GRANDMOTHERS TO GRANDMOTHERS
Welcome to 1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations
Newsletter #6, April 2022
(Sections are color coded to match this list's colors, so you can focus on what's most interesting to you):
_______________________________________________________________ ACTION ALERTS
1) April 19, 20: Passover action. Defund Fossil Fuel
Dayenu, an organization of American Jews confronting the climate crisis, is calling on Jews and allies to gather on Passover to demand that big banks and asset managers stop investing their money in “Fossil Fuel Pharaohs: oil, gas, and coal companies: We will publicly proclaim today’s fossil-fueled plagues, and lift up matzah as a symbol of urgency, calling on these financial institutions to move their dough.”
April 19, 4 – 5 PM
BlackRock, 400 Howard St., San Francisco
info/RSVP
April 20, 11 AM – 1 PM
Lytton Plaza, 200 University Avenue, Palo Alto
Info/RSVP
2) April 22: People’s Earth Day – Demand Environmental Justice for Bayview/Hunters Point and Treasure Island
Support the Bayview Hunters Point Mothers and Fathers Committee, GreenAction, and Youth vs. Apocalypse to demand that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Mayor Breed, the US Navy, and state and federal agencies guarantee full cleanup of toxic and radioactive contamination and reparations for workers and neighbors of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.
April 22,
10 AM: UN Plaza, Civic Center BART, San Francisco
12 PM: Third and Evans, Bayview Hunters Point
More info/demands
Questions: Contact ashley@greenaction.org, hannah.estrada@youthvsapocalypse.gmail.com
3) April 22: Sonoma County Earth Day Transit Justice Rally
March starting from Santa Rosa Junior College to the Board of Supervisors office, where a rally and chalking action will call on the Board of Supervisors to invest in our transit system and create transformative transit justice
April 22, 2 – 4 PM
Santa Rosa Junior College, 1502 Mendocino Ave, Santa Rosa
More info/RSVP
4) Sunrise Silicon Valley Climate Strike
March from San Jose City Hall to Cesar Chavez Park
April 22, 4 PM
San Jose City Hall, 200 East Santa Clara St.
Info/RSVP
5) April 23: Celebrate Earth Day with Urban Tilth
The Urban Tilth Community Garden on the Richmond Greenway invites everyone to celebrate Earth Day with mural painting, planting a flower garden, beautifying a playground, petting zoo, building a free fruit tree stand for an edible forest, watershed swale planting and weeding, free screen printing, and more
April 23, 10 AM – 2 PM
Unity Park Community Plaza
16th Street & Ohio Ave, Richmond
Online actions
Petition banks to defund fossil fuel
JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America account for more than 25% of fossil fuel financing from 60 banks around the world. Tell them to divest.
https://act.ran.org/page/39687/action/1
Pass a Big Oil Windfall Profits tax
While millions of Americans struggle with the high costs of gas and heating fuels, Big Oil is profiteering on the Russian petrostate’s invasion of Ukraine. Call on Congress to pass the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax and return that money to Americans. https://www.stopoilprofiteering.com/
ANNOUNCEMENT:
Honor Climate Superheroes – including 1000 Grandmothers!
350 Bay Area will honor Climate Superheroes at this online Earth Week awards event
Tickets here
GRANDMOTHERS KEEP SHOWING UP
Youth climate strike: No drilling in Contra Costa
Grandmothers showed up March 12 to support the youth who organized and led a major march and rally demanding that the new county general plan include a ban on oil and gas drilling in Contra Costa.
Global Strike for Climate Reparations
Grandmothers showed up with food and a giant mobile puppet to support the children and youth at Embarcadero Plaza March 25, part of a global Climate Strike for Climate Reparations.
Stop the War in Ukraine
Grandmothers showed up at an April 6 rally in San Francisco to stop the war in Ukraine
Art Action for Climate Justice April 2022
Grandmothers joined activists around the bay, pasting up posters #DefundClimateChaos.
HAVE YOU HEARD?
Starting with good news....
A Federal court is blocking Exxon Mobil’s bid to protect itself from investigations regarding their withholding internal documents that demonstrate that they knew about climate change and Exxon’s relationship to it as early as the 1970s.
https://grist.org/beacon/nice-try-exxon/
And on to the bad news . . .
Banks Shredding Guarantees to Not Finance Oil, Coal & Gas: Despite thousands of promises to reduce funding for new oil and gas operations, banks are chomping at the bit to exploit the Russian war on Ukraine and earn billions from the skyrocketing price of oil. No wonder they cynically paced the halls at Glasgow-COP 26, saying they wouldn’t meet their goals until 2050.
Big Oil Continues to Oppose Paris Agreement
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Big-Oil-Is-No-Longer-Unbankable.html}
Brazil has approved a railroad that will rip through the Amazon & decimate Indigenous lands. Deforestation in the Amazon is at its highest level since 2006 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/18/deforestation-in-brazils-amazon-rises-by-more-than-a-fifth-in-a-year You can add your voice to protest this decision by signing this petition: https://actions.sumofus.org/a/stop-bolsonaro-destroying-the-amazon-rainforest
Resources
Banking on Climate Chaos, co-authored by Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, Indigenous Environmental Network, Oil Change International, Reclaim Finance, Sierra Club, and Urgewald, is the most comprehensive global analysis on fossil fuel banking to date: banks pouring billions into fossil fuel expansion despite public climate commitments.
Averting Climate Catastrophe: Fossil Fuels Must End While Renewables Take Over, a new report by Food and Water Watch, explains why “we must stop pretending renewables will automatically replace fossil fuels,” showing that “renewables and fossil fuels have grown together.” It argues that we must directly confront and reduce fossil fuel production and use.
Dear Grandma,
Last month you wrote about what your daughter says to her children about the climate crisis. That got me wondering: “How do I think about when to begin talking about it, with young children -- or if I even should?” -- Worried Elder
Dear Worried Elder,
It is hard to know how to help children feel safe these days, to know what to say and do.
It was once thought that adults should wait until a child asks about ANY complex issue, but the tide is turning, and I agree that adults should not wait for children to ask questions. Today’s children are exposed to so much through TV and social media. They know much more about topical issues than most adults realize. (That doesn’t mean, however, that their information is always correct!)
But even young children who cannot understand “climate crisis” in the way adults do, can begin to take in the concepts in simple ways, over time, through experiences and in relationship to their grownups. Some of those experiences are happenstance -- a three-year-old is sad that she can’t go outside because the air is smoky-- or very purposeful-- a preschooler engages in a community eco-project with their family. Both call for adults to help children make meaning of those experiences.
I want to tell you a story about how my mother supported me to understand something that was confusing and scary to me as a child. She was much older than other children’s mothers, and I was afraid that she would die. I think I was pretty young when she first explained to me how dying is part of life and that at some point, we all will die. I remember I cried. Throughout my childhood, she talked about this dying thing more than I wanted. It was hard to take in, but it was truth. As I grew, plants, animals, and people I loved died, but I had internalized a frame with which to try to make sense of those deaths.
I have been grateful for that gift all my life.
As a grandmother, you have different possible roles with your grandchildren about the climate crisis. You can talk to your grandchild (after checking with their parents) and you can also help your adult children work through their anxieties and strategies for speaking honestly with their children. This means that we grandmothers need to find ways to handle our own fears about the climate crisis, so that we can be a realistic but reassuring presence, for both our children and our grandchildren. Hopefully, when we work through our own fears about talking to our children about this existential crisis, they will feel more motivated and able to talk with their children.
Much is written about starting an appreciative process with young children by encouraging them to have deeper relationships with nature and animals and take on the responsibility of caring for them. Of course…. but this is no longer enough. Later on, school can also play a positive role, but in the early years, it is up to us adults. When we initiate difficult conversations it sends a message that it is an OK thing to talk about. It’s not a secret - we don’t have to deny or avoid it. Ultimately, little children grow into big ideas by actively engaging with them.
Resource: Videos, Books, and Websites to support you talking with your grandchildren about climate change:
https://www.eldersclimateaction.org/with-your-grandchildren/
1000 GRANDMOTHERS: OUR WORK
Election Groups - (Started anew!)
1000 Grandmothers Help Save the Midterm Elections!
We now have eight small groups working on the elections! We have groups in Marin, SF, East Bay, and even New York, some meeting live, others by zoom. Each group is choosing what activities to engage in and which election organizations to team up with, drawing on suggestions provided by 1000 Grandmothers. Most groups will focus on writing letters and postcards, while others are also providing support for their members who wish to expand into texting, phone banking or canvassing. Contact Robin rbaker@berkeley.edu or Carol Carolahoffman@gmail.com if you have any questions and/or are interested in joining or starting up your own group. The goal is to keep up sustained electoral work through the November elections -- and to build community, and have fun together in the process!
Legislative Working Group
The Legislative Working Group (LWG) follows local, state, and federal climate change/environmental justice proposals and bills. Currently we have six active members, and others we have called upon who live in specific legislative districts. We could use more grandmothers who have some time to devote to learning the details and how to act effectively.
Our next meeting is scheduled for 1 PM May 10, at the Rockridge Cafe on College Ave in Oakland. If you would like to join us or want to work with us, please email susanpennerbybay@gmail.com
Calling 1000 Grandmothers constituents of Assembly Member Buffy Wicks and Senator Nancy Skinner: 350 Bay Area Action invites constituents to attend April Zoom meetings with these legislators, to ask them where they stand on neighborhood oil and gas drilling, and on current pending legislation and policies that address climate change. One concern is that Wicks and Skinner did not sign on to a legislators’ letter to the California Geologic Energy Management Agency (CalGEM), urging that agency to strengthen its public health regulations for neighborhood oil and gas drilling. We need to protect Californians, especially communities of color, who suffer the most from the toxic effects of oil and gas drilling in their neighborhoods. To join this effort, email susanpennerbybay@gmail.com
Bills to support: Call or write your California legislators urging them to support these bills:
Book Group
The 1000 Grandmothers book group's next book will be The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich.
"Set in the author’s actual bookstore in Minneapolis during COVID and the George Floyd protests, the story follows Tookie, an Potawatomi woman, from her crime, to a decade in federal prison, to the job she lands in the bookstore, which becomes inhabited by a ghost. The book asks what we owe to the living, the dead, the reader and the book. ‘The Sentence’ is a metaphor and double entendre for being indigenous in America and for reading and books helping us sort out the stories and meaning of our times". We will read The Sentence for two sessions. We meet the first Thursday of the month from 2:00 to 3:30. Everyone welcome. Contact gracehisaye@gmail.com
San Francisco Circle
The San Francisco Circle has been meeting with members of the Board of Supervisors asking them to increase funding for the Department of the Environment. So far they’ve met with Ronen, Walton, and Melgar. They are also planning a Zoom meeting with Sen. Scott Weiner to discuss climate-related legislation.
They have recommended reading on the war in Ukraine:
Transitional Coordinating Committee
The Transitional Coordinating Committee has continued to help grow new leadership. We want to recognize and thank two of our Committee Members who have exited off this Committee. Claire Schoen transitioned off of the Coordinating Committee in the early months of the pandemic, and Patricia St. Onge recently transitioned off of the Coordinating Committee after providing much of the leadership and training for our amazing trip to Line 3 in Minnesota. We want to thank both Grandmothers for the many hours, and 'moments' given to the work of the Coordinating Committee. They both continue to work with 1000 Grandmothers. Pat will continue to provide spiritual leadership and co-leads the 1000 Grandmothers Book Group with Grace.
In our ongoing work to expand leadership, two of our newest members - along with one of our 'old timers' - planned and facilitated our first 1000 Grandmothers Gathering since the pandemic (besides one wonderful time we got together to hear our speaker Loretta S...last year). This April 2 convening was very successful -- 98 people registered, and we were able to add several new groups and circles to our community. It was wonderful to see everyone. Although it would be wonderful to see some of the photos that captured all the beautiful, powerful grandmothers' faces, we didn't ask permission to publish those photos. So remind us the next time, so that people can enjoy seeing each other in the newsletter. An inspiring new slideshow, put together by Peg Hunter, was one highlight of the Gathering.
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU
Reports from your group or circle: If your 1000 Grandmothers group has anything you want to share in the next newsletter, please send it in by May 1.
Book suggestions: Have you recently read a book you would recommend to other Grandmothers? Send us the title, author, and a short description of the book and why you recommend it. We’ll pick out one suggestion to include in the next newsletter.
Pictures of 1000 Grandmothers in action: If you attend any demonstrations with other Grandmothers, please take pictures and email them to us to include in the newsletter and website.
Send reports, book suggestions, and pictures to jeantepper@gmail.com
Welcome to 1000 Grandmothers for Future Generations
Newsletter #6, April 2022
(Sections are color coded to match this list's colors, so you can focus on what's most interesting to you):
- ACTION ALERTS
- 1000 GRANDMOTHERS KEEP ON SHOWING UP
- "HAVE YOU HEARD" - Climate News Highlights
- RESOURCES
- GRANDMA SAYS
- OUR ORGANIZATIONAL WORK - inside story
_______________________________________________________________ ACTION ALERTS
1) April 19, 20: Passover action. Defund Fossil Fuel
Dayenu, an organization of American Jews confronting the climate crisis, is calling on Jews and allies to gather on Passover to demand that big banks and asset managers stop investing their money in “Fossil Fuel Pharaohs: oil, gas, and coal companies: We will publicly proclaim today’s fossil-fueled plagues, and lift up matzah as a symbol of urgency, calling on these financial institutions to move their dough.”
April 19, 4 – 5 PM
BlackRock, 400 Howard St., San Francisco
info/RSVP
April 20, 11 AM – 1 PM
Lytton Plaza, 200 University Avenue, Palo Alto
Info/RSVP
2) April 22: People’s Earth Day – Demand Environmental Justice for Bayview/Hunters Point and Treasure Island
Support the Bayview Hunters Point Mothers and Fathers Committee, GreenAction, and Youth vs. Apocalypse to demand that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Mayor Breed, the US Navy, and state and federal agencies guarantee full cleanup of toxic and radioactive contamination and reparations for workers and neighbors of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.
April 22,
10 AM: UN Plaza, Civic Center BART, San Francisco
12 PM: Third and Evans, Bayview Hunters Point
More info/demands
Questions: Contact ashley@greenaction.org, hannah.estrada@youthvsapocalypse.gmail.com
3) April 22: Sonoma County Earth Day Transit Justice Rally
March starting from Santa Rosa Junior College to the Board of Supervisors office, where a rally and chalking action will call on the Board of Supervisors to invest in our transit system and create transformative transit justice
April 22, 2 – 4 PM
Santa Rosa Junior College, 1502 Mendocino Ave, Santa Rosa
More info/RSVP
4) Sunrise Silicon Valley Climate Strike
March from San Jose City Hall to Cesar Chavez Park
April 22, 4 PM
San Jose City Hall, 200 East Santa Clara St.
Info/RSVP
5) April 23: Celebrate Earth Day with Urban Tilth
The Urban Tilth Community Garden on the Richmond Greenway invites everyone to celebrate Earth Day with mural painting, planting a flower garden, beautifying a playground, petting zoo, building a free fruit tree stand for an edible forest, watershed swale planting and weeding, free screen printing, and more
April 23, 10 AM – 2 PM
Unity Park Community Plaza
16th Street & Ohio Ave, Richmond
Online actions
Petition banks to defund fossil fuel
JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America account for more than 25% of fossil fuel financing from 60 banks around the world. Tell them to divest.
https://act.ran.org/page/39687/action/1
Pass a Big Oil Windfall Profits tax
While millions of Americans struggle with the high costs of gas and heating fuels, Big Oil is profiteering on the Russian petrostate’s invasion of Ukraine. Call on Congress to pass the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax and return that money to Americans. https://www.stopoilprofiteering.com/
ANNOUNCEMENT:
Honor Climate Superheroes – including 1000 Grandmothers!
350 Bay Area will honor Climate Superheroes at this online Earth Week awards event
- John Gioia, Contra Costa County Supervisor
- Isabella Zizi, Youth Activist
- 1000 Grandmothers
- Cheryl Davila, former Berkeley City Councilmember
Tickets here
GRANDMOTHERS KEEP SHOWING UP
Youth climate strike: No drilling in Contra Costa
Grandmothers showed up March 12 to support the youth who organized and led a major march and rally demanding that the new county general plan include a ban on oil and gas drilling in Contra Costa.
Global Strike for Climate Reparations
Grandmothers showed up with food and a giant mobile puppet to support the children and youth at Embarcadero Plaza March 25, part of a global Climate Strike for Climate Reparations.
Stop the War in Ukraine
Grandmothers showed up at an April 6 rally in San Francisco to stop the war in Ukraine
Art Action for Climate Justice April 2022
Grandmothers joined activists around the bay, pasting up posters #DefundClimateChaos.
HAVE YOU HEARD?
Starting with good news....
A Federal court is blocking Exxon Mobil’s bid to protect itself from investigations regarding their withholding internal documents that demonstrate that they knew about climate change and Exxon’s relationship to it as early as the 1970s.
https://grist.org/beacon/nice-try-exxon/
And on to the bad news . . .
Banks Shredding Guarantees to Not Finance Oil, Coal & Gas: Despite thousands of promises to reduce funding for new oil and gas operations, banks are chomping at the bit to exploit the Russian war on Ukraine and earn billions from the skyrocketing price of oil. No wonder they cynically paced the halls at Glasgow-COP 26, saying they wouldn’t meet their goals until 2050.
Big Oil Continues to Oppose Paris Agreement
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Big-Oil-Is-No-Longer-Unbankable.html}
Brazil has approved a railroad that will rip through the Amazon & decimate Indigenous lands. Deforestation in the Amazon is at its highest level since 2006 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/18/deforestation-in-brazils-amazon-rises-by-more-than-a-fifth-in-a-year You can add your voice to protest this decision by signing this petition: https://actions.sumofus.org/a/stop-bolsonaro-destroying-the-amazon-rainforest
Resources
Banking on Climate Chaos, co-authored by Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, Indigenous Environmental Network, Oil Change International, Reclaim Finance, Sierra Club, and Urgewald, is the most comprehensive global analysis on fossil fuel banking to date: banks pouring billions into fossil fuel expansion despite public climate commitments.
Averting Climate Catastrophe: Fossil Fuels Must End While Renewables Take Over, a new report by Food and Water Watch, explains why “we must stop pretending renewables will automatically replace fossil fuels,” showing that “renewables and fossil fuels have grown together.” It argues that we must directly confront and reduce fossil fuel production and use.
Dear Grandma,
Last month you wrote about what your daughter says to her children about the climate crisis. That got me wondering: “How do I think about when to begin talking about it, with young children -- or if I even should?” -- Worried Elder
Dear Worried Elder,
It is hard to know how to help children feel safe these days, to know what to say and do.
It was once thought that adults should wait until a child asks about ANY complex issue, but the tide is turning, and I agree that adults should not wait for children to ask questions. Today’s children are exposed to so much through TV and social media. They know much more about topical issues than most adults realize. (That doesn’t mean, however, that their information is always correct!)
But even young children who cannot understand “climate crisis” in the way adults do, can begin to take in the concepts in simple ways, over time, through experiences and in relationship to their grownups. Some of those experiences are happenstance -- a three-year-old is sad that she can’t go outside because the air is smoky-- or very purposeful-- a preschooler engages in a community eco-project with their family. Both call for adults to help children make meaning of those experiences.
I want to tell you a story about how my mother supported me to understand something that was confusing and scary to me as a child. She was much older than other children’s mothers, and I was afraid that she would die. I think I was pretty young when she first explained to me how dying is part of life and that at some point, we all will die. I remember I cried. Throughout my childhood, she talked about this dying thing more than I wanted. It was hard to take in, but it was truth. As I grew, plants, animals, and people I loved died, but I had internalized a frame with which to try to make sense of those deaths.
I have been grateful for that gift all my life.
As a grandmother, you have different possible roles with your grandchildren about the climate crisis. You can talk to your grandchild (after checking with their parents) and you can also help your adult children work through their anxieties and strategies for speaking honestly with their children. This means that we grandmothers need to find ways to handle our own fears about the climate crisis, so that we can be a realistic but reassuring presence, for both our children and our grandchildren. Hopefully, when we work through our own fears about talking to our children about this existential crisis, they will feel more motivated and able to talk with their children.
Much is written about starting an appreciative process with young children by encouraging them to have deeper relationships with nature and animals and take on the responsibility of caring for them. Of course…. but this is no longer enough. Later on, school can also play a positive role, but in the early years, it is up to us adults. When we initiate difficult conversations it sends a message that it is an OK thing to talk about. It’s not a secret - we don’t have to deny or avoid it. Ultimately, little children grow into big ideas by actively engaging with them.
Resource: Videos, Books, and Websites to support you talking with your grandchildren about climate change:
https://www.eldersclimateaction.org/with-your-grandchildren/
1000 GRANDMOTHERS: OUR WORK
Election Groups - (Started anew!)
1000 Grandmothers Help Save the Midterm Elections!
We now have eight small groups working on the elections! We have groups in Marin, SF, East Bay, and even New York, some meeting live, others by zoom. Each group is choosing what activities to engage in and which election organizations to team up with, drawing on suggestions provided by 1000 Grandmothers. Most groups will focus on writing letters and postcards, while others are also providing support for their members who wish to expand into texting, phone banking or canvassing. Contact Robin rbaker@berkeley.edu or Carol Carolahoffman@gmail.com if you have any questions and/or are interested in joining or starting up your own group. The goal is to keep up sustained electoral work through the November elections -- and to build community, and have fun together in the process!
Legislative Working Group
The Legislative Working Group (LWG) follows local, state, and federal climate change/environmental justice proposals and bills. Currently we have six active members, and others we have called upon who live in specific legislative districts. We could use more grandmothers who have some time to devote to learning the details and how to act effectively.
Our next meeting is scheduled for 1 PM May 10, at the Rockridge Cafe on College Ave in Oakland. If you would like to join us or want to work with us, please email susanpennerbybay@gmail.com
Calling 1000 Grandmothers constituents of Assembly Member Buffy Wicks and Senator Nancy Skinner: 350 Bay Area Action invites constituents to attend April Zoom meetings with these legislators, to ask them where they stand on neighborhood oil and gas drilling, and on current pending legislation and policies that address climate change. One concern is that Wicks and Skinner did not sign on to a legislators’ letter to the California Geologic Energy Management Agency (CalGEM), urging that agency to strengthen its public health regulations for neighborhood oil and gas drilling. We need to protect Californians, especially communities of color, who suffer the most from the toxic effects of oil and gas drilling in their neighborhoods. To join this effort, email susanpennerbybay@gmail.com
Bills to support: Call or write your California legislators urging them to support these bills:
- SB 1173 (Gonzalez and Wiener) would divest public retirement systems from fossil fuel investments https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1173 — other environmental groups such as 350 Bay Area Action are supporting this bill
- AB 2419 would require that federal climate and infrastructure investments will advance California’s goals to promote equity, environmental justice, and good jobs through targeted investments to disadvantaged and low-income communities. Sponsored by the California Green New Deal Coalition https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2419
Book Group
The 1000 Grandmothers book group's next book will be The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich.
"Set in the author’s actual bookstore in Minneapolis during COVID and the George Floyd protests, the story follows Tookie, an Potawatomi woman, from her crime, to a decade in federal prison, to the job she lands in the bookstore, which becomes inhabited by a ghost. The book asks what we owe to the living, the dead, the reader and the book. ‘The Sentence’ is a metaphor and double entendre for being indigenous in America and for reading and books helping us sort out the stories and meaning of our times". We will read The Sentence for two sessions. We meet the first Thursday of the month from 2:00 to 3:30. Everyone welcome. Contact gracehisaye@gmail.com
San Francisco Circle
The San Francisco Circle has been meeting with members of the Board of Supervisors asking them to increase funding for the Department of the Environment. So far they’ve met with Ronen, Walton, and Melgar. They are also planning a Zoom meeting with Sen. Scott Weiner to discuss climate-related legislation.
They have recommended reading on the war in Ukraine:
- Bill McKibben, Heat Pumps for Peace and Freedom. https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/heat-pumps-for-peace-and-freedom
- Rebecca Solnit, The world is unpredictable and strange. Still, there is hope in the madness https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/05/world-is-unpredictable-and-strange-climate-crisis-ukraine
Transitional Coordinating Committee
The Transitional Coordinating Committee has continued to help grow new leadership. We want to recognize and thank two of our Committee Members who have exited off this Committee. Claire Schoen transitioned off of the Coordinating Committee in the early months of the pandemic, and Patricia St. Onge recently transitioned off of the Coordinating Committee after providing much of the leadership and training for our amazing trip to Line 3 in Minnesota. We want to thank both Grandmothers for the many hours, and 'moments' given to the work of the Coordinating Committee. They both continue to work with 1000 Grandmothers. Pat will continue to provide spiritual leadership and co-leads the 1000 Grandmothers Book Group with Grace.
In our ongoing work to expand leadership, two of our newest members - along with one of our 'old timers' - planned and facilitated our first 1000 Grandmothers Gathering since the pandemic (besides one wonderful time we got together to hear our speaker Loretta S...last year). This April 2 convening was very successful -- 98 people registered, and we were able to add several new groups and circles to our community. It was wonderful to see everyone. Although it would be wonderful to see some of the photos that captured all the beautiful, powerful grandmothers' faces, we didn't ask permission to publish those photos. So remind us the next time, so that people can enjoy seeing each other in the newsletter. An inspiring new slideshow, put together by Peg Hunter, was one highlight of the Gathering.
- Our Engagement Team completed a new welcome letter to better welcome folks who sign up with us. And the Team is putting some final touches on an Info session that will be offered to folks who are interested.
- The Communications Team has had the support from new leadership to finally do some website updates, as well as discuss and expand our (relatively) new newsletter.
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU
Reports from your group or circle: If your 1000 Grandmothers group has anything you want to share in the next newsletter, please send it in by May 1.
Book suggestions: Have you recently read a book you would recommend to other Grandmothers? Send us the title, author, and a short description of the book and why you recommend it. We’ll pick out one suggestion to include in the next newsletter.
Pictures of 1000 Grandmothers in action: If you attend any demonstrations with other Grandmothers, please take pictures and email them to us to include in the newsletter and website.
Send reports, book suggestions, and pictures to jeantepper@gmail.com
