Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (April 19, 2012)
EARTH DAY OREGON 2012 “Listen To Our Children” T he 14th annual Earth Day Celebration is an environmentally-based event that celebrates the Earth and its resources. This year’s event theme is Listen To Our Children and features over 40 educational activity booths, the Lane County Master Gardener’s Annual Plant Sale, the John H. Baldwin Film & Lecture Series, a musical main stage, important community awards, and much more! The event is produced by the volunteer efforts of the Earth Day Steering Committee. The Eugene Water & Electric Board will be awarding a grant of up to $100,000 to a local renewable energy and education project, as chosen by EWEB customers who are signed up for the Greenpower program. The winner (the fi nalists are chosen from organizations that are either tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organizations or public or academic institutions) will be announced on the main stage at 1:30 p.m. Also on the main stage at 3:00 p.m. we will announce the winners of the Earth Day Message Contest, which will include cash prizes to youths who have positive earth-friendly messages in three formats. LTD will provide free bus shuttle service from the downtown station to EWEB’s River Edge Plaza during event hours, with special stops at Saturday Market. Lane County Master Gardener Association Spring Garden Fair and Plant Sale (Main EWEB Parking lot, west of main entrance and under Ferry Street Bridge) 10am-5pm Lane County Master Gardener Association (LCMGA) is an Oregon State University Extension Service program that educates Oregonians in Lane County about the art and science of growing and caring for plants. This program also facilitates the training of a highly educated group of volunteers. These volunteers extend sustainable gardening information to their communities through education and outreach programs. At the Garden Fair and Plant Sale, you’ll fi nd thousands of plants available for sale and have an opportunity to talk to growers about their projects and special interests. Booths include: Ask a Master Gardener Ask a Compost Specialist Ask a Master Food Preserver Adaptive Gardening Sustainable Landscaping Tree Fruit Specialist Kid’s Corner Recycled Garden Art & Crafter’s corner Used Books, Master Gardener Journals Used Tools Bake Sale & Snack Bar Silent Auction (11 AM - 2 PM) Plants on sale include: Perennials Annuals Bulbs & Tubers Bamboo & Water Plants Natives Ground covers Grasses Herbs Vegetables, including the latest in grafted tomatoes Trees & Shrubs Succulents Houseplants JOHN H. BALDWIN FILM & LECTURE SERIES (NORTH BLDG., EWEB TRAINING CENTER; BOARD ROOM) PANEL LECTURE - TRAINING CENTER “The State of the Region” 12:30 PM -1:20 PM Introduction by Mayor Kitty Piercy Speakers: Babe O’Sullivan, City of Eugene Sustainability Liaison, and Michael Johns, Fleet Services Manager for Lane County Come and listen to an exciting program on how Lane County and the City of Eugene are working to address sustainability across the region. Mayor Kitty Piercy will introduce speakers Babe O’Sullivan, the City of Eugene Sustainability Liaison and Michael Johns, the Fleet Services Manager at Lane County. Babe and Michael will discuss all of the recent efforts at the City and County level to address sustainability while describing the long-term vision and trajectory of the region. This presentation will reveal the details behind the numbers and the opportunities and efforts at the City and County to continue making this region a leader in sustainability. FILM SERIES SCHEDULE – BOARDROOM Inside-Outside 1:00 PM -1:30 PM INSIDE-OUTSIDE, the fi rst program in the “Home Place” series, explores the problem of recognizing and understanding ecosystems from within their boundaries. Images of Earth from space have provided us with a view from outside, making possible a new, more complete perspective. This program discards the human-centered concept of environment, replacing it with a more universal idea of ecosystems. The ecosphere concept is introduced as an alternate world view, in which Earth itself is conceived as a living organism, as an ecological being. The Age of Stupid 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM THE AGE OF STUPID is the new documentary-drama-animation hybrid from Director Franny Armstrong (McLibel, Drowned Out) and Oscar-winning Producer John Battsek (One Day In September, In the Shadow of the Moon). Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite (In The Name of the Father, Brassed Off, The Usual Suspects) stars as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055. He watches “archive” footage from 2008 and asks: Why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance? Runaway climate change has ravaged the planet by 2055. Pete plays the founder of The Global Archive, a storage facility located in the (now melted) Arctic, preserving all of humanity’s achievements in the hope that the planet might one day be habitable again. Or that intelligent life may arrive and make use of all that we’ve achieved. He pulls together clips of “archive” news and documentary from 1950-2008 to build a message showing what went wrong and why. He focuses on six human stories: - Alvin DuVernay, is a paleontologist helping Shell fi nd more oil off the coast of New Orleans. He also rescued more than 100 people after Hurricane Katrina, which, by 2055, is well known as one of the fi rst “major climate change events.” - Jeh Wadia in Mumbai aims to start-up a new low-cost airline and gets a million Indians fl ying. - Layefa Malemi lives in absolute poverty in a small village in Nigeria from which Shell extracts tens of millions of dollars worth of oil every week. She dreams of becoming a doctor but must fi sh in the oil- infested waters for four years to raise the funds. - Jamila Bayyoud, age 8, is an Iraqi refugee living on the streets of Jordan after her home was destroyed and her was father killed during the US-led invasion of 2003. She’s trying to help her elder brother make it across the border to safety. - Piers Guy is a wind farm developer from Cornwall fi ghting the NIMBYs of Middle England. - Fernand Pareau, an 82-year-old French mountain guide, has witnessed his beloved Alpine glaciers melt by 150 meters. The City Dark 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM THE CITY DARK chronicles the disappearance of darkness. The fi lm follows fi lmmaker (and amateur astronomer) Ian Cheney (King Corn, Big River, Truck Farm), who moves to New York City from Maine and discovers an urban sky almost completely devoid of stars. He poses a deceptively simple question, “What do we lose, when we lose the night?” Exploring the threat of killer asteroids in Hawaii, tracking disoriented hatching turtles along the Florida coast, and rescuing birds on Chicago streets injured by collisions with buildings, Cheney unravels the myriad of implications of a globe glittering with lights--including increased breast cancer rates from exposure to light at night, and a generation of kids without a glimpse of the universe above. In six chapters, weaving together cutting-edge science with personal, meditative sequences refl ecting on the human relationship to the sky, THE CITY DARK shines new light on the meaning of the dark. The fi lm features stunning astrophotography and a cast of eclectic scientists, philosophers, historians, and lighting designers including Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson, astronaut Don Pettit, neurologist Dr. George Brainard, Harvard Medical School scientist Dr. Steven Lockley, cosmologist Chris Impey, and lighting designer Hervé Descottes.
