September: A month of water and health care reform.

September 2009: The Piper’s Creek Watershed

To begin this season’s focus on water, we turned to Seattle’s Piper’s Creek Watershed, the border of which lies at the foot of the senior center’s doorstep. Bill Malatinsky, a watershed interpretive specialist for the city, joined the SAGE group on September 8th to talk about the Piper’s Creek watershed and the problems that threaten its vitality. Bill discussed the combined sewage cycle that the GSC is a part of. Runoff will either go directly into the Piper’s Creek streams or into sewage lines and through water treatment plants. Apparently water treatment plants were not built to handle many of the chemicals, that come from cars for example, and the pollutants end up still being ejected directly into the Puget Sound. Bill also discussed how over the past half century the amount of rain that made it to the ground and became surface water has increased from 3% of total rainfall to 25% of total rainfall. This is due to a decrease in trees from logging and an increase in impervious surfaces. All this creates more runoff that drags pollutants and chemicals straight into our streams, rivers, and eventually Puget Sound. Bill told us that another dire consequence of increased runoff is sewage overflows, where, during storms, the sewage drains reach maximum capacity and overflows with sewage water that enters streams and creeks without any sort of treatment. Bill finished his presentation with a clip from the PBS special called “Poisoned Waters,” a film that examines the devastating effects pollution has had on fish, other wildlife, and the potential threat it poses to the health of humans. We then talked about changes that are being made to the city of Seattle, such as SEA streets, that takes in storm water in order to relieve pressure on the sewage drains. We finished with the reminder that we would discuss long-term projects on our “Action Day” with Bill at the end of the month that the GSC could engage in to reduce the amount of runoff and pollution levels within our neighborhood.

On Tuesday, September 22, we were supposed to take a trip to Carkeek Park’s environmental learning center to learn about the center and do some work in the gardens. Unfortunately, we did not have enough people express interest and had to cancel the trip. However, if you are interested in doing something like this, please contact me and we can try to get a group together at a time that works for everyone.

This last Tuesday, September 29, Bill Malatinsky came back to the Greenwood Senior Center for our “onsite action project.” Although only two SAGE participants attended, we had a great conversation with Bill on potential long-term projects that the GSC could do that helps benefit the Seattle watersheds in some way. Here is a list of ideas we came up with:
1) STORMWATER DRAIN FILTER
2) NEIGHBORHOOD TREE PLANTING
3) RAIN GARDEN
4) ACCESSIBLE GARDEN

Please join us at our next committee meeting, October 12th at 1:30pm, to further discuss these long-term project ideas and upcoming SAGE events. I look forward to seeing you there!

July: Community Gardening

In an excellent article entitled "Why Bother?", Michael Pollan argues that "the single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world." In July the SAGE Project set out to learn more about producing our own food and the benefits of community gardening.

EDUCATION

Community Gardening - from Victory Gardens to P-Patches: During many periods in history, urban agriculture has helped solve food security issues while producing local, nutritious food for all. Sandy Pernitz from Seattle's P-Patch program joined the SAGE Project to give us a history of community gardening movements and an overview of the P-Patch program, which was born out of environmental activism in the 1970s and today provides 68 community gardens for residents throughout Seattle. SAGE participants learned about the many benefits of community gardening, including connection to food, community building, cultural traditions, public expression, improving neighborhoods and cross-generational connections. The P-Patch program also promotes community food security by encouraging gardeners to donate fresh produce to local food banks and feeding programs; in 2008 P-Patch gardeners donated 12.3 tons of organic produce!

Wanda Moore, a GSC member, shared her reflections on Victory Gardens in Seattle during the World War II era. She remembers residents creating huge gardens on abandoned farm land and ripping up parking strips to grow produce, and she spoke about how the experience would bring neighbors together. Dan Pavlovic, a community member who is on the steering committee for Vision Greenwood Park, discussed the opportunity to develop a P-Patch garden in an empty lot located in the nearby Greenwood Park with enough community support. Karen Cirulli, an AmeriCorps volunteer focusing on community development, provided information about the community garden she coordinates on Aurora.

ACTION

Volunteering at the Aurora Community Garden: In April, Awake Church began a community garden with the hope of beautifying Aurora, providing food for community meals and, most importantly, bringing people together. Following the SAGE presentation on community gardening, we headed over to the garden on an extremely hot afternoon to help out with a few projects. The heat was so oppressive that we had to limit the work we did, but it was a valuable experience nonetheless.

Karen gave us a tour, talking about the many neighbors she's gotten to know through Wednesday night barbeques held at the garden and the participation of the community in garden maintenance. We spent our time creating "tee-pees" for the beans, thinning carrots, weeding around the lettuce and kale, and participating in the very first harvest! On our way back to GSC we stopped at the Sun Hill Motel to share freshly picked peas, baby carrots and green pepper with the residents there.

Click here for more photos:

Aurora Community Garden

Skills for the New Millennium

The Skills for the New Millennium Tour has been traveling the country since 2008, offering education and resources to any and all interested in cultivating revolutionary ways of living. In June the SAGE Project welcomed Stan, Delyla and Megan Wilson who arrived at the Greenwood Senior Center in the Permibus - a 40-foot mobile permaculture demonstration bus complete with solar power, greywater systems, a composting toilet, three dogs and a clutch of chickens! SAGE Participants enjoyed workshops on Permaculture Ethics & Basics, Composting and Canning and afterward were given a tour of the Permibus. (Click here for a complete list of workshops and trainings offered by the Skills Tour.) A group of excited kids from the Boys and Girls Club also joined us for the tour - they were thrilled to hold a live chicken, intrigued by the worm composting bin and expressed a mixture of fascination and disgust at the composting toilet on the bus.

The principles of permaculture, which are based on indigenous cultures in Australia and Papua New Guinea, are driven by ethics: care for the earth, care for the people, share the surplus and live as though we were permanent residents. The Permaculture 101 workshop encouraged us to challenge the notion that arose in the 1700s that resources are scarce and therefore have to be hoarded. The reality is that resources are abundant and therefore should be shared. Stan Wilson referred to this idea as "sustainable hedonism" - we can and should live well caring for the earth.

Click here for more photos:

Skills for the New Millennium Tour

June: Good Food!

EDUCATION

Film & Forum: The SAGE Project kicked off its summer program on Sustainable Food with a screening of the movie Good Food, a film that offers an intimate look at farmers, ranchers and businesses that are creating a more sustainable food system in the Pacific Northwest. Sue McGann, community activist and farm coordinator for the Lettuce Link Giving Garden at Marra Farm, led us in a great discussion following the film. We talked about how supporting small family farms who produce food sustainably is essential in the face of climate change, the end of cheap energy and rising health care costs. Shopping locally and organically benefits the environment, our local economy and our own personal well being.

Click here for a great resource on the issues: Why buy sustainable?

ACTION

Sustainable Community Dinner: In partnership with Awake Church, the SAGE Project hosted a second community dinner for residents of Phinney/Greenwood and our neighbors living in motels along Aurora. This time around there was a special focus on building community through the sharing of a meal founded on the principles of a sustainable food system. We were grateful for the support of PCC, Greenwood Market, the Essential Baking Company and New Roots Organics in these efforts.

A wonderful group of about 60 volunteers and guests joined us for the meal, bringing together people from the Greenwood Senior Center, motels along the Aurora corridor, the Greenwood/Phinney community, HomeStep (a transitional housing program) and Awake Church. It was beautiful to witness connections form among neighbors who might not otherwise interact. Following a lovely meal made with fresh and local organic food (including barbeque chicken, lentil loaf, green salad and summer crisp), guests joined in on some square dancing fun led by callers and musicians from the Seattle Subversive Square Dance Society!

Follow up on immigration issues

On Saturday evening, June 6, members of SAGE, Sustainable Greenwood and the greater community came together to watch the critically-acclaimed film The Visitor, which offers a unique glimpse into the U.S. immigration system and the people it affects through the story of a disillusioned economics professor whose life is transformed by a chance encounter.

The discussion that followed brought up many complex and difficult issues dealing with immigration detention, immigration policy and the need for immigration reform. Topics that came up included: ICE raids, human rights abuses, denial of due process, separation of families, border enforcement, profits earned by corporations who own detention centers, and our own heritage as immigrants in the U.S.

The following link provides a lot of great information about the U.S. detention and deportation system: http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/aboutdetention

Click here to see OneAmerica's report on human rights violations at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, and here to see its report on how immigrants contribute to our state's economy.

The Reform Immigration for America campaign was launched in several cities nationwide Monday, June 2 and sponsored locally by OneAmerica. For information about the campaign and how to get involved, click on the following link: http://www.reformimmigrationforamerica.org/index.php

April: Immigration Issues

According to a U.S. Census Bureau report in 2003, approximately one million new immigrants enter the country each year. In April, the SAGE Project engaged in a three-week exploration of issues related to immigration, including the role that globalization plays, challenges new immigrants face, and factors that affect our communities economically and socially.

EDUCATION

Documentary and Discussion: Roger Yockey, a trained facilitator with the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations, joined the SAGE Project to discuss the film Uprooted. This documentary presents three stories of immigrants who left their homes after global economic powers devastated their countries, only to face new challenges migrating and living in the United States. SAGE participants discussed the issues of injustice raised in the film and reflected on whether or not our current system is in line with our values.

Understanding Immigration Basics: Fatima Morales and Jeanette Wenzl of Washington CAN! led an interactive workshop using an immigration board game to teach participants about the current immigration system and help them understand the many difficulties and barriers that prevent immigrants from obtaining a visa.

Panel Discussion: Representatives from CASA Latina, OneAmerica and Refugee Women’s Alliance joined the SAGE Project to answer questions and discuss their perspectives on the most pressing issues facing immigrants in our community, how these issues are being addressed, and how they affect our community as a whole.

ACTION

On May 1, a group of SAGE participants headed downtown demonstrate in the May 1st March and Rally, calling on President Obama to renew justice and restore all rights for everyone, with a focus on a moratorium on raids & detentions.

March: Mentoring

EDUCATION

On Thursday, March 5, GSC's social worker Carin Mack offered a wonderful class on the nature and benefits of being a mentor--a person who gently guides and nurtures the growth of others. We discussed the reciprocal nature of the relationship between a mentor and mentee, the importance of forging intergenerational connections, and the way that mentoring has affected us personally in our lives.

Here are a few insightful suggestions for mentors, gathered from the book From Age-ing to Sage-ing by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Ronald S. Miller:

-Listen with an open mind and heart to your mentee's genuine concerns before sharing wisdom.
-Don't impose, but invoke knowledge.
-Provide openness for the journey instead of a roadmap.
-Don't try to impress; instead, be your searching, tentative, human self.
-Cherish your mentee's uniqueness.

ACTION

The following week we were joined by four lovely panelists from local organizations who discussed ways to connect with mentoring and tutoring opportunities in the community.


Shana Faulkner provided information about the Page Ahead Children's Literacy Program, which is the largest literacy program in the state of Washington and distributes approximately 160,000 books to more than 55,000 children from low-income families each year. Their Story Time program is a wonderful opportunity to visit local schools and spend an hour or two sparking enthusiasm for books amongst preschoolers and kidnergartners who are most at-risk for academic failure.

Devyn Perez shared with us the secret behind the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co.: if you walk beyond the personal defense armaments and "accoutrements for the youngest adventurers" and go through the Atomic Teleporter, you will find yourself in a fun and innovative writing and tutoring center for youth called 826 Seattle. Through writing workshops, field trips, drop-in tutoring and publishing projects, 826 fosters great leaps in learning among students between 6 and 18 years old.

Sarah Hepner came from nearby Greenwood Elementary School to discuss the great need for tutors at the school. Many children at the school are under grade level for reading, and at least 5 to 6 children from each classroom are in need of extra help with their schoolwork. Through the Sound Partners tutoring program, students are matched with volunteers who guide them through a 20-minute lesson (curriculum is provided) and then spend at least 10 minutes of "fun time" with them.

Crystal Barnard, from the North Seattle Boys and Girls Club, gave a wonderful overview of the many ways to connect with various programs that serve children from kindergarten through 12th grade coming from every public and private school in the north end. Volunteers are welcome on an ongoing basis to tutor kids in reading and math, participate in arts and crafts, provide companionship during free time, or lead a class on a hobby or topic of personal interest.