Events

Brown Bag: Women’s Commission
for Refugee Women and Children

Presenter: Carolyn Makinson, Executive Director
Pacific Room at Tides
Thursday, September 4
12:30p to 1:30p

The Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children works to improve the lives and defend the rights of refugee women, children and youth around the world.

Carolyn will be speaking about their Fuel & Firewood and Detention & Asylum initiatives, covering topics such as

• Families and children seeking asylum in the US are held in a former prison in Texas, with minimal access to education, health care and outdoor recreation.
• Women and girls risk rape every day in Darfur and other conflict settings as they go out to collect firewood to cook food for their families.

Find out what the Women's Commission is doing to solve these and other problems in humanitarian settings.

“Waste Not”+ Film Screening: “Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home”

*Pizza* Brown Bag
Presentation by:
Lena Strayhorn + Arlyn Bull
Pacific Room at Tides
Thursday, September 11
Presentation: 12:00 to 12:20p
Screening: 76 mins
Free pizza lunch

How do we dispose of those organic soy milk containers? And what about those plastic and metal bottle lids...? Lena and Arlyn will give you concrete examples of common items that are often improperly disposed. The presentation will offer improved ways of making recycling and composting easier. The easier you make it, the more people recycle and compost. Let’s bring Thoreau Center to Zero Waste!

About the film: Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home is a feature documentary about how the family household has become one of the most ferocious environmental predators of our time. Writer/Director Andrew Nisker takes an average urban family, the McDonalds, and asks them to keep every scrap of garbage that they create for three months. He then talks them on a journey to find out where it all goes and what it's doing to the world. From organic waste to the stuff they flush down the toilet, the plastic bags they use to the water they drink our of bottles, the air pollution they create when transporting the kids around, to using lights at Christmas, the McDonalds discover that for every action there is a reaction that affects them and the entire planet.

Thoreau Gallery Opening Reception: Wanderings

Artist: Livia C. Stein
Thursday, September 18
5:00p to 8:00p
Exhibition dates:
September 18 through November 14, 2008

Please join us in celebration of our upcoming exhibit “Wanderings,” by Oakland artist Livia C. Stein. “Wanderings” takes us away from and brings us back to the well-loved and familiar. It joins together multiple lives and synthesizes them into a crazy quilt of the artist’s wandering of the mind. Stein addresses conflict, confrontation, compromise, negotiation, and much more. Her images at first glance look light and playful but on closer inspection reveal the unexpected.

The Seed Gallery Features:
Hereafter, Futures With Which We Can Live?

Artists: ArtSeed students and mentors and participants from the Burnett Child Development Center, Your Health Adult Day Center, Bay School of San Francisco, Sherman Elementary School, First Unitarian Universalist Society, and the Faithful Fools
Closing Reception: Friday, September 26, 5:00p to 7:00p
Exhibition dates: August 22 through September 26

Young artists explore images and ideas running the gamut from transgression to meditation. This exhibit features the keynote project, Urban Art: 11th Hour, in which Young ArtSeed artists are documenting diverse forms of graffiti that have accumulated inside the Public Health Services Hospital in the Presidio. The hospital has been vacant since the early 1980s and has been used by teens and adults as a forum for urban mark-making. Two large wings of the hospital will be demolished next winter so that the historic hospital building can be rehabilitated for housing. Under the mentorship of professional artists, young people, from their perspectives as beginners in the field, will have the last word on graffiti that is sometimes political or especially troubling. Parts of this documentary material will be used to stimulate discussions around why under-appreciated structures attract entry and youthful self expression, with a hope that this inquiry will seed a community needs assessment for a Creative Work Space attracting youth (and the young at heart) to a safe and lawful outlet for self-discovery and community.

Bicycling as a Practical Life Style

Brown Bag Presentation by: Pete Lester
Pacific Room at Tides
Thursday, September 25
12:30p to 1:30p

Join Pete Lester of the Sports Basement as he presents the benefits of biking and how new bike commuters can get started and feel safe on the road.

Frequently non-cyclists don't realize how practical bicycles are. Cycling to work or for errands really is plausible for most people. It's not hard, and it's something you can really be proud of. It's fun to see how often you can replace the car with your bike, and you're getting in shape and saving money while doing it. You owe it to yourself to give practical cycling a try - few activities are more rewarding.