Thoreau Center Brown Bag: A Conversation with Dr. Chintamani Yogi

Brown Bag: A Conversation with Dr. Chintamani Yogi

Founding Chairperson, Shanti Sewa Ashram, Founding Principal, Hindu Vidyapeeth School in Nepal, Country Coordinator, Global Network of Religions for Children (GNRC)

When: Monday, June 7, 12:30pm to 1:30pm
Where: Pacific Room at Tides, Thoreau Center for Sustainability

Join us for a discussion about living a life promoting peace and attaining peace within. Yogi Ji has dedicated his life to peace in service to humanity. For several years Yogi Ji has served in many organizations working for the promotion of spirituality through selfless service in collaboration with 21 different organizations. He also works with Youth Society for Peace, which acts as a forum for youth committed to peace and service. Our gratitude goes to the folks at the United Religions Initiatives for inviting Yogi Ji to the Thoreau Center.

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.

ArtSeed's 10th Anniversary Exhibtion Reception

Tenth Anniversary Exhibition

When: Friday, June 04, 2010 5:00 PM-7:00 PM
Where: Seed Gallery at Thoreau Center

Health, Healing and Community (HH&C) Part One

ArtSeed’s 2010 annual end-of-the-school-year exhibition celebrates the organization’s tenth anniversary. Selected student works are featured here with three professional artists whose own work has been influenced by their close association with three public schools. The second part of this exhibition opens August 12, 5-7pm and features artists and youth involved in ArtSeed’s Summer Intensive and Apprenticeship Program. Stay tuned for the details of (HH&C) Part Two.

Marissa Kunz, a teaching artist and founder of ArtSeed, co-conceived The Print Exchange Project: 8x10x10 (eight by ten inches by ten artists) who are scattered across the globe and who at one point intersected at the San Francisco Art Institute. Here these artists intersect again by way of collaboratively altered prints handed off to each other through the post. Also represented are samples of Marissa’s students’ work from Sherman Elementary School where she teaches.

Teaching artist Manon Bogerd-Wada shows work made in her pre-k classes at the Burnett Child Development Center in Bayview Hunters Point. In addition, she shows architectural renderings by children from Lincoln Elementary School involved with the HEARTH Community Art Garden Project, this latter, funded by the OPEN CIRCLE Foundation.

Patricia Warren is represented by new work made this past February in her Community Portrait Project. Patricia set up a professional photography studio at the Burnett Child Development Center where she made portraits of fifteen families from the neighborhood. The resulting photographs were framed and given to their subjects free of charge. ArtSeed also received framed copies to display at the exhibition. Sales of the art support ArtSeed’s Schools Programs.

Both Marissa and Manon have received support as teaching artists through the California Arts Council’s Artists in Schools program. Patricia Warren’s Community Portrait Project was also made possible by Tony and Caroline Grant and the Sustainable Arts Foundation.

For further information, contact Josefa Vaughan, Executive Director: josefa@artseed.org or (415) 409-1761

Thoreau Center Brown Bag - Independent Council on Safe Energy

Stopping New, Costly, Dangerous Reactors

When: Tuesday, June 01, 2010 12:00 PM-1:00 PM

Where: Pacific Room at Tides, Thoreau Center

The Independent Council on Safe Energy (ICSA), a Tides Center project, is 3+ years old and concentrates on countering the intense nuclear energy industry and government push for the so-called "nuclear renaissance." Please join us for an engaging discussion on a strategy to prevent new costly, dangerous reactors with some of the best and brightest sustainable energy experts in the country, including:

Peter Bradford, former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner, and the former chair of both the New York and Maine Public Utility Commissions; Dr. Mark Cooper, Economic Analyst and Adjunct Professor, Vermont Law School 25+ years key national consumer economic analysis; Diane Curran, Esq., leading U.S. public interest attorney on state and federal reactor interventions and legal proceedings; and Michele Boyd, Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility's Safe Energy Program.

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

New Books - May

New Books - May 2010

You've watched the video, you've told all of your friends and family members to watch the video, now you can read the book - The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard with Ariane Conrad. Leonard elaborates on her previous work to examine in greater depth the nature of our current patterns of production and consumption that are based on a belief in perpetual economic growth, and the critical challenges this system presents to the future of the global environment. Drawing on extensive research and on her personal experiences visiting the places around the world where "Stuff" is made and the dumps where it ends up, she illustrates the enormous and often hidden costs involved in the stages of today's material economy: extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. She also details more signs of hope and examples of solutions, showing the practical ways people are working to make a safe, fair, and sustainable material economies at the local, national, and international levels.

Also...

Elizabeth Grossman. Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry. (2009)

Journalist Elizabeth Grossman (author of High Tech Trash) reports on the weak regulation of synthetic chemical materials and explains how they spread through our bodies and our environment thousands of miles from their sources with still unknown long-term effects. Her work illustrates the alternative potential for new developments in green chemistry to revolutionize the materials we make in order to bring about a healthier world.

Adam Kahane. Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change. (2010)

Based on his two decades of experience working around the world with teams of civil society, business, and government leaders to address challenges including food security, economic development, peacemaking, and climate change, Adam Kahane relates an approach to facilitating social change based on a balance between seemingly contradictory methods based on power - the desire to achieve one's purpose - and love - the drive to reconnect and unite with others. As Martin Luther King put it, “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.”

Michael Pollan. Food Rules: An Eater's Manual. (2009)

Michael Pollan returns with this concise guide for making eating less complicated. Critical of much of today's nutritional science, he starts with the bottom line "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants" and elaborates a set of rules designed to help you move away from the typical Western diet to one based on eating real food in moderation.

Philip J. Dreyfus. Our Better Nature: Environment and the Making of San Francisco. (2008)

Cities and the people who live in them exist in complex relationships with the natural environment on which they depend. San Francisco State University professor Philip J. Dreyfus recounts the history of San Francisco, how the residents of the city remade the landscape around them, and how that history has reflected changes in humankind's understanding of our place in nature.

Jeff Chester. Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy. (2007)

From the founder and executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, this book details how large media corporations with the help of lobbyists and pro-business policy makers have used their influence to shape regulation and increase their dominance over the Internet and other digital communication channels. Rather than an open and democratic landscape offering a variety of independent news, knowledge, and culture, the online world is in danger of coming under the control of a few media giants interested only in its commercial potential.

Thoreau Center Brown Bag - Plantains and Politics: Coffee, Co-ops and Coups

Plantains + Politics: Coffee, Co-ops and Coups

Presenters: Roxanne Hanson & Diana Chavez

Thursday, May 27, 12:30p 1o 1:30p

Atlantic Room at Tides

Who wants to see a boring slide show of vacation photos? Not us! Instead, join a discussion about the current effects of the economic crisis, immigration reform, and Barak Obama’s administration in Central America. Tides’ own Roxanne Hanson and Diana Chavez will share their recent experiences living and traveling in Nicaragua and Honduras. You won’t want to miss the radical cheer about CAFTA!

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

Thoreau Center Brown Bag: Women's Rights in the Niger Delta

Brown Bag: Women's Rights in the Niger Delta

When: Friday, May 21 12:30p - 1:30 p
Where: Pacific Room at Tides, Thoreau Center

Thoreau Center and The International Forum on Globalization invite you to join Justice in Nigeria Now for a Brown Bag with women's rights advocate, Emem Okon, visiting from the Niger Delta.

Emem Okon is a women's rights activist and advocate from the Niger Delta’s oil impacted region of Nigeria. Ms. Okon is the founder and the Executive Director of Kebetkache Women Development & Resource Centre. She is a gender analyst, a trainer, a researcher, and a campaigner against all forms of violence including that directed at women and the environment. Ms. Okon was a leader of the powerful women’s protests against Chevron Corporation for its environmental and human rights abuses in Nigeria which garnered international media attention when a group of women took over an oil installation and threatened to take off their clothes if the company did not negotiate with them. She has coordinated several women’s networks and coalitions in the Niger Delta region, including Civil Society on HIV & AIDS, Gender and Constitution Reform Network, International Network on Women and Environment, and National Coalition on Affirmative Action, to mention a few.

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

Speaker Event - Afghanistan: A Returnee's Perspective

Afghanistan: A Returnee's Perspective

When: Thursday, May 20 12:30pm - 1:30pm
Where: Pacific Room at Tides, Thoreau Center

Dawoud Nasraty, a recent Afghan-American returnee, recalls his experiences of day-to-day life in Kabul and offers perspective on the country's recent past, its current direction and future. Through film clips and discussion, Dawoud’s stories will open your eyes to the richness and complexity of the people that make up this war-torn country.

After a hiatus in Afghanistan of nearly three years, Dawoud has returned to Tides working as a financial analyst for the Tides Center.