 
Chesapeake Education, Arts, and Research Society A nonprofit organization dedicated to all who share the Chesapeake watershed environment.
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Greetings!
As daylight ceases and darkness envelopes our morning and evening routines, it's time to chop wood, stock the root cellar, organize "stuff", read, reflect and study... "November comes
And November goes,
With the last red berries
And the first white snows.
With night coming early,
And dawn coming late,
And ice in the bucket
And frost by the gate.
The fires burn
And the kettles sing,
And earth sinks to rest
Until next spring."
~ Elizabeth Coatsworth
Peace & Understanding, Kim Walsh ~ Executive Director |
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This month, GCAN will be hosting or participating in the
following events:
Sat, Nov 5 - "Move Your Money Day"
(http://moveyourmoneyproject.org/)
Sun, Nov 6 (2 PM) - "Hands Around the White House"
Opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline
Mon, Nov 7 (7-9:30 PM) - "Fund Our Communities"
Prince George's County Town Hall, Community College,
Marlboro Hall, Lecture Room 1097,
Wed, Nov 9 (6:00-9:00 PM) ~ I
n place of the November GCAN
Meeting, you are all invited to join the Town Hall Meeting on
Offshore Wind Energy, Hillcrest Heights Community Center,
2300 Oxon Run Drive, Temple Hills, MD 20748.
FURTHER DETAILS FOR ALL EVENTS CAN BE FOUND ON THE CHEARS FACEBOOK PAGE!
Please email lore@simplicity-matters.org, if you would like to carpool from the Greenbelt Community Center on Nov 7 or 9.
We just had a very successful "Green & Just" Candidates Forum,
for the Greenbelt City Council. Thanks to Susan Stewart for all her
hard work to pull it together. Keep an eye out for Melanie Griffin's
article in the Greenbelt News Review.
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Two Discussion Circles were started in October. Both will continue until the end of year. Thanks to circle coordinators Marj Donn and Jennifer Robinson. A planning committee will be meeting soon, to plan out topics for the rest of the year. Please contact Lore if you would like to suggest a topic or attend this twice-a-year planning meeting.
- World on the Edge
- Common Security Club/Resilience Circle
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A small group has decided to reconvene the Re-Skilling Workshops group. The first workshop will probably be on "Winterizing Your Windows". Here is a link to building insulated windows, materials cost, and energy savings. If you would like to help plan this and future reskilling topics, let us know.
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Reel N' Meal @ New Deal Cafe
Reel and Meal is a monthly film series at the New Deal Cafe exploring vital environmental and social justice issues.
Patuxent Riverkeeper Fred Tutman
Patuxent Riverkeeper Fred Tutman will host a discussion about how class, race & sense of place shape our individual approach to environmentalism & conservation values. The evening will feature a short media presentation and a community dialogue about how to build strong, compassionate communities and a more inclusive environmental movement around a broad sense of shared place.
November 21 (7 PM) @ New Deal Cafe
FREE & Open to the Public
with optional vegan buffet at 6:30 PM ($13).
| | Admission to the film is always FREE! Organizations that co-sponsor the monthly film are Beaverdam Creek Watershed Watch Group, CHEARS (Chesapeake Education, Arts and Research Society), Prince George's Peace & Justice Coalition, and Vegan Networking. |
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This map allows you to see the big
picture of our region, or zoom up close to many places where
active. Read instructions below the map to find out how to change the
map view. Choose from the pop-up menu and hit the "Zoom to it!" button,
or just double-click to zoom, or drag your pointer within the map to
virtually drive to your favorite sites and study them up close.
Buttons at upper right let you flip from a satellite view to an
ordinary road map, or a physical terrain map. Each red marker links
directly to professionally monitored water flow and quality in your
streams and rivers. Gold markers show special
CHEARS
sites. You can
zoom to any of the "3 Sisters Gardens" to see how they appear in
Google's latest collection of data, that is updated yearly in our
region. You can zoom to two of the Pennsylvania farms
CHEARS
is
active, or swoop down to the coastal site at Chincoteague Island. If
activity not shown there, you can let us know, or
send us a file saved in Google Earth, that can easily be added to the
confluence map.
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Jim Cassels Award to CHEARS...
Three Sisters Demonstration Gardens Project
In preparation for next growing season, we received a grant to make the Center Garden (behind Greenbelt Community Center) accessible to those with disabilities. If you are interested in becoming involved with the planning committee, contact maggie@chears.org.
CHEARS Three Sisters Gardens Project thanks the Jim Cassels Selection Committee, Greenbelt Community Foundation and the City of Greenbelt for its support. The project is approved as one for which Prince George's County Master Gardeners can receive volunteer work hour credits.
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The Center for the Chesapeake Story Collection...
The Chestory Archive
Tom Wisner, the "Bard of the Bay" was a poet, folklorist, artist, singer, co-founder of Chestory, and has been called Maryland's first environmental educator. Tom passed away in April 2010 and left behind a lifetime of work focused on the natural environment and culture of the Chesapeake Bay. He spent his life using the arts as a way to share knowledge and bring people everywhere together in the environmental and cultural conservation efforts. The Calvert Marine Museum acquired the Center for the Chesapeake Story Collection, a compilation of documents, artwork, music and more, so that it could be archived and stored properly. Tom's main focus for the Chestory Archive was to have it reach a wider audience than just Museum visitors. The goal of the project is to create a tool that will allow anyone to access the activities, lessons, and programs to use in teaching and research. A featured portion of this project includes training workshops for educators and anyone else interested in learning how to use the Chestory Virtual Archive tools. Plans to bring the Chestory Virtual Archive into the community and beyond are currently in development; Anne Arundel and Prince George's County Schools have already shown interest in this tool for their own curriculum and state-mandated Environmental Literacy Plan development. The project will be unveiled to the public for the first time at the 2012 Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education (MAEOE) Conference in Ocean City, MD. Once the Chestory Virtual Archive is launched, it will prove to be a wide-reaching, easily-accessible educational tool focused on studying the Bay and rivers that educators and students of all learning styles can use. For more information about this project or if you are interested in how you or your organization could use the Chestory Archive, please email Concetta, Project Manager, at |
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Gather 'Round Chesapeake: Tom Wisner's Vision
When Tom Wisner, the Chesapeake Bay 'Bard' died in April 2010, he'd already given us living treasures: dozens of recorded Chesapeake songs, stories and radio shows. Now, Sara Ebenreck Leeland, co-founder and partner with Tom in the Chestory (Center for the Chesapeake Story) project, has published a book that collects Tom's written reflections on the powerful insights that guided his work. Gather 'Round Chesapeake: Tom Wisner's Vision is a collection of Wisner's writing, from short celebratory poems to analysis of how our cultural ways of thinking about 'nature' results in the destruction of our waters and what an alternative 'Come Full Circle' way of living might be like.
A few entries, like the 'Wade-in poem' are familiar to those who knew Tom Wisner, but Tom's writing about his own creative process, his sketching of a personal Chesapeake mythology, his reflections on connecting art to the sciences in education, his 4-page imagining of riding a blue heron's back on the journey from Texas to the Nanjemoy rookery, and over a hundred other pages of writing-are all new. Leeland searched 30 years of Wisner's journals and other notes, lengthy records of e-mail correspondence and other unpublished writing. The result is both visionary and simple.
"Thanks to water for its grace, For singing on the roof when it rains". "Spiritual learning comes backwards."
"You begin mostly in the dark, choosing paths from impulse by following your heart. Then, much later, truths begin to emerge, ...and you learn why you did those things."
The book is available from Chestory, The Center for the Chesapeake Story and the following websites.
www.chestory.com
www.amazon.com
www.saraleelandbooks.net
and selected Chesapeake bookstores.
In the works are:
- A songbook of Tom Wisner's songs for children.
- A songbook of additional Tom Wisner songs.
- A digital-archive of Wisner's regional stories & songs.
For more information, contact Joan Clement at Chestory@gmail.com
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Video of the Month:
Nutria-What are they?
 | | Nutria Hunted to Save Wetlands |
When we took a canoe trip to Parkers Creek in Calvert County, MD~we learned of these animals that can eat wetlands to nonexistence. Learn about who they are, where they come from and what we are doing to protect/ preserve the wetlands.
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CHEARS on FACEBOOK!
You can now become a fan of CHEARS on Facebook and receive updated information in a format that may best suit your networking preferences. We will continue to communicate via email and Twitter but are pleased to offer yet another method to share information about upcoming events, discussion boards, photo albums, and much more. We look forward to your feedback and suggestions as CHEARS moves into the social networking arena. |
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Follow CHEARS
on Twitter!
CHEARS is offering an exciting line-up of educational, musical, and community activities and events in 2011. Receive up-to-the-minute information by following CHEARS on Twitter-an information sharing network.
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Simply register at
http://twitter.com
- Add CHEARS as a friend and follow
- Choose how you wish to receive information (email, text message, rss feed)
- And never again miss any of CHEARS's exciting educational and community events!
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Chesapeake Education, Arts, and Research Society4 Maplewood Court · Greenbelt, MD · 20770 www.chears.org
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