Calendar
Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) is hosting a special fall benefit concert to open the year-end giving season and raise funds for strategic relocation and expansion of our anti-fossil fuels infrastructure, direct action campaign and operations in southwest Idaho. Please join community supporters and WIRT activists at The Attic, up the back stairs of 314 East Second Street in Moscow, Idaho, from 6 to 9 pm on Sunday, November 16, for a social hour with refreshments and discussion of ongoing WIRT climate justice campaigns and an evening of rousing, acoustic, live folk and blues music at this intimate downtown venue.
At 7 pm, local husband-and-wife composers and musicians Joshua Yeidel and Sharon Cousins will open performances with their original, eclectic, multi-generational songs and lyrical messages of harmony and hope. After performing as solo street musicians in San Francisco, Sharon and Josh have been filling the Palouse community with tunes since their migration to the region in 1976, lately hailing from a ridge above Viola. They have formed and collaborated with several, local, folk/rock bands over the years, including Sun-on-the-Mountain, Jasper, We Here Now, and Sagin’ Time, performing primarily at Inland Northwest festivals, concerts, and private parties, and producing and releasing a 2003 album, The Taste of Life Itself, with Sagin’ Time [1]. Through a revitalizing mixture of uniquely upbeat, inclusive, alternative music, these fellow WIRT members have been singing since they could talk and playing their primary, respective instruments, the guitar and flute, for more than 50 years. Together, they offer concert listeners over a century of experience in the enlightening joy of rich, diverse music.
Tom Bennett of Salt Lake City will take the stage next. A native of Villa Rica in the rural, north Georgia countryside, Tom is a true, relentless, traveling, folk/blues singer and activist [2, 3]. At age nine, he began playing the harmonica given to him by an old woman from West Virginia. He has journeyed in nearly every U.S. state on buses, freight trains, and by hitchhiking, and has stayed with East Los Angeles gang members and at isolated, polygamist enclaves. Always seeking adventures, Tom shares his stories while performing on resonator guitar, harmonica, tambourine, suitcase percussion, and vocals, which he often plays together in the style of a one-man-band busker, as demonstrated in his recent video rendition of Sharecropper’s Blues [4]. Along with founding a regular, folk-music showcase and a folk-centric record label, Sweet Salt Records, and releasing a debut album, The Man Who Shook the Trail of the Devil’s Hounds, this talented and inspiring musician likes doing shows that spread awareness of various issues [5]. He has performed at the Utah March against Monsanto and the Clean Air No Excuses rally at the Utah Capitol, and at other human rights and environmental events besides a recent, 20-plus-state, summer tour through the West Coast and Deep South.
For admission by free-will donation, WIRT welcomes everyone to come and hear Josh’s, Sharon’s, and Tom’s rowdy tales and gritty, soulful songs of authentic, Americana folk life and music, and to enjoy the opportunity for a rare WIRT convergence, before the dual college towns of Moscow and Pullman disperse for Thanksgiving-time vacations. Please bring your resistance spirit and friends and your contributions of funds and additional beverages and/or snacks on Sunday evening, November 16, at 6 pm. We hope to give some of the proceeds to these valiant, volunteer, visiting musical guests, who consider it “a great privilege and honor to do this show” for Wild Idaho Rising Tide. Peruse the WIRT facebook and website pages for further information about this event and our campaigns, share this announcement, and print and widely post the attached, color, letter-sized flyer. Thanks!
Moscow, Sandpoint, and Spokane activists of Spokane Rising Tide and Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) enthusiastically invite regional community members eager to design and stage public education events and protests to the third annual Stand Up! Fight Back! Against Fossil Fuels in the Northwest! information sharing, brainstorming, and strategizing sessions [1, 2]. Opponents of coal, fracked natural gas and oil, and tar sands extraction and transportation projects are converging from northern Idaho and eastern Washington for these urgent planning gatherings. Like Missoula comrades of Indian Peoples Action, Blues Skies Campaign, and several other groups, who have been meeting since November 19, participants could talk about campaign strategies, creative tactics, and practical arrangements for upcoming training workshops, panel discussions, and direct actions [3]. The Missoula potluck convergence shared “thoughtful dialogue about stopping TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline and all other forms of extraction,…forming an allegiance among local eco-warriors.” More information at: Wild Idaho Rising Tide.
— a light lunch will be provided – thanks to Pat & Dan R
(we meet 3rd Sunday every month – next meeting is February 15)
Agenda to include:
We have two special guests this Sunday. The PESC meeting, about one hour, will be followed by Climate Forum meeting about 1 or 1:15 pm. We will discuss joining with the Coop for several environmental films at the Kenworthy. Please send additional agenda items to me.
Brett Haverstick, Friends of Clearwater, will review a joint event in March regarding Snake River dam breaching and port dredging. We also plan to collaborate on Chris Caudill’s Salmon Restoration and the effect of the dams later in the year.
Tim Hatten, entomologist, will review the effect of neonicotinoid pesticides on our bee population, a major concern not only for farmers but for all gardeners in the Palouse. How to restrict their use locally. How we can encourage Monarchs with native northwest milkweed.
April 24-26, 2015 PESC Climate Forum with Maria Talero
Looking for people to help with fundraising, outreach, organizing, and/or publicity.
Tentative Schedule for April 24–26
- Friday night in the 1912 Center Great Room: Plenary multi-media presentation with audience participation.
- Saturday (Great Room 8:30–4pm)(Fiske and Art Rooms 1–4pm)
- Morning workshop: Climate Courage Skills and Strategies: How Ordinary Citizens, Students, and Families Can Face the Climate Crisis Together, Instead of Alone.
- Afternoon workshops: “Introduction to climate change activism on the Palouse” and “break-out groups and tabling”.
- Concurrently in Afternoon: Fostering a Courageous Climate Change Ministry (private workshop for faith leaders).
- Saturday Night Dance, Potluck, Film (UUCP Basement)
Names for this event are still tentative: “Palouse Climate Courage Kickoff” or “A Climate Change Plan for a Resilient Palouse.”
Maria L. Talero, Ph.D.
Maria Talero will be the leader for most of this weekend event. Maria Talero is a Denver-based community climate change educator and former philosophy professor who is developing an innovative approach to climate change communication, organizing and activism. Her research-based methodology draws on a paradigm called “embodied cognition” to identify the stages of transformation (for both individuals and communities) that lead to courageous and powerful climate change activism. She is a hands-on, mindful and passionate presenter and facilitator with 15 years of experience as an educator, and she currently organizes a monthly community group in Denver, Colorado called the Climate Courage Resilience Circle. She offers leadership trainings and workshops to non-profits, schools and communities of faith in Colorado. She is Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Denver. She is a 2014 NAAEE Community Climate Change Fellow as well as a board member and team leader with 350 Colorado and 350 Denver.
YouTube videos of Maria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On8pZi4KuxY,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-zPh1pwZGA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM9xTfv089k.
Can geothermal energy aid in mitigating climate change? University of Idaho PhD candidate Cary Lindsey will give a talk on the “Future of Geothermal Energy” Tuesday, January 20, in the 1912 Center Fiske Room at 7:30 p.m. She will discuss her research from Yellowstone Park and other “hot spots” as well as local geothermal projects. This presentation is sponsored by PESC and the UUCP Environmental Task Force. For further information, contact Pat Rathmann.
Crystal Layman, First Nations from Alberta, will speak about tar sands; other topics include Wolves, and Grizzly Bear Recovery. Contact/Like us on Facebook “Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment”. Thanks and happy new year to all!!! Food and beverage for all. Saturday, January 31, 2015 from 8:30 to 4:30 pm at Washington State University, College of Education Bldg, Cleveland Hall. PESC is a co-sponsor.
The Palouse Environmental Sustainability Coalition general meeting and committee meeting, for our special event “Building a Resilient Palouse in the Age of Climate Change: A Forum for Thoughtful and Courageous Action”, are this Sunday, 2/15. The general meeting is at 12pm noon at the UUCP Yellow House, and the committee meeting, which anyone is welcome to join, will follow at 1:30pm.
Can geothermal energy aid in mitigating climate change? University of Idaho PhD student Cary Lindsey will give a talk on the “Geothermal Energy: An overview of this renewable energy resource and its place in Idaho’s energy future ” on Thursday, Feb 26, in the UI Jansen Engineering Room 104 at 7:00pm. She will give an overview of geothermal energy including her research from Yellowstone Park and other “hot spots” and discuss geothermal energy opportunities in Idaho. This presentation is sponsored by the UUCP Environmental Task Force and the Palouse Environmental Sustainability Coalition. The public is invited.
Speak for Wolves workshop. Join PESC members in scenic West Yellowstone to discuss sustaining our wolf populations. (Click www.speakforwolves.org for more information.)