PASUP people will share insights on reducing waste (especially plastic) in general, and at the holidays in particular.  Danica Buchanan-Wollaston will introduce the organization, with an update on how PASUP is moving forward despite the pandemic (including an upcoming virtual gathering on avoiding disposables in the time of COVID).   Sabrina Culyba will fill folks in on Recycle This Pittsburgh, PASUP's compendium of what can and can't be recycled locally.  More Spirit, Less Waste!  Dianne Peterson of Our Children Our Earth and Rebecca Stallings, author of the Earthling's Handbook, will bring creative ideas to help make holiday gift-giving more meaningful, with less impact on environmental and human health.  Are you feeling overwhelmed?  Ed Wrenn, MD will inspire you to turn challenges into opportunities as we work together to tackle formidable plastics problems.  

Other events in the offing:  This week, you can visit an Antarctic glacier (virtually) and learn about important research on sea-level rise during Thwaites Glacier's Antarctica Week.  Our house concert with Lui Collins scheduled for November 20th didn't happen, but you can catch her in a virtual show on December 6th.  On Dec 13th, PASUP will resume monthly community meetings with a workshop titled Plastic and the Pandemic: Real Talk about Staying Healthy and Cutting Waste During COVID.  And on Saturday Dec 19th, the Rachel Carson EcoVillage will hold a virtual information session to introduce this multi-generational cohousing community planned for Chatham University's Eden Hall campus.  

Salons currently run from 4 p.m. to 7:30 or so on Zoom (sadly, no potluck supper these days).  Plan to join the call after 3 p.m., and we aim to start the program right around 4.  If you're new to Zoom, you may find my Zoom Reference Guide helpful.  You can RSVP via Eventbrite to receive the Zoom registration link right away.  If you're not already on my Eventbrite list, please email me (at maren dot cooke at gmail dot com) with salon in the Subject line to be added!

Please do RSVP each time -- it helps greatly in several ways   (and with a virtual event, it's how you'll get the call-in info!).  Please make every effort to RSVP well in advance -- I'll be sending out the registration link manually, so could miss last-minute registrations while setting up and hosting the event!  Be sure to include salon in the Subject line if you email, as I receive a ridiculous amount of email every day.  And if you're new, please let me know how you heard about the Salons!  

Check back on MarensList  (where you can find information on all sorts of environmental and social justice events, as well as better formatting for this event description) for updates.  And if you aren't yet on my list, if you're interested in Sustainability Salons (and our occasional house concert, simply contact me and I'll put you on my email list.  

As always, I'll be sending out directions and such (in this case Zoom instructions), and any late-breaking info, to all the RSVP'd folks by the morning of the salon if not before (usually Friday night).  So if you don't have it yet, please be patient!  One of these days I'll streamline this process a bit, but for now it takes a while to to dot all my i's and cross all my t's.   NEW:Eventbrite should also send you the Zoom registration link after you RSVP.  (I'm working on that streamlining!).

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;  fit's a house party with an environmental theme.  We usually 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.

Past topics have included 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!

Nov 21: Sustainability Salon on Pandemics and Air

The global COVID-19 pandemic is still with us, and won't be gone any time soon.  The 106th Sustainability Salon will look at several ways in which such events relate to air and air quality.  

First off, how can each of us best protect our own health, and those around us?   Neil Donahue, our resident expert on atmospheric particles and a signatory of the cautionary July letter to the World Health Organization, will delve into the difference between droplets and aerosols, the importance of wearing masks, and whether fomites (surfaces) are important in coronavirus transmission.

How do masks protect us, anyway?  Pleated surgical masks, homemade cloth masks, cartridge respirators, or replaceable filter media -- there are so many types.  Even before the pandemic, filter masks were important to countless people in a wide range of professions from health care to heavy  industry, not to mention individuals exposed to smoke from wildfires, severe pollution, or sawdust from weekend woodworking.  We've talked before about B-Corporations, whose goals include public benefits as well as financial gain.  One such company, Minneapolis-based Breathe99, originally meant for protection from urban pollution, was already getting underway as COVID-19 began spreading around the U.S.  If you've seen me in person in the last few months (indoors, anyway), you probably saw me wearing their B2 mask.  Breathe99's filter expert Alison Lee will share the story of the company and fill us in on the whys and wherefores of optimum filtration:  layers, fibers, pore size, electrostatic effects, and proper fit.  Update:  the Breathe99 mask has been chosen as one of Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2020!  Note:  salongoers will be eligible for a special discount on the B2 mask; if a lot of folks are interested, we may be able to set up a bulk order for an even lower price.  (If you email me interest or questions, please be sure to include "salon" in the Subject line!)  

Over the past nine months, we have all gotten used to a "new normal" of limiting interactions with other people, mask-wearing when we're out and about, and doing meetings and other events online whenever possible.  The last contagion on this scale was a particularly deadly influenza pandemic, spread in part by troop movements during World War I and lasting from early 1918 until the spring of 1920.   (Can you imagine the peril and isolation felt by people back in 1918 -- before Zoom, Facebook, email, and online commerce?  Before TV, and just as radio was catching on?  Before even widespread access to telephones?)  Dubbed the Spanish Flu (although it did not originate in Spain, they were neutral in the war so able to report on it and so were left with the nickname), it afflicted a third of the world's population and killed tens of millions of people (different analyses differ greatly on how many -- estimates range from 20 to 100 million).  But as with COVID, it was worse in some places than others.  Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have looked at the correlation of fatality rates in that pandemic with air pollution.  Edson Severnini, assistant professor of Economics and Public Policy, will share insights gleaned from this analysis, and the implications for our region.  

So what about the current pandemic?  Similar research is being done for COVID-19, but it is very difficult to unravel all of the confounding factors (things like international travel, politics, and stressed medical systems) during an ongoing global event.  Environmental physician Bernard Goldstein, former dean of Pitt's Graduate School of Public Health and former assistant administrator of the EPA, will bring us up to date on what has been uncovered so far, as well as regulations currently under review by Andrew Wheeler's EPA.  Should standards for ozone and PM2.5 be tightened due to pollution's impact on public health risk when a respiratory virus is rampaging, in accordance with the Clean Air Act?  This question comes at the nexus of medicine, epidemiology, public health, and the law.

And this spring, as much of the economy shut down, local scientists were watching.  Rebecca Tanzer Gruener and colleagues at CMU observed the changes in regional air pollution levels during the closures.  The results may surprise you!

This virtual event was recorded, and a video may be viewed here. 

Other events in the offing:  the annual Shale & Public Health Conference is always incredibly informative;  12-4:30 on November 17th & 18th (and a recording will be available later here).  Our house concert with Lui Collins on the 20th won't be happening, but you can catch her in a virtual show on December 6th.   The next Sustainability Salon will be on December 5th, with our annual early-December focus on Consumption (how to do less of it, especially around the holidays), featuring Pittsburghers Against Single-Use Plastic (PASUP).  And on Dec 13th, PASUP will resume our monthly community meetings with a discussion about SUPs in the time of COVID.  

Salons currently run 4-8 p.m. on Zoom (sadly, no potluck supper these days).  Plan to join the call after 3 p.m., and we aim to start the program right around 4.  If you're new to Zoom, you may find my Zoom Reference Guide helpful.  Please email me (at maren dot cooke at gmail dot com) with salon in the Subject line to RSVP (yes or maybe), or click on the link in your Eventbrite notice (if you're not already on my list, just email me with "salon" in the subject line to be added!).  

Please do RSVP each time -- it helps greatly in several ways   (and with a virtual event, it's how you'll get the call-in info!).  Please make every effort to RSVP well in advance -- I'll be sending out the registration link manually, so could miss last-minute registrations while setting up and hosting the event!  Be sure to include salon in the Subject line if you email, as I receive a ridiculous amount of email every day.  And if you're new, please let me know how you heard about the Salons!  

Check back on MarensList  (where you can find information on all sorts of environmental and social justice events, as well as better formatting for this event description) for updates.  And if you aren't yet on my list, if you're interested in Sustainability Salons (and our occasional house concert, simply contact me and I'll put you on my email list.  

As always, I'll be sending out directions and such (in this case Zoom instructions), and any late-breaking info, to all the RSVP'd folks by the morning of the salon if not before (usually Friday night).  So if you don't have it yet, please be patient!  One of these days I'll streamline this process a bit, but for now it takes a while to to dot all my i's and cross all my t's.   NEW:Eventbrite should also send you the Zoom registration link after you RSVP.  (I'm working on that streamlining!).

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;  fit's a house party with an environmental theme.  We usually 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.

Past topics have included 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!

Nov 20: House Concert with Lui Collins

[Update:  Putting Down Roots is sad to note that Lui is not currently roving around the country doing house concerts.  However, she'll be doing her first virtual concert (with a higher-tech host than I), on December 6th!  More info and tickets are here.]

Putting Down Roots is pleased to announce a house concert with New England favorite Lui Collins!

“… one of New England's clearest and most distinctive folk voices, with unusually piercing lyrical insight..." - Hartford Courant

“Folksinger for our times” - The Boston Herald

“… one of New England’s first and brightest stars.” - The Boston Globe

Folk singer/songwriter Lui Collins has been performing, writing and recording for over 40 years, her early Philo and Green Linnet recordings earning international acclaim and establishing her as a respected voice in the folk world.  Lui has shared the stage with such notables as Pete Seeger, Bonnie Raitt, Stan Rogers, Dar Williams, and John Gorka.  Renowned guitarist Dave van Ronk called her “one of the best guitarist-arrangers I have heard in years.”

“Lui sings my songs better than I do.”  

- Canadian folk icon Stan Rogers

From playful 4-string arrangements of some favorite original songs, to the fabulous jazz chords in American standards and bossa nova, Lui translates her rich and complex guitar arrangements onto her tenor ukulele to create something unexpected and delightful.

"Lui has a gentle way of capturing the hearts of her audience and having what amounts to a musical conversation with them during her performances… No one weaves a spell quite like she can." —Champlain Valley Folk Festival Newsletter

Nov 20, 2020 at 7 p.m. (door 6:30), at Maren's house in Squirrel Hill.  Light fare to share (food contributions appreciated, but not expected).  Suggested donation $15-20.  Directions and other info will come after RSVP -- and please do RSVP even if you know your way!  Email me with "concert" in the Subject line, with name(s) of attendees -- or via Eventbrite if you're on the email list for Sustainability Salons (email me with "salon" in the Subject line if you'd like to be added).  You can also call 412-251-5814 (9-9, please, and do leave a message!)

Previous Putting Down Roots house concerts have included Tom Neilson & Lynn Waldron, Two of a Kind and Brad Yoder, Mike Agranoff, Sparky & Rhonda Rucker, Putnam Smith, Ken Gaines and the Squirrel Hillbillies, and Randal Bays & Davey Mathias.