16 June 2011

New Exhibitions in Thoreau Center Galleries, June 16 through August 12

Exhibition dates: June 16 through August 12, 2011
Opening reception: Thursday, June 16, 5:00PM to 7:00PM

The two new exhibits are:

Constructs


In the Seed Gallery of Photograph Art, photographer Tony Maridakis displays his nocturnal images drawn from iconic structures such as the Presidio Battery West and DeYoung Museum.

synthesia natura


Bay Area artists Cathy Richardson and Anneliesse Vobis will construct a science lab in the Thoreau Gallery. Their exhibition explores fascinating forms of calcification as a result of environmental degradation, expressed through books, assemblage, digital media, and video.

09 June 2011

Library Closed June 10 to June 17

The library will be closed June 10 through June 17, so that the librarian can go to the annual Special Librarian Association conference in Philadelphia to tell other librarians how important sustainability is and to learn how to leverage taxonomies for greater effectiveness. We apologize for any inconvenience. If you have items due during that week, just return them when the library reopens. If you have items due before that week, please think about returning them when the library reopens as well. If you do need to get into the library, contact Bruce DeMartini. Meanwhile, here are a few items we have added to the collection recently, some of which you might recognize because their authors spoke here at the center recently. If interested, you have until 3:00 pm this afternoon to check them out. Have a sustainable week!


Jay Walljasper and On the Commons. All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons. (2010)

Veteran journalist Jay Walljasper is a fellow at and online editor for On the Commons, a commons movement strategy center connecting organizations, community leaders, and individuals with new ideas, practical solutions, and each other to create change. Their collection is an introduction to the broad range of ideas and activities of individuals and groups highlighting the importance of understanding and strengthening protection of the commons - those lands, waters, and other resources that belong to everyone. With success stories from communities around the world, it demonstrates how new thinking about our shared values relates to the economic, political, and cultural problems facing the world today.

Mark Brilliant. The Color of America Has Changed: How Racial Diversity Shaped Civil Rights Reform in California, 1941-1978. (2010)

UC Berkeley Professor Mark Brilliant examines California's history to illustrate how the civil rights era was a truly multiracial phenomenon that was shaped and complicated by the presence of not only blacks and whites, but also Mexican Americans, Japanese Americans, and Chinese Americans, among others. Focusing on a wide range of legal and legislative initiatives pursued by a diverse group of reformers, Brilliant analyzes the cases that dismantled the state's multiracial system of legalized segregation in the 1940s and subsequent battles over fair employment practices, old-age pensions for long-term resident non-citizens, fair housing, agricultural labor, school desegregation, and bilingual education. While civil rights historians have long focused on the Southern experience and recently have turned their attention to the North, this work advances a new understanding of civil rights history that more fully reflects the racial diversity of America.

Rebecca Solnit. Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas. (2010)

Learn to see the city in a new way in this atlas "of principal landmarks and treasures of the region, including butterfly species, queer sites, murders, coffee, water, power, contingent identities, social types, libraries, early-morning bars, the lost labor landscape of 1960, and the monumental Monterey cypresses of San Francisco; of indigenous place names, women environmentalists, toxins, food sites, right-wing organizations, World War II shipyards, Zen Buddhist centers, salmon migration, and musical histories of the Bay area; with details of cultural geographies of the Mission District, the Fillmore's culture wars and metamorphoses, the racial discourses of United Nations Plaza, the South of Market world that redevelopment devoured, and other significant phenomena, vanished and extant."

Lawrence Ferlinghetti. A Coney Island of the Mind. (1958)

From the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers and Publishers, this collection originally published in 1958 continues to be one of the most popular books of poetry in the United States, with more than a million copies in print. Unconventionality, satiric bite, and lyric beauty illuminate themes that resonate today.

17 May 2011

Thoreau Center Lunchtime Speaker: Mark Brilliant, UC Berkeley


The Color-Line Problem

Presenter: Mark Brilliant, Professor of History, U.C. Berkeley


Thursday, May 19, 12:30P to 1:30P


Pacific Room at Tides, Thoreau Center for Sustainability, Presidio Building 1014



Join us for an engaging discussion about the history of race and civil rights reform in California. This talk presents an overview of Mark Brilliant's book, The Color of America Has Changed: How Racial Diversity Shaped Civil Rights Reform in California, 1941-1978.


The book taps California’s civil rights history to reveal how the Civil Rights Era was truly a nationwide and multiracial phenomenon. Brilliant examines how California’s multiple “race problems” shaped and complicated the multifaceted efforts of civil rights reformers. While civil rights historians have long set their sights on the South and, more recently, turned their attention to the North, advancing a “long civil rights movement” interpretation, The Color of America Has Changed calls for a new understanding of civil rights history that more fully reflects the racial diversity and accompanying civil rights complexity of America - a civil rights history that is as "wide" as it is "long." Mark Brilliant is Assistant Professor of History at UC Berkeley
.

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.

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29 April 2011

Thoreau Center Brown Bag: Organizing for Change with On the Commons


Guests: Julie Ristau and Ana Micka, Co-directors of On the Commons; Jay Walljasper, veteran journalist and author with On the Commons of the new book All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons.

Wednesday, May 4, 12:30P to 1:30P


Pacific Room at Tides, Thoreau Center for Sustainability

Lunch provided


Please join the leadership of On the Commons for lunch and lively conversation
that explores the commons as a new paradigm and approach to organizing for change.

RSVP by May 1 at office@onthecomons.org

Sponsored by Thoreau Center for Sustainability


Across the U.S. and around the world, people are rediscovering and reclaiming our commons - those things that belong to all of us - as a means to shape a just and hopeful future for our communities and planet. The Luncheon for Commoners will fill you with stories of inspiration and a hearty discussion of the emerging commons movement. Please join us!

From the publisher:

All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons is a wake-up call that will inspire you to see the world in a new way. As soon as you realize that some things belong to everyone—water, for instance, or the Internet or human knowledge—you become a commoner, part of a movement that’s reshaping how we will solve the problems facing us in the twenty-first century. Edited by award-winning journalist Jay Walljasper, All That We Share is an indispensable introduction to fresh ideas that touch all of us.

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.

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21 April 2011

New Books - April 2011



Happy Earth Day from the Whole Earth Library! Have a salutary day reflecting on your place in the natural world and hopefully eating a lovely picnic. Here are some books recently added to the collection that might help you with that, touching as they do on a variety of subjects from healthy food to environmental protection to nonprofit management and more. And see you at the Thoreau Center Earth Day Craft Fair, Friday, April 22, 11:30am to 2:00pm.

Temra Costa. Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat. (2010)

Sustainable food and farming advocate Temra Costa, former director of California's Buy Fresh/Buy Local campaign, profiles twenty-six women working to create a more regional, resilient, and transparent food system in America that respects the environment, supports our health, treats workers fairly, and strengthens local economies and communities. They are pioneering farmers, activists, chefs, and advocates embracing a wide range of approaches to grow food, prepare food, change policies, build new relationships between fields and eaters, preserve traditional cultures, and raise awareness about the far-reaching effects of the food choices we make. Thoreau Center connections: includes profiles of the Cultural Conservancy's Melissa K.Nelson and Claire Hope Cummings, and of Social Venture Network emeritus board member Judy Wicks.

Dyan deNapoli. The Great Penguin Rescue: 40,000 Penguins, a Devastating Oil Spill, and the Inspiring Story of the World's Largest Animal Rescue. (2010)

On June 23, 2000, the iron-ore carrier MV Treasure sank off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, releasing 1,300 tons of oil and contaminating a large portion of the habitat of the already threatened African penguin. Dyan deNapoli of the New England Aquarium joined 12,500 other volunteers from around the world in a massive three month effort to rescue these penguins, clean them, feed them, and rehabilitate them for release back into the wild. While ultimately one of the most successful penguin rescues ever, with over ninety percent of the oiled birds surviving, penguin populations worldwide are plummeting under pressure from increased ship transportation, pollution, irresponsible fishing practices, and climate change. Today, deNapoli actively campaigns to conserve penguins and protect the health of the oceans.

Janet Poppendieck. Free for All: Fixing School Food in America. (2010)

This first comprehensive assessment of school food in the United States explores its realities and the obstacles to its improvement. What is preventing schools from providing all children with free, fresh, appealing, and healthy meals? Poppendieck argues it is the result of specific social choices, including the disinvestment in public education, an industrialized food system, and school food programs operated on a business model rather than a public health approach. She presents the possibility of sweeping change based on innovative projects in action around the country today that support a vision of sustainable agriculture and that see school food expenditures as investments in the future health and well-being of our children.

Miriam Pawel. The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez's Farm Worker Movement. (2009)

Former Newsday and Los Angeles Times reporter and editor, Miriam Pawel, tells the story of the United Farm Workers of America from the perspective of eight key participants - lawyers, sudents, clergy, and farm workers – who bring new insights into the spectacular growth and eventual collapse of the union, to the point that only a small percentage of California's farm workers are unionized today. Based on interviews and extensive research, including six hundred hours of tapes of meetings, rallies, and interviews recorded between 1969 and 1980, Pawel's nuanced analysis challenges popular views of Chavez's legacy, emphasizing the tension between his vision of leading a comprehensive social movement and the practical work of managing a union. The effects of Chavez's efforts to retain control and stifle dissent highlight the dilemmas faced by social justice movements as they seek to balance the vision of charismatic leadership with the slow effort of consolidating real gains for poor people.


Judith B. Margolin, ed. After the Grant: The Nonprofit's Guide to Good Stewardship. (2010)

“Congratulations, you got a grant!” From the Foundation Center, this collection written by expert fundraisers and foundation staff is a guide to what a nonprofit organization should do next to turn that grant proposal into measurable accomplishments, manage grant funds successfully, and build an enduring relationship with the funder through effective communication. Covering each step in the grant cycle, it also includes analytical case studies, and a troubleshooting guide for those inevitable times when things do not go according to plan.

Galina Tachieva. Sprawl Repair Manual. (2010)

Sprawl – the car-dependent pattern of development that has been the defining feature of most of the suburban growth in the United States since the end of World War II. Imposing heavy environmental, societal, and economic burdens, sprawl can be transformed into vibrant, livable communities through thoughtful design interventions, responsive regulatory frameworks, and new permitting strategies and financial incentives, as this book demonstrates. Step-by-step guides and case studies demonstrate how to repair the full range of suburban conditions from the regional scale down through to blocks, roads, and buildings.

And a special bonus pick by China Brotsky, Senior Vice President, Tides and Managing Director, Tides Shared Spaces:

K.M. Kostyal. Great Migrations: Official Companion to the National Geographic Channel Global Television Event. (2010)

"In a world of changing global temperatures and conditions on land and in the sea, the annual journeys of wild species become stories of astonishing strength and the sheer will to survive. State-of-the-art images — including heart-pounding scenes captured by world-class photographers and iconic stills from the film — offer exciting new perspectives on migratory animals and their remarkable behaviors, some of which have never before been seen or recorded." - from the publisher.

13 April 2011

Kaua'i Island's Strategy for Sustainability Master Planning


Kaua'i Island's Strategy for Sustainability Master Planning
Presenter: Professor Ed Quevedo, Presidio Graduate School & Paladin Law Group LLC
Thursday April 28, 12:00PM to 1:00PM
Pacific Room at Tides, Thoreau Center for Sustainability | Free Pizza Lunch

Join us to hear about Paladin Law Group’s pro bono work with the Hawaiian garden island of Kaua’i. Kaua’i is rapidly becoming a center of excellence in sustainable community design. Ed Quevedo will be discussing Paladin Law Group's work advising Malama Kaua’i in the design of master planned community strategies for the island. Malama Kauai is an organization that strives to create a Kauai where the `aina (environment) is healthy, people enjoy a high quality of life, the sense of community is strong, and culture is respected and perpetuated.

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.
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30 March 2011

New Exhibitions for the Thoreau Center Galleries


Join us in celebrating our new exhibitions in the Thoreau Gallery and Seed Gallery.

Opening reception: Thursday, April 7, 5:00PM to 7:00PM


In the Thoreau Gallery: six Bay Area artists explore wood as a medium for making art. Their investigations include highlighting wood in its natural condition, making whimsical contraptions, and exploring the inherent qualities of the material.
Exhibiting will be Larnie Fox, Joshua Greenberg, Mark Brest van Kempen, Al Honig, Mike Kendall, Bernie Lubell

In the Seed Gallery: photographer Sid Hollister will exhibit his images of the Montezuma Hills, near Rio Vista, almost 400 square miles of Sacramento Delta farmland under development pressure from power windmills and housing subdivisions.


Thoreau Center for Sustainability

The Presidio of San Francisco Building 1016

1014 Torney Avenue (at Lincoln Boulevard)

Gallery Hours: Monday to Friday, 9AM to 5PM