May 21: Sustainability Salon on Food (Part II)

Time to get tomato seedlings into the ground (so they can do this!)

Spring is going strong!  The 136th Sustainability Salon completes our annual two-month springtime focus on Food.  We'll meet -- hopefully in-person (weather and health permitting) on Sunday, May 21st. 

Speakers will include (check back for updates):

Master gardener and permaculturist Tamara O'Brien is founder and director of Plant it Further, raising awareness of native pollinators;  co-founder and president of the local chapter of Wild Ones, encouraging native landscaping to promote biodiversity;  served as a mentor for Pitt's Plant2Plate student garden;  and sits on the Pennsylvania Farm to School Policy Implementation Group and the national School Garden Support Organization Network.  Tamara will talk about native edible plants -- and we'll surely be sampling some from around our home!  

Patrice Collins is an urban farmer, artist, educator, mother, and entrepreneur. She co-founded Mystic Mamas to share resources around food sustainability, artistic expression, and creating intentional community, as well as a community garden. Patrice will talk about the locavore movement and ways to simplify and widen food access -- often starting with educating our children, and ensuring they have access to gardens and farm animals.  Many children are much more willing to try new and healthy food options when they participate in growing or producing the food.

Shelly Danko+Day is the Urban Agriculture and Food Policy Planner for the Sustainability & Resilience Division of Pittsburgh's City Planning Department.  She'll bring an update on City programs addressing food insecurity.

Just outside of the city, ReImagine Food Systems is addressing food insecurity by transforming residents of environmental justice communities into home gardeners.  Co-founder Rhea Homa will share our achievements thus far, and plans for the future.  

Curious about biochar?  Russell Thorsen, Farmer Outreach Specialist for the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA), will talk about how it's made and what it can do for the soil.  

In the meantime, some other items of interest:

•  March 23-June 8:   Doug Oster is doing another series of online organic gardening classes, under the auspices of Farm To Table PA.  You can watch videos of past classes and register for upcoming sessions, here.

•  April 15, 16, 22, 23:  Combine a forest stewardship activity with the creation of grapevine spheres, in honor of Earth Day.  More info and registration here.

•  April 19-22:  Grow Pittsburgh and Allegheny County Conservation District will host a Free Soil Lead Screening for county residents.  More info and registration here.

•  April 21:   Online panel on The Role of Trauma, Trust, & Community in Food Insecurity.  1 p.m. online.  More info and registration here.

•  April 21:    Join a student-led coalition of Pittsburgh colleges for an Earth Day Climate Party, to demand that our elected officials take action on the climate crisis:  2 p.m. at the City-County Building (414 Grant St. downtown).

•  April 24:  Are animals necessary for a healthy, resilient, and conscientious food system?  Free virtual film screening -- with a discussion to follow at 5 p.m. on Monday.  More info and registration here. 

•  April 27:  Concerned about a toxic train derailment here in Pittsburgh?  Join a resident-led Air Quality Town Hall about what that would mean.  More info and registration here.

•  April 29:  A new grocery store for Homewood?  Freedom Foods is holding a community meeting and membership drive (1-4 p.m. at the Carnegie Library of Homewood (7101 Hamilton Ave).    

•  May 9:  So many resources been spent trying to cure cancer.  But as the old saying tells us, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  Journalist Kristina Marusic has a new book out, The New War On Cancer.  Launch event 7p.m. at the White Whale Bookstore.  

•  May 10:  GASP hosts a webinar about climate anxiety.  More info and registration here.  

•  May 11:  Solarpunk Future:  part job fair, part interactive art show.   More information and registration here.

•  May 11:  Is hydrogen a front for still more fracking?  PennFuture and Conservation Voters of PA will explore that question in this webinar.  

•  May 24:  Online lunch briefing with Dan Zegart on the Gassing of Satartia.  FB event, registration link.

•  May 25:  Better Path Presents Chantal Bilodeau on Climate Change Action Theatre.  FB event, registration link.

•  Sept 23:  Save the date for Pittsburgh's annual Urban Farm Tour!  More information to come. 

•  Last month we learned a great deal about agriculture and the Farm Bill.  You can use your voice to advocate for more-sustainable practices being supported at this link. 

•  We know that only a tiny fraction of plastic has ever been recycled.  And yet, NPR has been airing sponsorship messages for the American Recycling Council, which is continuing to perpetrate the "recycling" hoax.  Does that make your blood boil?  The national group Beyond Plastics has a petition/sign-on letter to get them to stop -- please sign, for yourself or for an organization you represent!

•  Clean Air Council has set up a directed donation fund to help residents affected by the train derailment just over the Ohio border in East Palestine.  You can contribute here to help fund needed resources for residents of easternmost Ohio and westernmost Pennsylvania.  

•  Closer to home, you can support striking Post-Gazette workers here (and consider signing up for the alternative online publication, the Pittsburgh Union Progress -- and maybe even cancel your P-G subscription until they start treating workers fairly!).

•  And speaking of solidarity, the Cop City controversy is still raging in Atlanta.  More information and a support fund are here.  There's also talk of a similar facility in the works for Pittsburgh... 

•  PRC continues to hold online workshops about composting, rainwater harvesting, and waste reduction.  

•  The Rachel Carson EcoVillage is still looking for a few more members, so they can start construction!  Curious?  Check out this introductory video -- or even better, sign up for an introduction session or sign up as an “inquirer” to have more information sent to you.

•  Did you see the film The Story of Plastic, or the PBS doc Plastic Wars?  (and/or join us for Plastic Paradise at a winter film salon six years ago?)  ...What if you could bring up imagery of the toxic impacts of plastic production, and commentary by the people and communities living with them, over the world?  You can do all that with the interactive Toxic Tours tool.  Check it out!  

•  Mask update:  Breathe99 masks (featured in a 2020 salon on Pandemics and Air (video), and one of TIME's 100 Best Inventions of 2020) are now being distributed by Our Children Our Earth, a local purveyor of alternatives to disposables (as well as classy wooden toys).  Contact Dianne via OCOE's Facebook page, or call (412) 772-1638 to coordinate a curbside pickup (or you can still order online).

Talks and discussion will run from 4 p.m. to 7 or so, here in our back yard (weather permitting -- else on Zoom).  We'll share potluck food and drink, in addition to growlers of beer and pots of pesto from the gardens and perhaps other things that we'll provide).  You're welcome to join us for informal conversation and noshing any time after 3 p.m., and we aim to start the main program sometime around 4.  Talks typically finish by around 7, but informal discussion usually continues into the evening -- join us for whatever time works for you!  (official timespan is 3-10, but few are here for the whole time!)  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!  Please RSVP on Eventbrite (or else email me with "salon" in the subject line).  I'll send out Directions & Other Information on Saturday night or Sunday morning to all the RSVP'd folks.

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 (and often health, and justice, and politics);  it's a house party (if there weren't a pandemic) with an environmental theme.  Each month we have featured speakers on various aspects of a particular topic, interspersed with stimulating conversation, lively debate, and (when in person) delectable potluck food and drink and music-making through the evening.   Originally a potluck mini-conference, the event has been mostly on Zoom since March 2020, except for some outdoor summer salons.  

Past topics have included single-use plastic legislation, home energy efficiency (and legislation to help fund improvements), the UN's COP process for climate negotiations, alternatives to single-use packaging, our region's air (part I and part II), activist art and America's Energy Gamble, advocacy opportunities, social justice games, fixing Pennsylvania state government, climate action, forest restoration, the history of American consumerism, regional air quality, preserving Pittsburgh's forests, climate modeling, approaches to pipelines, pipeline hazards, 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, 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!).