Thoreau Center Brown Bag: Greening the Main Post

Join us for a lively discussion about the many improvements planned for the Main Post, in the Presidio. Learn more about plans to improve parking while creating a more pedestrian-friendly park. Over the next few years, the Presidio Trust hopes to reopen the Presidio Theatre, provide more public programs and build a lodge for overnight guests and daily visitors to the park.

Wednesday, November 17, 12:30PM to 1:30PM

Pacific Room at Tides, Thoreau Center for Sustainability

Presenters: Tia Lombardi, Director of Public Affairs; Michael Boland, Chief of Planning, Projects and Programs; John Fa, Main Post Coordinator

Brown Bag events are free informal mid-day learning sessions hosted at Tides. Friends, neighbors and colleagues are welcome. Visitors, please sign in at the front desk.

Book Recommendations from RSF Social Finance

For the second in our series in which we ask you, the tenant organizations, to recommend some books to your neighbors, we have a list provided by RSF Social Finance. We hope you enjoy learning about their work, and if your organization is interested in sharing a list of your own, please contact the library.

RSF Social Finance (RSF) is a pioneering non-profit financial services organization dedicated to transforming the way the world works with money. In partnership with a community of investors and donors, RSF provides capital to non-profit and for-profit social enterprises addressing key issues in the areas of Food & Agriculture, Education & the Arts, and Ecological Stewardship.

This selection of books is about money, its role in the economy, and in our lives. RSF Social Finance’s work stands at the intersection of money and spirit, and how money can best be used to support initiatives for healing culture and the environment such that it serves human aspirations. Money is not a singular thing, but rather comes alive in its three primary functions of purchase, loan, and gift. These transactions hold great potential for transformation. These books touch on many of these aspects, have served as inspiration for our work as a social finance organization, and hopefully will inspire others to transform how they think about money and their role as economic citizens.

Rudolf Steiner. (1933). World-economy: the formation of a science of world-economics : a series of 14 lectures, given at the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland, from 24th July to 6th August. London: Rudolf Steiner Publ. Co.

John Bloom. (2009). The genius of money: essays and interviews reimagining the financial world. Great Barington, MA: SteinerBooks.

Siegfried E. Finser. (2006). Money can heal: evolving our consciousness and the story of RSF and innovations in social finance. Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks.

Woody Tasch. (2008). Inquiries into the nature of slow money: investing as if food, farms, and fertility mattered. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Pub.

Lynne Twist and Teresa Barker. (2003). The soul of money: transforming your relationship with money and life. New York: Norton.

Jacob Meedleman. (1991). Money and the meaning of life. New York: Doubleday/Currency.

James Buchan. (1997). Frozen desire: the meaning of money. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Lewis Hyde. (1983). The gift: imagination and the erotic life of property. New York: Random House.

Niall Ferguson. (2008). The ascent of money: a financial history of the world. New York: Penguin Press.

San Francisco Film Society Fall Season - Cinema by the Bay

November 5–8, 2010
Roxie Theater, The Lab & Southern Exposure

The San Francisco Film Society's Cinema by the Bay festival celebrates the passion, innovation and diversity of Bay Area filmmaking, featuring new work produced in or about the San Francisco Bay Area that demonstrates the incredible depth and breadth of America’s film and media frontier.

The 2010 edition of Cinema by the Bay opens with Chris Brown’s darkly comic feature Fanny, Annie & Danny and presents dynamic films from leading Bay Area filmmakers throughout the weekend, including Jennifer Gilomen and Sally Rubin's Deep Down, a complex documentary that contrasts the devastating result of rampant energy consumption with the remote and picturesque backdrop of Appalachia. SF360 Presents Essential SF concludes the festival in celebration of Bay Area veteran visionaries and the launch of the newly designed SF360.org.

For tickets and full program information, visit sffs.org.

New Exhibtions Opening Reception: Mapping Memory and Doug Burgess

Wednesday, November 10
5:00PM to 7:00PM
Thoreau Center for Sustainability, San Francisco

In Mapping Memory artist Gurpran Rau mixes maps with layers of paint, de-emphasizing boundaries and their political meanings. Rau's paintings suggest that home is just a state of mind and that we all spring from the same source. In the Seed Gallery, photographer Doug Burgess displays his detailed images of Bay Area invasive plants. He combines his images with narratives, challenging our understanding of weeds and our complicity in their proliferation.

Exhibtion Tours: Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here

Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition founder, Beau Beausoleil, will be available to lead tours of the current Thoreau Center exhibition Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here on Friday, October 22 and Friday October 29 between noon and 2:00 pm. A tour will last approximately half an hour. If you are interested in joining a tour, please email Bruce DeMartini at bruce@thoreau.org.

Thoreau Center Brown Bag - Social Media Discussion

In the news:

• Bing and Facebook form a partnership to bring your social network into your search results.
• President Obama answers your questions from Twitter.
• Malcolm Gladwell claims that Twitter and Facebook cannot be used to change the real world, angering Clay Shirky and activists around the world.
• Google’s new exec in charge of location-based and local services loves Foursqaure.
• While Ning launches a new service to create highly customizable social websites and mobile applications that allow you to connect to them anywhere.

There are new developments in the world of social networking daily. Online social media has already changed the environment in which nonprofits, foundations, philanthropists, and social entrepreneurs operate in rapid, novel, and often unexpected ways. What does it all mean and where is it all going? This event is an opportunity to meet with other organizations and individuals working in the Thoreau Center for an informal lunchtime discussion about such issues. Learn about your neighbors' experiences with these new tools, share strategies and lessons learned, and hopefully have some of your questions answered.


Representatives from United Religions Initiative - @global_uri, and Tides - @TidesCommunity (and the library - @WholeEarthLib) have signed on to give brief presentations to get the discussion started, and if you have experiences, projects, etc. you would like to arrange to share, please contact John Bertland at library@thoreau.org. Otherwise just come with your ideas, thoughts, and questions and join in the discussion.

Thoreau Center Exhibition Opening Reception:

Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here

Art and readings about the 2007 destruction of Al-Mutanabbi Street, Baghdad, Iraq

Thursday, October 14
5:00pm to 7:00pm
Thoreau Center for Sustainability, San Francisco

On March 5, 2007, a car bomb exploded on Al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad, Iraq, killing 30 people and wounding over 100 others. As the center of Baghdad’s bookselling, Al-Mutanabbi Street was the heart and soul of the city. In April 2007, San Francisco bookseller and poet, Beau Beausoleil, and Al-Mutanabbi printmaker, Grendl Lofkvist, formed the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition, asking letterpress printers to craft a visual response to this attack.

And they did. Over a hundred printmakers submitted their own broadsides depicting Al-Mutanabbi Street’s thriving haven for artistic freedom and a place of civil discourse.

Join us for an evening of art, wine and storytelling in support of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition. The evening’s program will include an exhibition of artwork from many of the printmakers who created and donated their work to help support the progress of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition. Also, three printmakers will read from their own writings in response to this 2007 incident. The readers include Deema Shehabi - Palestinian- American Poet - Co-Editor of the anthology, "Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here"; Esther Kamkar - Iranian -American Poet - Contributor to the anthology, "Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here" ; Bettina Pauly - A California Printer - A Letterpress Contributor to the "Al-Mutanabbi Street Broadside Project"

Brown Bag events are free informal mid-day learning sessions hosted at Tides. Friends, neighbors and colleagues are welcome. Visitors, please sign in at the front desk.