past events

*New Meeting Location*

On this longest night of the year, we embrace both the dark and celebrate the return of the light. This evening's event will guide us in the deeper meaning of the season by honoring that which is both dark and light within ourselves and in the world today. We will offer a space where we can reflect, cry, laugh, sing and join in ecstatic dance. Then we will have a gift circle where we will share our offerings and ask for what we need. 

Bring a yummy treat, drinks, or finger food for the refreshments afterwards

If you would like to participate in the gift exchange, bring a precious item from your home that you love but can now let go of. Please bring it wrapped!

7:00 PM -- 9:30 PM

Location:
for location please email or call
julfire@yahoo.com
707-321-0644

Transition Sebastopol and St Stephens Church cordially invite you to attend our first Annual Harvest Community Potluck on 10/10/10 to pledge our commitments to reducing our carbon footprint and to celebrate the harvest of our gardens and farms.

10/10/10 is an international day of action to reduce global warming organized by 350.org. We, along with people and communities all over the world will be participating in projects and activities that make a difference to this cause. We invite you to join in with friends that day to work on a project that makes a difference, and then come to our Local Food Potluck to enjoy the harvest of our abundant gardens.

Bring yourselves, your families and friends, a potluck item, and (if you have it) something to share from your summer garden. We will trade our homegrown goods, be entertained by music from live band The Role Models, share stories, press all the apples you bring, and laugh! So definitely bring all the apples you can, and we will press them into a Transition apple blend for you, and everyone to enjoy.

Remember to bring your own dishes. We look forward to seeing you there.

When:
Sunday, October 10, 2010
2-5 pm
2:30-4:30 pm: Live music played by the band "The Role Models": classic rock in the party music vein; Bon Jovi, Stones, Fu Fighters, Clash, etc.

Location:
St Stephens Church
500 Robinson Road
Sebastopol, CA 95472
(see map)

For additional information: Call Angel @ 477-4564

Join us for our last Movie Night of the year at the French Garden Restaurant for "What Would Jesus Buy?" This is a film by Reverend Billy & the Church of Life After Shopping, a satire on holiday consumerism, just as the season begins to gear up for it. Father Phil Roundtree of St Stephens Episcopal Church will be the guest speaker after the film for group discussion.

Wednesday, October 27
7:00 - 9:00pm
Please arrive on time!
Come early and enjoy dinner! 

Location:
The French Garden Restaurant
8050 Bodega Avenue, Sebastopol
Google map: http://tinyurl.com/frenchgardenmap

The movie:
Produced by Morgan Spurlock and directed by Rob VanAlkemade, this docu-comedy follows our trials and triumphs across the country as we preach and sing to help holiday-abused Americans find a new Christmas without products.

The film takes the viewer into the homes of families as they max our their credit cards to live up to the Consumer Ideal of Christmas, while also telling personal stories from those who remember the holidays as a simpler, less commercial, and more joyful time. Interviews with labor rights experts, historians, and spiritual leaders reveal how the consumerization of the holiday season over time taught Americans they can only show love for their children by purchasing toys made by other children in overseas sweatshops.

This film has played throughout the US, bringing Fair Trade activists and Evangelical Christians together in darkened movie theaters, emerging with new tools to BUY LESS and GIVE MORE!

 Visit the movie website here.

Please note location has changed to Laguna Farm! Details below! See you there!

Learn practical skills for resilient and sustainable living.
Workshops & Ongoing Demonstrations

Donation: $10-40 Sliding Scale (no one turned away for lack of funds).

Simple lunch of soup and salad will be available for $5, please bring bowl and utensils.
Kids program for the whole family & children are free.

FULL SCHEDULE HERE:

Please join us at the Sebastopol Grange on Highway 12 for this special event with Richard Heinberg.

With oil production peaking, climate changing, the economy faltering, and fresh water, soil, fish, and minerals depleting at alarming rates, we must aim to increase society’s resilience—its ability to absorb shocks while continuing to function.
   
That means re-localizing much economic activity. We must aim also to shore up basic support services, education, and cultural benefits, while de-emphasizing economic activity that entails non-essential consumption of resources. 

If ever there was a time to get to work and build a resilient community…it is clearly now.

Join us for an evening with Richard Heinberg:

Tuesday, November 16th 
7 – 9 pm  (come early – limited seating)

Suggested donation $10-$20

Location:
Sebastopol Grange Hall 
6000 Sebastopol Ave/Hwy 12

Printable flyer available here (help us spread the word!)

About Richard Heinberg:

Richard is a Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost Peak Oil educators. He has authored scores of essays and articles that have appeared in numerous journals and on-line publications. He has appeared in many film and television documentaries, including Leonardo DiCaprio’s 11th Hour, and is a recipient of the M. King Hubbert Award for Excellence in Energy Education. Since 2002, he has given over three hundred lectures on oil depletion to a wide variety of audiences.  
 
Richard Heinberg is the author of nine books including: Blackout: Coal, Climate, and the Last Energy Crisis (2009), Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (2007), The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism & Economic Collapse (2006), Powerdown: Options & Actions for a Post-Carbon World (2004) and The Party's Over: Oil, War & the Fate of Industrial Societies (2003). You can order Richard's books here.
 
This event will benefit Transition US, Transition Sebastopol and the Sebastopol Grange. 
Please bring a canned or packaged food item for the Redwood Food Bank. 
For more info: (707) 318-5046

Thank you to WaccoBB for helping us spread the word.

Transition Sebastopol and the French Garden Restaurant present Transition Movie Series
This month featuring:

Wednesday, August 25
7:00 - 9:00pm

(please arrive on time) 

Optional discussion following the screening

How much do we know about the food we buy
at our local supermarkets and serve to our families?

http://www.foodincmovie.com/trailer-and-photos.php#
Film length: 93 minutes

Food Inc. Synopsis

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that's been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of e coli--the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually.

We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield Farms' Gary Hirschberg and Polyface Farms' Joe Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising -- and often shocking truths -- about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

The Transition Sebastopol Energy Group will host its second workshop on how to build a solar batch water heater.

The simple design is an insulated box with reflective interior and double pane (re-used) sliding glass door to heat the water in a steel tank salvaged from a used water heater core. The hot water can be used directly or can be used to preheat water feeding into a conventional water heater, allowing it to work more efficiently. This concept can be also used to make a solar oven. Come join us at Laguna Farm for this fun, hands-on workshop!

• Learn an easy way to take simple materials and transform them into a practical appliance.
• Build a solar water heater in a single afternoon with others.
• Save money by heating or preheating your water with energy from the sun!

Space is limited, please RSVP early to:
scott@lagunafarm.com or call 707-823-0823

When: Saturday, July 31st, 2pm to 5pm
Where: Laguna Farm, 1764 Cooper Road, Sebastopol
Cost: Suggested Donation: $10
Bring: Work gloves, working clothes

Transition Sebastopol is having a family potluck picnic!

Thursday, July 15
from 5:30 pm to 8 pm.

The picnic is happening on the beautiful grounds of St. Stephens Episcopal Church at 500 Robinson Road (off Bodega Ave. between Jewell Ave. and Pleasant Hill Road) in Sebastopol.

Everyone and anyone is invited. Kids are welcome and encouraged to come. Please bring some food to share, and bring your own plates and utensils. Also bring blankets and lawn chairs. Extra kudos if you bring some food grown from your own garden.

Transition is largely about building community bonds and strengthening our connections with each other. And what better way to do that than by sharing food together on a mid-summer evening!

It doesn't matter if you've attended a Transition Sebastopol event or not. Come just to meet others in the community. Or, if you are interested in Transition, this might be a good time to meet some of the folks involved in Transition and to get some information. However, this picnic is about sharing food and just being together more than being an informational meeting.

Also, there will be an introduction of the new Transition Sebastopol clubhouse room which has been generously donated for Transition Sebastopol's use by the wonderful folks at St. Stephens Church.

The Transition Sebastopol Energy Group presents Marcin Jakubowski on "Economy in a Box: Reaching Post-Scarcity Escape Velocity."

Join us for an eye-opening presentation that may explode your index of possibilities – or at the very least – that will leave you with a fresh view on the possibilities before us. This will be a 45 minute presentation followed by a question and answer session.

Suggested donation: $5 (nobody turned away for lack of funds)
Very limited seating, so please arrive early.

Marcin is also speaking on Tuesday night, November 16 in Cotati hosted by Transition Cotati. Details here.

The presentation summarizes the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) – an advanced industrial economy-in-a-box which may be replicated inexpensively anywhere in the world. The GVCS provides the key building blocks for creating modern, resilient, post-carbon communities in a bootstrapping fashion. We will push the limits of thinking and practice of how the GVCS can break the feasibility and cost barriers of building communities from the ground up. This presentation will cover a bold program of requirements which would allow replication cost to reach a minimum. We believe that our discussion is worthwhile because these are not pipe dreams – but realities that we’re substantiating with daily results from Factor e Farm, our living laboratory.

Location: Guayaki Cafe & Mate Bar
6782 Sebastopol Avenue
(opposite Gravenstein Station/Coffee Catz)
Sebastopol

About Marcin Jakubowski:

Marcin Jakubowski received his Ph.D. in fusion physics from the U. Wisconsin, Madison, and has taken a mid-course correction by founding Open Source Ecology (OSE). He will be discussing OSE's work in the presenation - The Global Village Constrcuction Set - An Economy in a Box.

The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is an advanced industrial economy in a box that can be deployed inexpensively anywhere in the world. This social experiment aims to demonstrate, first, that a community of 5 skilled people with the proper tools may attain a comfortable lifestyle (100% food, fuel, energy, housing, and technology needs) with 2 hours of work per day with local resources. Second, OSE aims to demonstrate that a ~200 person resilient community can be created with a capacity to produce all of its own technology, up to the 1990s level of microchip fabrication – also with similar 2 hour per day work schedules.

The cost of creating such a community, and the cost of living, is reduced to one tenth the normal thanks to lifetime design and the savings from using open source software and hardware designs. The components of the GVCS are essential to life and work in the system - rather than decorative knick-knacks - and are "designed for disassembly" so each component, like the LifeTrac tractor for example, is easy to repair with bolts and simple tools such as wrenches, and is easy to modify and improve.

This project aims to collate all learnings of humanity to date regarding quality, modern lifestyles, minus any compromises associated with the status quo. The GVCS is designed to be applicable in any location where soil, sunshine, and water are found. The completion of the GVCS introduces the possibility of closing the industrial divide between the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ worlds. The GVCS is a radical departure whereby individuals are empowered to take responsibility for the world around them – as creators instead of consumers. OSE focuses on turning ‘dirt and sticks’ into advanced civilization via application of modern technology to abundant, local resources. If this is achieved, by tapping humanity's unlimited creative potential – we just may begin evolving to freedom.

Key Links:

• Weblog: http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/
• How to Build a Post-Scarcity Village: http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/2009/09/ose-presence-at-paraflows-festiva... 5 min video
• OSE featured in Plenitude: New Economics of Real Wealth: http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/2010/07/plenitude-the-new-economics-of-tr... – 3 min video
• Economy in a Box: http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/2010/07/economy-in-a-box-presentation-rep... presentation – 45 min video
• Progress on the ground:
  - tractor: http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/2010/07/lifetrac-ii-frame-2/
  - CEB press< <http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/2010/06/full-product-release/
  - hole puncher < <http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/2010/07/open-source-150-ton-hole-puncher/ 
  - torch table < <http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/2010/01/reptab-open-source-torch-table-in-make-zine/
  - crowd funding< <http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/2010/07/getting-ready-to-build-a-better-future/

Come join us at our next Transition Sebastopol Movie Night at the French Garden Restaurant. Come early and enjoy dinner and conversation. 

Collapse Synopsis
Americans generally like to hear good news. They like to believe that a new president will right old wrongs, that clean energy will replace dirty oil and that fresh thinking will set the economy straight. American pundits tend to restrain their pessimism and hope for the best. But is anyone prepared for the worst?

Meet Michael Ruppert, a different kind of American. A former Los Angeles police officer turned independent reporter, he predicted the current financial crisis in his self-published newsletter, From the Wilderness, at a time when most Wall Street and Washington analysts were still in denial. Director Chris Smith has shown an affinity for outsiders in films like American Movie and The Yes Men. In Collapse, he departs stylistically from his past documentaries by interviewing Ruppert in a format that recalls the work of Errol Morris and Spalding Gray.

Sitting in a room that looks like a bunker, Ruppert recounts his career as a radical thinker and spells out the crises he sees ahead. He draws upon the same news reports and data available to any Internet user, but he applies a unique interpretation. He is especially passionate about the issue of peak oil, the concern raised by scientists since the seventies that the world will eventually run out of fossil fuel. While other experts debate this issue in measured tones, Ruppert doesn't hold back at sounding an alarm, portraying an apocalyptic future. Listening to his rapid flow of opinions, the viewer is likely to question some of the rhetoric as paranoid or deluded, and to sway back and forth on what to make of the extremism. Smith lets viewers form their own judgments.

Collapse also serves as a portrait of a loner. Over the years, Ruppert has stood up for what he believes in despite fierce opposition. He candidly describes the sacrifices and motivators in his life. While other observers analyze details of the economic crisis, Ruppert views it as symptomatic of nothing less than the collapse of industrial civilization itself.

Thom Powers
Toronto International Film Festival