Sunday, December 23, 2018

Energy (and Other) Events - December 23, 2018

Energy (and Other) Events is a weekly mailing list published most Sundays covering events around the Cambridge, MA and greater
Boston area that catch the editor's eye.

Hubevents  http://hubevents.blogspot.com is the web version.

If you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe to Energy (and Other) Events email gmoke@world.std.com
What I Do and Why I Do It:  The Story of Energy (and Other) EventsGeo

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There will be no December 30, 2018 edition of Energy (and Other) Events as everyone seems to be spending time celebrating Christmas and New Year’s instead of concentrating on changing the world.  Probably a wise idea.  

Happy Merry New and Bah Humbug to all.

Details of these events are available when you scroll past the index

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Index
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Sunday, December 30
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1:30pm  Winter Solstice Lunch/Talk: Ellery Schempp Thoughts for the Future

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Upcoming Events
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Wednesday, January 2
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The Health Effects of Climate Change - a 7 week, self-paced, FREE course from HarvardX

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Monday, January 7
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7pm  Citizen Illegal

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Tuesday, January 8
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8:30am  Sustainability 101: From Foundations to the Future
2pm  Intro to Bullet Journaling: An analog method to improve your productivity
5:30pm  A National Study of Higher Education: Challenges and Rays of Hope (Part I)
6pm  How to Become a Sustainability Magnet
7pm  The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai (Li Po)

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My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:

Building New Renewables Cheaper than Operating Existing Coal Plants

Stories from the Shadows:  Reflections of a Street Doctor

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Sunday, December 30
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Winter Solstice Lunch/Talk: Ellery Schempp Thoughts for the Future
Sunday, December 30
1:30 PM to 3:30 PM
India Pavilion, 17 Central Square, Cambridge

We'll celebrate the recent Solstice, and coming of the Western Calendar New Year by having our traditional GBH Winter Secular Solstice Luncheon in association with other secular groups in the area.

We'll share in another Indian buffet meal at the India Pavilion in Central Square Cambridge.

Our special guest speaker is longtime member and supporter Ellery Schempp, who is well known throughout the Humanist community. As a kid he realized it was wrong to endure compulsory Bible-readings and prayers in the public school and won an historic case before the Supreme Court. He went on to earn his doctorate in Physics and to be a lifelong humanist activist. A Unitarian Universalist, he has been an advisory member of the Secular Coalition of America, the Secular Student Alliance, and a longtime supporter of various local groups.

His tentative topic is "Fun Memories for the Future: Thoughts for Young Humanists". We will fill in more information as we get it, but rest assured Ellery is an engaging speaker who spoke before us 8 years ago on the importance of narrative. He particularly looks forward to starting an engaging discussion. Join us to celebrate the our place in the Universe and among friends.

The India Pavillion in Central Square Cambridge (vegetarian options, only $14 per person for all you care to eat, not including drinks; bring cash or check, please). Parking in Cambridge is free on Sundays in metered and some non-metered spots, and several garages and lots in Central Square including several just steps away on Green Street. MBTA red line Central Square station and associated bus stops are also within the block.

RSVP here, or via Facebook, or by responding to your email list email, but NOT all three, please, so we can give the restaurant a good sense of our size. Thanks!

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Upcoming Events
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Wednesday, January 2
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The Health Effects of Climate Change - a 7 week, self-paced, FREE course from HarvardX

Learn how global warming impacts human health, and the ways we can diminish those impacts. 

Our world’s climate is changing. Of the top twenty hottest years ever recorded, sixteen have occurred in the last two decades. This warming has already had a profound effect. Many feel powerless in the face of this challenge, but you can make a difference.

By looking at air quality, nutrition, infectious diseases, and human migration, this course will show you how increases in greenhouse gases impact public health. Experts working in a variety of settings will present their recommendations for responding to these challenges, and interested students will have the opportunity to learn about the research methods that measure the health effects of climate change.

Created with support from the Harvard Global Health Institute, this course will explain how climate change impacts people around the globe, but also how it directly affects you and your life. Though your risk rises with the rising global temperatures, climate change is a solvable problem, and there are things you can do to mitigate that risk.

This course is not an elegy for the planet, but a call to action. Enroll now to learn what you can do to reduce the harm caused by global warming.

What you'll learn
Climate change’s impacts on nutrition, migration, and infectious diseases
The research methods used in this field
Strategies to mitigate and adapt to the health impacts of climate change
How changes in Earth’s atmosphere affect health outcomes
How to assess the various ways of addressing the health effects of global warming

Meet the instructors
Aaron Bernstein, Associate Director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard University
Ashish Jha, Director, Harvard Global Health Institute, Harvard University

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Monday, January 7
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Citizen Illegal
Monday, January 7
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline

Discussing Citizen Illegal by Jose Olivarez. The Transnational Literature Series focuses on books concerned with migration, displacement, and exile, with particular emphasis on works in translation. Contact our moderator at brad@brooklinebooksmith.com.

In this stunning debut, poet Jose Olivarez explores the stories, contradictions, joys, and sorrows that embody life in the spaces between Mexico and America. He paints vivid portraits of good kids, bad kids, families clinging to hope, life after the steel mills, gentrifying barrios, and everything in between. Drawing on the rich traditions of Latinx and Chicago writers like Sandra Cisneros and Gwendolyn Brooks, Olivarez creates a home out of life in the in-between. Combining wry humor with potent emotional force, Olivarez takes on complex issues of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and immigration using an everyday language that invites the reader in. Olivarez has a unique voice that makes him a poet to watch.

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Tuesday, January 8
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Sustainability 101: From Foundations to the Future
Tuesday, January 8
8:30 AM – 10:30 AM EST
50 Milk Street, Room Edison, Floor 16, Boston
Cost:  $15 – $40

At USGBC MA, we want to help the green building community redesign the built environment to be more sustainable. As climate change becomes a pressing issue for Boston, professionals are going to need to work together to meet this goal.

But where do you start?

Sometimes, it is good to start with the basics. At our course Sustainability 101: From Foundations to the Future, attendees will learn about the basics of sustainability in the built environment. From the three E’s of sustainability from USGBC, from what the laws of thermodynamics have to do with sustainability, attendees will leave this course with a broader appreciation and understanding of sustainability.

About the instructor, Meredith Elbaum
As a sustainability advocate and educator, I joined the USGBC MA, as Executive Director, in November 2017. Before becoming ED, I was developing climate action plans, master plans, design guidelines and green buildings as President of the Elbaum Group, LLC. Fueled by an interest in materials transparency I launched the Health Product Declaration as its Interim Executive Director. For almost a decade I was Director of Sustainable Design at Sasaki. During that time I helped in the USGBC MA Chapter’s creation and served as a founding board member. I also co-created the Architecture and Design Sustainable Design Leaders Network. I earned a BArch from Rice University and a MSArch from MIT and I currently teach architecture students at Wentworth Institute of Technology. I’m looking forward to advancing net positive communities in Massachusetts and beyond.

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Intro to Bullet Journaling: An analog method to improve your productivity 
Tuesday, January 8
2:00pm to 4:00pm
MIT, Building 2-146, 182 Memorial Drive, Cambridge

Take a digital detox and get organized by learning the analog productivity system that's become a global phenomenon! This session will provide an overview of the Bullet Journal method created by Ryder Carroll and demonstrate how it can be customized to your life.

Bullet journals combine creativity with structure in a flexible format that includes list making, planning, and journaling. The Bullet Journal method emphasises intentionality, mindfulness, and self expression. Come learn about these wellness aspects of bullet journaling and how it can increase your time management skills, self-reflection, and habit-tracking.

Current Bujo enthusiasts are welcome to attend and share their techniques and tips! Examples of notebooks, journals, and scrapbooks from the MIT Institute Archives & Special Collections will also be highlighted to provide a historical context.

Notebooks and pens will be available for participants.

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A National Study of Higher Education: Challenges and Rays of Hope (Part I)
WHEN  Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2019, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard Graduate School of Education, Askwith Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Graduate School of Education
SPEAKER(S)  Professor Howard Gardner
COST  Free
DETAILS  In this special, community-wide 3-part lecture series, psychologist and educator Howard Gardner will share findings from a six year national study of higher education.
How do the chief constituencies in higher education — students, faculty, senior administrators, parents, alumni, trustees, and job recruiters — on 10 disparate campuses understand the opportunities and challenges in the U.S.? In a rapidly altering terrain, what is the future of the liberal arts and sciences — indeed, of quality, non-professional higher education in the 21st century?
Join us for Part I of this special lecture series, a unique opportunity to hear one of Harvard's premier scholars share findings from this comprehensive study for the first time.

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How to Become a Sustainability Magnet
Tuesday, January 8
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Venture Cafe Kendall, One Broadway, Cambridge
Cost:  $8 – $12

The world would be a much better place if more of us had sustainability on our minds and in our hearts, yes? We would shout from the rooftops if the sustainability stuff we come together to talk about at BASG would lead to a bigger conversation and more action, right? 
Fact is, as pointed out in this great article, communicating sustainability, especially educating about sustainability, is no easy task. 
For the first BASG event of the year, co-sponsored by Net Impact Boston, we have invited someone who lives this challenge every day. Let’s start 2019 by learning about new ideas to better connect with friends, family, co-workers and others around our passion!
The National Network of Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation(NNOCCI) was pioneered by the New England Aquarium to create a community of science educators and scientists talking about climate change in ways that make it easy and natural for their audiences to click with them. Since 2010, NNOCCI has run trainings across the U.S. and has members in 170 institutions in 38 states to do just that, reaching millions of people a year. With evidence-based tools, they are effectively helping people talk about climate change in a way that is positive, civic-minded and solutions-focused. Check in with anyone who has attended one of their workshops and you’ll discover hope, confidence and optimism about collective action to address climate change.

On January 8th, we are lucky to have Hannah Pickard, NNOCCI’s Program Manager responsible for network management and operations, give BASG a taste of how NNOCCI is making this much-needed change possible. Hannah has led curriculum development, facilitator training, and alumni support since 2010. She has a background in education program development, implementation and evaluation for families, schools, and community groups.

Hannah and her team will draw on the many workshops they have created and run all over the country to give us tools to have more fun and success when we passionately talk about sustainability. She will also remind us of the words of an attendee a few months back who referred to BASG as a “safe haven” for sustainability professionals, expressing appreciation for the value of having a supportive community and enabling it as being just as important as fostering dialogue that pushes the envelope whenever we gather to tackle big issues. 
January 8th is an evening with BASG you definitely won’t want to miss.

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The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai (Li Po)
Tuesday, January 8
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline 

With the instincts of a master novelist, Ha Jin draws on a wide range of historical and literary sources to weave the life story of Li Bai (701-762), whose poems–shaped by Daoist thought and characterized by their passion, romance, and lust for life–rang throughout the Tang Dynasty. Jin follows Li Bai from his birth on China’s western frontier through his travels as a young man seeking a place among the empire’s civil servants, his wanderings allowing him to hone his poetic craft, share his verses, and win him friends and admirers along the way. In his later years he is swept up in a military rebellion that alters the course of China, and his death is shrouded in speculation and legend to this day. The Banished Immortal is an extraordinary portrait of a poet who both transcended his time and was shaped by it, and whose ability to live, love, and mourn without reservation produced some of the most enduring verses in the world.

Ha Jin left his native China in 1985 to attend Brandeis University. He is the author of eight novels, four story collections, three volumes of poetry, and a book of essays. He has received the National Book Award, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award, the Asian American Literary Award, and the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. In 2014 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in the Boston area and is a professor at the creative writing program at Boston University.

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Thursday, January 17 - Monday, January 21
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Reality Virtually Hackathon
January 17-21st, 2019
MIT Media Lab
Apply by 12/29/18

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Opportunity
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Announcing Destination 2040: The next long-range transportation plan for the Boston region

How would you improve the Boston region’s transportation system? That’s the question at the heart of the MPO’s preparations for Destination 2040, which the MPO expects to adopt in the spring of 2019.

Every four years, the MPO identifies the system’s strengths and weaknesses; forecasts changes in population, employment, and land use; and creates a plan to address existing and future mobility needs. The resulting long-range transportation plan (LRTP) allocates funding for major projects in the Boston region and guides the MPO’s funding of capital investment programs and studies.

Use the new Destination 2040 website at http://ctps.org/lrtp-dev to explore the state of the system; learn how the MPO will identify needs, revisit its vision and goals, and prioritize its investments; and share your own interests, concerns, and ideas.

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Where is the best yogurt on the planet made? Somerville, of course!
Join the Somerville Yogurt Making Cooperative and get a weekly quart of the most thick, creamy, rich and tart yogurt in the world. Members share the responsibility for making yogurt in our kitchen located just outside of Davis Sq. in FirstChurch.  No previous yogurt making experience is necessary.

For more information checkout.

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Free solar electricity analysis for MA residents

Solar map of Cambridge, MA

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Sustainable Business Network Local Green Guide
SBN is excited to announce the soft launch of its new Local Green Guide, Massachusetts' premier Green Business Directory!
To view the directory please visit: http://www.localgreenguide.org
To find out how how your business can be listed on the website or for sponsorship opportunities please contact Adritha at adritha@sbnboston.org

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Boston Food System
"The Boston Food System [listserv] provides a forum to post announcements of events, employment opportunities, internships, programs, lectures, and other activities as well as related articles or other publications of a non-commercial nature covering the area's food system - food, nutrition, farming, education, etc. - that take place or focus on or around Greater Boston (broadly delineated)."
The Boston area is one of the most active nationwide in terms of food system activities - projects, services, and events connected to food, farming, nutrition - and often connected to education, public health, environment, arts, social services and other arenas.   Hundreds of organizations and enterprises cover our area, but what is going on week-to-week is not always well publicized.
Hence, the new Boston Food System listserv, as the place to let everyone know about these activities.  Specifically:
Use of the BFS list will begin soon, once we get a decent base of subscribers.  Clarification of what is appropriate to announce and other posting guidelines will be provided as well.
It's easy to subscribe right now at https://elist.tufts.edu/wws/subscribe/bfs

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The Boston Network for International Development (BNID) maintains a website (BNID.org) that serves as a clearing-house for information on organizations, events, and jobs related to international development in the Boston area. BNID has played an important auxiliary role in fostering international development activities in the Boston area, as witnessed by the expanding content of the site and a significant growth in the number of users.
The website contains:
A calendar of Boston area events and volunteer opportunities related to International Development - http://www.bnid.org/events
A jobs board that includes both internships and full time positions related to International Development that is updated daily - http://www.bnid.org/jobs
A directory and descriptions of more than 250 Boston-area organizations - http://www.bnid.org/organizations
Also, please sign up for our weekly newsletter (we promise only one email per week) to get the most up-to-date information on new job and internship opportunities -www.bnid.org/sign-up
The website is completely free for students and our goal is to help connect students who are interested in international development with many of the worthwhile organizations in the area.
Please feel free to email our organization at info@bnid.org if you have any questions!

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Boston Maker Spaces - 41 (up from 27 in 2016) and counting:  https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zGHnt9r2pQx8.kfw9evrHsKjA&hl=en
Solidarity Network Economy:  https://ussolidarityeconomy.wordpress.com
Bostonsmart.com's Guide to Boston:  http://www.bostonsmarts.com/BostonGuide/

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Links to events at over 50 colleges and universities at Hubevents:  http://hubevents.blogspot.com

Thanks to
Fred Hapgood's Selected Lectures on Science and Engineering in the Boston Area:  http://www.BostonScienceLectures.com
Sustainability at Harvard:  http://green.harvard.edu/events
Startup and Entrepreneurial Events:  http://www.greenhornconnect.com/events/
Cambridge Civic Journal:  http://www.rwinters.com
Cambridge Happenings:   http://cambridgehappenings.org
Cambridge Community Calendar:  https://www.cctvcambridge.org/calendar


If you have an event you would like to see here, the submission deadline is 11 AM on Sundays, as Energy (and Other) Events is sent out Sunday afternoons.
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