I hope you all are having a wonderful summer! I wanted to update you on what's been going on and what's coming up and some of the different ways you can connect in with Transition Cotati. There's a lot!

We had a fantastic turn out for our Walk on the Wild Side led by local herbalist Larkin Child at the end of June and learned to identify some of the edible plants that grow wild in our yards and public places. Our Rhythm and Blueberries event with poets Drew Dellinger and Trathen Heckman in mid-July was powerfully juicy and inspiring! Mmmm.

FrogSong Cohousing Tour and Potluck
Sunday, July 27, 11 am - 1 pm

If you've ever wondered what it's like to live in cohousing, come join us for a FREE tour of the community. We'll follow this with a potluck focusing on local, vegetarian food and a discussion of how FrogSong works and how you could bring more community to your neighborhood. So bring a dish to share and meet in front of Copy Mail and More, 8282 Old Redwood Highway. Plates and cups provided.

Cotati Farmers' market
We've been having a great time spreading the word about Transition Cotati at the farmers' markets this summer. We've mapped local gardens, had a conversation salon, and participated in the Eco-Fair. We have two more dates this summer that we'll be tabling there: August 7 and September 4. If you'd like to join in the fun, email judithn@transitioncotati.org or just drop by our table and say hi!

C-CORP
We're working with the Concerned Citizens of Rohnert Park (C-CORP) and the St Joseph Health System to get Neighborhood Shared Gardens going in the L Section, which is split between Cotati and Rohnert Park. It's a great opportunity for Transition Cotati because strengthening our local food system is important in growing our resilience to a loss of cheap fossil fuels. If you want to learn more, reply to this email or contact Teresa Hernandez (teresalh@comcast.net) . Oh, and remember, now is the time to be working on your winter garden!

Peak Oil Sebastopol -- Transition Town Salon
Thursday, August 7
7:30 - 9 pm

The Peak Oil Sebastopol group is sponsoring a free Transition Towns salon. Come join in the discussion with Carolyne Stayton and myself (Judith Newton) as we share our experiences with the Transition Initiatives model. We will meet in a room at the French Garden Restaurant at 8050 Bodega Ave., Sebastopol.

Do the Rot Thing!
Sunday, August 24
10 am - 2 pm

We've got the very inspired Jessica Jones coming to help us learn about the alchemy of turning kitchen waste into powerful nutrition for plants in our FREE compost and worm bin workshop. Learn the recipe for success and how to troubleshoot compost challenges. Get some plans to take home with you. It's happening at FrogSong Cohousing. Meet by Copy Mail and More, 8282 Old Redwood Highway and bring a brown bag lunch. Muffins and tea provided.

TC forum
Got something to say? Want to talk with others about Transition Cotati and related matters? Have ideas and suggestions? Check out our main website and be part of making our forum (http://www.transitioncotati.org/forum ) into a vibrant virtual gathering place.

If you made it this far, thanks for checking it all out... I'm glad you're with us!

cheers,

Judith

I found this a few months ago. It was written by Peter Lunsford on the Relocalization Network website as part of his essay on community. I've tweaked it just a little bit -- it's great "food for action" on increasing the adaptability, resilience, and community where you live.

What should we do now?

Start to get to know the neighbors in your neighborhood. The best way to do this is to give something before expecting to receive something. Bake a cake, preserve some jam or salsa, or prepare a gift basket of homemade items and then deliver the goods to one neighbor at a time, letting them know you want to get to know them. Start talking about your lives and the future together. Tell them how (and why) you made the jam!

If you have kids, get involved in the PTA and their extra-curricular activity organizations, booster clubs or volunteer for chaperone duties. It is reasonable to assume that after just one PTA meeting you will be upset about something you heard and will have something to say about it. Get involved in your kids education and get to know the other parents. Invite them to socialize with you – perhaps a dinner club?

After getting to know the neighbors, ask them if they know how to do something you need done, or if they have a skill you need. Blatantly ask them to help you and teach you. Then return the favor with a favor and follow through even if it’s at an inconvenient time. Projects can include helping to prepare a vegetable garden, knitting socks, putting up a permanent clothes line, building a solar water heater or solar oven, or installing a rainwater harvesting system.

Ask an adjoining neighbor if they would participate with you in enhancing your property boundary or fence line with a new landscaping approach (that doesn’t shut you off from each other by the way!) All of these projects will get your neighbors interested in what you are doing.

Join and attend a church – there are plenty that advocate virtually any philosophical beliefs, yours included. Churches are communities.

Locate and volunteer with a fraternal community organization; like the Lions, or Rotary, or a Woman’s Auxiliary, or the Scouts. Get to know the members and their families. Start to socialize with them regularly – invite them over for a barbecue or to make ice cream with an old-time crank ice cream freezer, or both!

Start an informal neighborhood coop. Offer to buy compact florescent bulbs, or dry foods, in bulk at a discount for the entire neighborhood. Tell them why it’s important and ask for orders (but don’t personally profit from the exercise.) Educate your neighbors on the importance of bulk food storage and rotation and suggest that you collectively buy in bulk as a neighborhood to realize savings. Buy compost or mulch in bulk at a discount at the appropriate seasonal times of the year to enhance your yards.

Start a neighborhood seed or rhizome exchange for your gardens. Get rid of the seeds you don’t want and collect more for the foods you like. (Have some unusual flower seeds and other interesting seeds that you don’t want, so you can offer them in exchange for others.) Or offer to buy seeds for the entire neighborhood in bulk, at a discount, to realize bulk savings. Talk about why non-GMO seeds are so important.

Offer to watch the neighbor’s kids if needed.

Plan neighborhood (or adult) fun days to nearby parks, festivals or entertainment destinations, or organize a periodic neighborhood block party. Ask neighbors to volunteer to help, and make it a hit.

Compile and share a contact list for all the neighbors in your area, along with notes of interest they might be known for (like professions, skills, hobbies, memberships, or hunting for example).

Throw a party, and then subtly suggest in your conversations with everyone who comes that you want to know when they are going to throw their party for you to attend. Suggest an annual or seasonal block party or family picnic where everyone can get together.

Once “community” has been established you will need things that you simply don’t have, but others do. You will want to trade. Trade becomes an art with everyone bartering to maximize their advantage. You may trade with neighbors (but don’t get greedy.) Your community may trade with other communities. Understand how this works.

Get involved in your neighborhood association. Get to know the “players”. Suggest improvements to make the neighborhood more neighbor-friendly.

Obviously there are hundreds of things you can do to get involved, and to start involving your neighbors. And it needs to get started now. If you wait for your neighbors or community to start it, it may never happen. There is a huge power in beginning something. Be powerful. What will you do?

We had a fantastic presentation at the end of January by Jennifer Gray on the Transition Model. For anyone wanting to know more about Transition Initiatives in general, and what we are working on here in Cotati, this video will give you a solid picture.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7287947471579443911&hl=en

Boy, things have been hopping!! The momentum just keeps building for Transition Cotati. It's great fun and so wonderful to have so many interested and eager folks working together on this. My gratitude cup runneth over!

The Transition Town presentation by Jennifer Gray that happened at FrogSong Cohousing on January 26 came off *really well*. Jennifer gave an excellent presentation, we had a full house of interested folks, and the buzz afterwards was intense! The Transition Town concept strikes a chord for a lot of folks, I think, because it's fun, positive, inclusive and deeply relevant to our times.

We've got a lot planned for the awareness-raising phase of our project: two events per month from now until August! The first event happens on Friday, February 8 at 7:30 pm at the Cotati Community Center (216 E School St), It's a showing of A Crude Awakening -- a powerful film about the implications of peak oil for all of us. When we screened it at FrogSong Cohousing people in the audience were stunned by its message. This has been called the best introduction to peak oil that's out there. So please come and bring some friends to discuss this movie over popcorn.

And that's just the first event -- we've got more movies, speakers, poets, local food events, and other juicy stuff to come. We're putting the finishing touches on some publicity -- a printed program and other items. They look fabulous, and we've gotten great help on understanding media outreach channels. Thank you, thank you! We're also working on developing a base of photos for Transition Cotati that we can use on our main website (when it comes online in all its beauty) and in other materials.

I've also had the opportunity to collaborate with other sustainability-related organizations in the county. A dozen of us met at Sonoma Mountain Village a few weeks ago to start a conversation around creating synergy among the groups. I'll report back as it evolves.

There's so much more I could tell you about, but this is getting long. Sorry it's been a while since the last update, but I hardly have a chance to catch my breath some days, it seems! Like I said, it sure is great, meaningful fun, though!

The next meeting of the steering committee is on February 4 at 4:30 pm at FrogSong. We would love to have you join us. We'll be brainstorming means to put together the person-power that will be needed to orchestrate the scheduled events. So come if you want to get more involved.

One other thing I wanted you all to know about is that Transition Cotati will be tabling at the Focus the Nation event at Sonoma State in the afternoon on February 7. If you haven't heard of it, it will be an all-day teach-in/sustainability fair and all are invited. See http://ssufocusthenation.com/Agenda.aspx

Last, but not least, I want to put in a plug for Wendy Krupnick's spring class series. Wendy was the garden coordinator for the Sustainable Agriculture program at SRJC for a number of years. She has a wealth of skills and knowledge to share in her classes that are so important as we head into a relocalized future. I've attached her class flier.

I'll end this here, but I think you get a sense of the groundswell of activity that's happening! Thanks for being part of it all, and I look forward to more. More fun, more energy, more meaning and more connectedness.