 
Chesapeake Education, Arts, and Research Society A nonprofit organization dedicated to all who share the Chesapeake watershed environment.
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Greetings!
You are Cordially Invited to Celebrate the Darkness and Entice the Light with a Mindful Walk around Greenbelt Lake, Potluck Shared Meal, Music, Song, a Warm Fire, and Good CHEAR Among Friends!
We will be gathering at Eugenia Kalnay's house at 5:15 PM for a silent walk around Greenbelt Lake followed by festivities. To RSVP, click HERE!
Look forward to seeing you at our 6th Annual Solstice Gathering! Kim Walsh ~ Executive Director |
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Many GCAN Members participated last month in "Move Your Money" day, White House Rally in opposition of the Keystone XL Pipeline (12,000 people), Fund Our Communities Town Hall, and Offshore Wind Energy Town Hall.
Two Discussion Circles that started in October - World on the Edge and Common Security Club/Resilience Circle - will continue into January. Thanks to circle coordinators Marj Donn and Jennifer Robinson. New circles will start up later this winter or early spring.
The World on the Edge discussion circle just hosted a Nov 30 House Party to discuss future strategies for Tar Sands Action (Keystone XL Pipeline). Thirteen people attended, including 4 people who had been arrested in August. Thanks to Carol Nezzo for hosting.
Thanks to Judy Hamburg, Susan Stewart, and Maggie Cahalan, who have stepped forward to help plan the next three months of GCAN meetings!
Please join GCAN in December for the following dates:
Dec 3, 9am - Support a Prince George's County Bag Bill
Hearing at PGCC Dec 3, 10:30am-1:30pm -Fund Our Communities
Follow Up Meeting,
Dec 5, 7pm - Tar Sands Action National Conference Call
Dec 5-9 - a week of rallies in DC, called "Take Back the Capitol"
Dec 14, 7-9:15 pm - **MONTHLY GCAN EVENING**, guest speaker Brad Guy, Catholic University School of Architecture will talk about Green Building and Life-Cycle Assessment
Dec 15 - Join a House Party to discuss overturning Citizens United. As long as corporations have a stranglehold on our elected officials, we will never make progress on climate change.
Dec 19-21 - drive past the Greenbelt Baptist Church and watch Astrum Solar install solar panels on the church! For more info, visit www.greenbeltcommunitysolar.com
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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.
Forks Over Knives
This 90-minute, 2011 documentary focuses on the healing benefits of a plant-based, whole-foods diet. Following the meal and screening, Dr. Neal Barnard, founder & President of the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine (who is featured in Forks Over Knives) will lead an informative, lively discussion. Clinical researcher and author, Dr. Barnard is one of America's leading advocates for health, nutrition and higher standards in research. Dr. Barnard has appeared on numerous television programs such as Dr. Oz, Good Morning America, Ellen, The Today Show and PBS. He has written many books & articles on health and nutrition including his new book, "The 21-Day Weight Loss Kickstart!"
This is a Reel & Meal evening you won't want to miss! In the spirit of the holiday season, please bring a non-perishable, VEGAN food item for the needy in Greenbelt.
Monday, December 19 (7 PM) @ New Deal Cafe
FREE & Open to the Public
with optional, incredible vegan buffet at 6:30 PM for $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. For additional information, contact December event sponsor Green Vegan Networking via Cam MacQueen at worldisvegan@aol.com.
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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:
Occupy Together!
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Occupy Wall Street Song
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Join your local movement!
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We are in support and in solidarity with the Occupy Movement! Please join the people in the streets, meetings, family dinner discussions and start a conversation. It is time for us to mobilize our minds, hearts, hands, and money as we are the 99%!
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CHEARS on FACEBOOK!
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 but are pleased to offer yet another method to share information about upcoming events, discussion boards, photo albums, and much more.
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Follow CHEARS
on Twitter!
 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, environmental, community, and activist events!
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Chesapeake Education, Arts, and Research Society4 Maplewood Court · Greenbelt, MD · 20770 www.chears.org
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