Village Vancouver Newsletter and Calendar of Events - November 2013


Village Vancouver Newsletter and Calendar of Events 

November 2013


Welcome to the November 2013 edition of the Village Vancouver monthly newsletter and Calendar of Events.


5th annual Sustenance Festival at the Roundhouse Community
Centre. Photo from Vancitybuzz.com
If October was one of the busiest months ever for Village Vancouver (we were at Sustenance, Living the New Economy, Strathcona Harvest Festival, the West End Food Festival, hosted our 4th annual Neighbour Savour community potluck, held our AGM... the list could go on!), it seems appropriate that November should be a time to take things a bit slower. As slow as they'll permit, that is; there is a great amount of activity these days both within the Village community and in allied groups that hints at an accelerated pace of Transition.

In this newsletter:
  • Drop-in "spaghetti" night community-wide celebration - Nov. 7
  • Basic Emergency Preparedness workshop - Nov. 7
  • 5th Annual Slow Food, Slow Everything Day with Village - Dec. 8
  • Bowen in Transition presents Inner Transition with Carolyn Baker - Nov 8-9
  • The New Geopolitics of Food with Lester Brown - Nov. 9
  • What is a green city, really? - Nov. 15
  • Seedy Thursday - Nov. 21
  • In Memoriam: James Myers
  • Upcoming Marpole Neighbourhood Food Network meeting
  • CityStudio project seeks donations of outdoor lighting
  • Zero Waste International Alliance reacts to bogus Zero Waste claims
  • CoDev's Annual Rum and Rhythms - Nov. 28


Enjoy!
Your November newsletter team,

Jordan, Sharon and Ross




Become a member today!

Have you joined the Village Vancouver community by joining our website? We hope you'll consider becoming a member of the Village Vancouver Transition Society as well, making our movement even stronger! It's easy to join - just click here!


Transition starts with people and places

(Photo by Dana Wilson) Village Vancouver co-sponsored a placemaking workshop with Mark Lakeman, founder of Portland's City Repair, and Erin Innes, a local permaculture educator and activist, on the very first day of the 6-day Living the New Economy confluence on Granville Island (October 15-20). Click here for more great photos, blogs and resources from the Living the New Economy events. Click here to listen to Mark Lakeman's keynote conversation with filmmaker Ian MacKenzie at the opening evening of Living the New Economy!


Drop in "Spaghetti" Night Community-wide Celebration Potluck Celebration - November 7th

Village Vancouver, the Drop in Spaghetti Night Team and Kitsilano Neighbourhood House are collaborating to bring you a celebration of the wildly delicious DISNs!
This month's Kits House Potluck celebrates a series of several locally-sourced and locally prepared neighbourhood dinners hosted by Kits Villagers and supported by a Vancouver Foundation Neighbourhood Small Grant. Each of these meals has brought or will bring neighbours together to share a meal cooked on one stove, reducing transportation and energy consumption, with one of the goals being to introduce neighbours to one another.
Hosts have been encouraged to prepare their meals using locally-sourced ingredients (e.g., 100-Mile Diet) - for example from the Kits Village Collaborative Garden and the Westside Community Food Market and to track the origin of all of their ingredients.  We will be reporting on the results of these Drop-In 'Spaghetti' Nights and encourage all who hosted or participated in a DISN to share their experiences as well.
We invite you to bring a dish featuring local ingredients to share at this month's potluck.  Local chef Russell Cameron will once again be providing his fabulous soup and bread.
  
Please RSVP here or to Ross at ross@villagevancouver.ca.

Upcoming drop-in spaghetti nights:

Saturday Nov 16 near 13th and Cypress, hosted by Bina and John
Friday Nov 22 near Cornwall and Laburnum, hosted by Ross and Laura Lee
Monday Nov 25 near 2nd and Larch, hosted by Tiva
Nov Date TBD  False Creek South, hosted by Jerry
...others TBA

Basic Neighbourhood Emergency Preparedness with Ann Pacey - Nov. 7, Strathcona Community Centre

Cultivating resiliency will help us respond more effectively during and after a disaster and provides a path to build a sense of neighbourhood. Village Vancouver has been at the forefront of building community through emergency preparedness. Come and explore some of the tools and approaches we're spearheading.
FREE.  Please pre-register.   
The 5th workshop in VV's Cultivating Food, Cultivating Community Series. Upcoming workshops: Thurs, Nov 21 Extreme Thrift ($10), Tues,  Dec  3 Disconnecting from the Matrix ($10).
50% Subsidies are available for all workshops in the series to low income residents of Vancouver with a Leisure Access Card. For details on how to apply, please contact Strathcona CC or visit http://vancouver.ca/parks/rec/lac/index.htm.

5th Annual Slow Food, Slow Everything Day with Village (celebrating Terra Madre Day) - December 8th

Celebrate Terra Madre Day and the holidays in a relaxing way! Join us in an oasis of calm amidst a sea of holiday frenzy for our 5th slow food, slow everything day, hosted by Kits Village.
Drop by anytime. Potluck lunch around noon or maybe one, potluck dinner at 6ish, movie later on - or something to this effect...
Any food, especially local, you wish to bring for the potlucks or for other times of the day is most welcome; "slow food" is especially encouraged -- making pizza is always fun!
In between, hang out, go for a walk at the beach, enjoy a conversation, read a book, take a nap, visit the Kits Village Collaborative Garden, or relax and do nothing. And maybe board games, knitting, seed swapping, soup 'n share???...suggestions welcome or surprise us!
11 am until late.
Please RSVP here or by sending an email to slowfood@villagevancouver.ca to receive the location address (to be sent out a couple of days prior).

Bowen in Transition presents Carolyn Baker


To Register for the Workshop: Please contact Brian Hoover either via email: bhoover@telus.net
or by phone: 604.947.2283.

Carolyn Baker, Ph.D. manages a website at www.carolynbaker.net and is theauthor of: Collapsing Consciously: Transformative Truths For Turbulent Times, Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path Of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse and Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Handbook For Inner Transition. She is a drummer, storyteller, and workshop leader, as well as a student of myth and ritual. She lives in Boulder, Colorado where she works with Transition Colorado. A former psychotherapist, she offers life coaching for people who want to live more resiliently in the present as they prepare for the future.

The New Geopolitics of Food with Lester Brown

A Fundraiser for the CCPA-BC’s Climate Justice Project
With food scarcity driven by falling water tables, eroding soils, and rising temperatures, control of arable land and water resources is moving to centre stage in the global struggle for food security. Food is the new oil.
Lester Brown is a renowned environmental thinker and the founder of the Earth Policy and Worldwatch institutes.
DetailsSaturday, November 9, 2013 – 7:00 pm
SFU Segal Graduate Building (500 Granville Street, Rooms 1200-1500)

Tickets are $20, and are available at: http://www.policyalternatives.ca/lester-brown (for secure online ticket sales)

Lester Brown’s new book will be available for sale at the event.

Event co-sponsors: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and SFU Centre for Sustainable Development

About the Climate Justice ProjectThe Climate Justice Project, a partnership between the CCPA and the University of British Columbia, addresses climate policy from a social justice perspective: we consider the social and economic effects of climate change, and we acknowledge that climate change affects people differently, depending on their position in society. Learn more at: climatejustice.ca

What is a green city, really?

November 15, 7pm - Vancouver Public Library

Presented by the Work Less Party of BC and the Extraenvironmentalist podcast

Vancouver wants to become the greenest in the world, but will any of the Greenest City Action Plan strategies make a difference? Join us for an evening of discussion about ideas and actions as we explore multiple perspectives on how our community could actually reduce its ecological footprint. 

Panelists: 

Jennie MooreDirector, Sustainable Development and Environmental Stewardship at BCIT

Donnie Maclurcan - Co-founder, Post Growth Institute

Gregor Macdonald - Journalist and energy analyst

Conrad Schmidt - Social activist, filmmaker and writer of books such as Alternatives to Growth: Efficiency Shifting and Workers of the World Relax.

More information on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/events/449259128527726



In Memoriam: James Myers 

On a very sad note, we lost a well liked member of the Village Vancouver family on October 12, Dr. James Myers from New Zealand. James, who was 33, was a radiologist at St. Paul's on a two year medical fellowship.

James joined the Kits Village Billy Bishop garden last May and also volunteered at VV's demonstration village at the Khatsahlano Festival in July, potting several dozen arugula seedlings from the garden to hand out and enthusiastically letting folks know about Village. He also participated in potlucks, played volleyball, volunteered at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, was thinking about hosting a drop-in spaghetti night, and loved the outdoors, particularly when it involved riding his bike. 

We were fortunate enough to meet his sister Hannah and brother Andrew, who came to the garden the week after his passing to see where he had spent many happy, productive hours.

Go well, mate!

We'll be dedicating one of the apple trees in the garden to James at a memorial gathering later in the month. (Date TBD.)

-- From your fellow Kits Village Collaborative Gardeners
Angela, Charlotte, Laura Lee, Mike, Ross, and Virginia

Marpole Neighbourhood Food Network Gathering

Marpole Neighbourhood Food Network will be holding a get together in late November - Date TBD. Watch the Events posts on the website for more details.
Marpole NFN is co-sponsored by Village Vancouver and Marpole Place neighbourhood House.

CityStudio project seeks donations of outdoor lighting

A group of students from the CityStudio program, which works to engage university students on Greenest City projects around Vancouver, has a vision of creating spaces where people from different communities can gather, interact, and own the space during the winter months.  Their project, “Deck the Dark” aims to fulfill their vision by engaging residents to help light up community public spaces with holiday lights. Not only does lighting have the power to make communities safer and more vibrant, “Deck the Dark” provides residents with unique opportunities to meet their neighbours and foster community networks.
At this moment, the students are asking for any community donations of outdoor lighting. Do you have any outdoor lights that you can spare, or know someone who does? If so, please get in touch with Kate Beck at katembeck@hotmail.com.

The Zero Waste International Alliance reacts to bogus Zero Waste claims 

As a direct response to the emergence of bogus “Zero Waste” organisations around the world the Zero Waste International Alliance (ZWIA), which has for over a decade proposed and promoted the elimination of all waste in human endeavours, has contacted its friends in the Industrial Ecology, anti-incineration and circular economy world, to ask for help in flushing out the imposters that are trying to steal the Zero Waste term in order to promote incineration and other unsustainable practices under the cloak of the term “Zero Waste to Landfill” ---mostly for undisguised commercial reasons.

“There can be no form of deliberate resource destruction in a zero waste world” –Ric Anthony, Chair of the Zero Waste International alliance. 


Tickets on Sale Now for CoDev's Annual Rum & Rhythms

 
428 Carrall Street, Vancouver, BC
Doors Open at 7:00PM
Tickets: $35 per person
We're excited to host the 2nd Annual Rum & Rhythms!  Join CoDev along with Diana Sánchez for an evening of rum tasting and salsa dancing!
We had such a great time last year that we wanted to bring it back this year
We hope you'll join us!

We'll start the evening off with a rum tasting (included in the ticket price)  and then a small silent auction including some delicious and special rums.
Diana will take the floor at 8:00PM and teach us some smooth salsa moves.

Buy your tickets here!  And see you on November 28th!
All proceeds from this event support CoDev's work to build partnerships for global justice.  

Support Village Vancouver and local economic resilience in one go!


Now you have another way that you can support the work of Village Vancouver - and help build a more resilient local economy at the same time! Simply trade in some of your Canadian dollars for Seedstock Community Currency that Village Vancouver has received in donations from local businesses. For every dollar you contribute, receive an equal amount of Seedstock in return which you can spend at any participating local business (now more than 65 of them!) for anything from organic food to soap, yoga, counselling, photography, DIY supplies and more. New businesses are being added all the time, so check the website regularly, subscribe to the Seedstock newsletter, or visit them on Facebook.


                 

Village Vancouver Calendar of Events