Great Lakes Bioneers

Happy Spring! or is it Late Winter! or Spring!?

Well, it’s Michigan, anyway. As we await more green shoots, here’s what’s cooking up north:

First, Thanks For Your Support!
We had an amazingly great showing of people who came to our Locavore Potluck and the movie, King Corn. We surprised ourselves with the turn out and were really happy to help showcase the new Serenity Tea Bar and Cafe as well as bring many new faces (and farmers) to the State Theater, where Great Lakes Bioneers was in lights on the marquee. How fun!

Last Call For Presenter Proposals
In case you haven’t written it down yet, the Great Lakes Bioneers Conference will be October 17-19, 2008 right here in Traverse City, MI. Are you doing something that you’d like to share with others? Know someone else who is? The Bioneers mission is based on the promotion and application of practical solutions and innovative strategies for restoring Earth and our communties. Presenters are not paid, though we offer complimentary registration, lodging and meals for those selected.

Applicants will be notified by June 1. Fill our our application form online by May 14 if you are interested in being a presenter or would like to recommend someone to us.
Website Redesign: Your Input Requested
We want to incorporate YOUR website wishes as we redesign the GLBioneers website. Let us know what you’d like to see more of, what you’d like to see less of, and ideas to make it better. The website is there for you, so please let us know what works. Send comments to info(at)glbconference.org.

Have Time to Help? Volunteer with Us!
We need volunteers to help us create outreach materials and displays, update our press contact lists, do data entry, and hang posters & deliver brochures across the state. We also have some fun new outreach ideas that we think you’ll enjoy. Including,

• Bioneer Walk-Abouts: canvass for Bioneers! We’ll start knocking on doors later this spring.
• Salons, Brunches, and Ice Cream Socials: Interested in hosting a Bioneer event for your friends and neighbors? We’ll help!

More volunteer needs are coming as we close in on this year’s conference, that’s right, October 17-19. Let us know your skills, talents, and availability and we’ll help you help us! Contact Tara(at)ecoSEEDS.org or call 231.947.0312

Final Note: Is Your Community Bike Friendly? Take this test; it’s short.

Happy Spring! or is it Late Winter! or Spring!?

Well, it’s Michigan, anyway. As we await more green shoots, here’s what’s cooking up north:

First, Thanks For Your Support!
We had an amazingly great showing of people who came to our Locavore Potluck and the movie, King Corn. We surprised ourselves with the turn out and were really happy to help showcase the new Serenity Tea Bar and Cafe as well as bring many new faces (and farmers) to the State Theater, where Great Lakes Bioneers was in lights on the marquee. How fun!

Last Call For Presenter Proposals
In case you haven’t written it down yet, the Great Lakes Bioneers Conference will be October 17-19, 2008 right here in Traverse City, MI. Are you doing something that you’d like to share with others? Know someone else who is? The Bioneers mission is based on the promotion and application of practical solutions and innovative strategies for restoring Earth and our communties. Presenters are not paid, though we offer complimentary registration, lodging and meals for those selected.

Applicants will be notified by June 1. Fill our our application form online by May 14 if you are interested in being a presenter or would like to recommend someone to us.
Website Redesign: Your Input Requested
We want to incorporate YOUR website wishes as we redesign the GLBioneers website. Let us know what you’d like to see more of, what you’d like to see less of, and ideas to make it better. The website is there for you, so please let us know what works. Send comments to info(at)glbconference.org.

Have Time to Help? Volunteer with Us!
We need volunteers to help us create outreach materials and displays, update our press contact lists, do data entry, and hang posters & deliver brochures across the state. We also have some fun new outreach ideas that we think you’ll enjoy. Including,

• Bioneer Walk-Abouts: canvass for Bioneers! We’ll start knocking on doors later this spring.
• Salons, Brunches, and Ice Cream Socials: Interested in hosting a Bioneer event for your friends and neighbors? We’ll help!

More volunteer needs are coming as we close in on this year’s conference, that’s right, October 17-19. Let us know your skills, talents, and availability and we’ll help you help us! Contact Tara(at)ecoSEEDS.org or call 231.947.0312

Final Note: Is Your Community Bike Friendly? Take this test; it’s short.

This Just In, Corporations are ruling the world! OK, so that’s old news but if your looking for a comprehensive and entertaining look at the creation of the modern corporate machine, visit our friends at the State Theatre (www.statetheatrtc.org) tonight to view the screening of THE CORPORATION (www.thecorporation.com).

Taking the corporation’s legal status as a “person” to its logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist’s couch to ask “What kind of person is it?” Provoking, witty, sweepingly informative…and, either depressing as hell or a stimulus package of a different sort.

When: Tonight!!! April 28 at 7:30 at the Traverse City State Theatre… www.statetheatretc.org
This film is part of the on going Monday night Community film series, tonight’s host is the Unitarian/Universalist group

Great Lakes Bioneers’ founders, Bob Russell and Sally VanFleck, were featured in this week’s free weekly The Northern Express. The feature is an interview with writer Anne Stanton discussing the state of the world. Those who know them will appreciate Stanton’s introduction: “Talking with Sally VanFleck and Bob Russell can either be highly motivating or deeply depressing.”

Look for the papers around Northern Michigan, they are literally everywhere, or read the article online after it is archived in a week or two at Northern Express Archive.

Second Annual Skill Swap–registration now open!
Presented by our friends at ISLAND and the Wagbo Peace Center is now taking registrations for the event on May 10, 2008 from 9 to 3 at Wagbo Peace Center in East Jordan. On display with hands on experience are 15 skills that build self-reliance, taught by your friends and neighbors, along with a fresh local and wild foods lunch and a post-workshop contra dance! Skills include bread baking, seed starting, irrigation for water saving, handmade paper making, timber stand improvement and more!

Early registration is $25 per person, kids 14 and under free! Add lunch for just $5.

All the information you need and online registration is at www.artmeetsearth.org/skillswap.htmlSkills Workshops:

Session I (9:30 to 10:55)
Baking Bread: Yeasted & Sourdough
Seed Starting & Transplanting
Irrigation for Water Saving
Handmade Paper Making
Timber Stand Improvement

Session II (11:05 to 12:30)
Chicken Processing
Seed Saving
Earth Floor Construction
Handmade Soap
Cook for a Crowd (& make lunch!)

Session III (1:30 to 2:55)
Friction Fire Starting
Cultured Foods
All About Herbs
Pruning Fruit Trees
Earthwise Cleaning Products

Do you have some spare time? A talent to share? We have lots of needs leading up to the conference, and sometimes we have needs that we don’t even know we have until a talented and giving person suggests something. If you’re interested email our new superstar, Tara at tara@ecoseeds.org

If you want to help, here are a few of our current volunteer needs:

1. Creating a tabletop display for use at conferences and events
2. Doing data entry to our database of interested people and organizations
3. Updating our press list

Northern Michigan just can’t seem to fit Earth Day into a one day. What’s going on?

The building of the Earth Day parade (Building Revolution), Odom’s 10th Anniversary festivities & tour, Oryana’s 35th Party, the annual NMEAC EOY dinner where we will present our 2008 Bioneers Award, the Compost Give-a-way, the EDay Parade, the Empty Bowls Benefit…and that’s not even all of it…

For a complete low down of events, go to the Progressive Calendar at www.traverseareaprogressives.org

See you there, or somewhere in between.

Once again we are honored to be invited as part of the annual NMEAC Environmentalist of the Year Event.

WHEN: Friday, 18 April 2008 From: 6:00pm–9:00pm
WHERE: The Waterfront Conference Center, US 31 North at 4 Mile Road.
WHAT: Good food, good company and deserving awards. Keynote speaker will be Dr. Howard Tanner, former head of the MDNR and lifelong conservation advocate. Open to the Public and tickets available at the Door- adults$20.00, seniors $10.00 , kids $5.00

The Great Lakes BIONEERS will also be presenting the annual Bioneers award. And, since we just can’t wait, this year’s BOY goes to acclaimed author and activist, Stephanie Mills.

Check out www.nmeac.org or www.glbconference.org for additional information.

The Great Lakes BIONEERS Award goes to a person whose life-work embodies the bioneer principles of interconnectedness, development of healthy relationships, and respect for the inherent intelligence of all life and ecological systems. This Award is for those who go beyond sustaining their home communities, but heal and regenerate them as well. For being an avenue toward hope.
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Stephanie Mills has been engaged in the ecology movement for more than thirty years, and in 1996 was named by Utne Reader as one of the world’s leading visionaries. Stephanie Mills is an author, editor, lecturer and ecological activist who has concerned herself with the fate of the earth and humanity since 1969, when her commencement address at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., drew the attention of a nation. Her speech, which the New York Times called “perhaps the most anguished statement” of the year’s crop of valedictory speeches, predicted a bleak future.

Stephanie Mills’s account of the simple life reaches deep into classical sources of pleasure - good food, good health, good friends, and particularly the endless delights of the natural world. One of the primary motivations for her pursuit of simplicity is her concern about the impacts of a consumerist lifestyle on the natural world. Mills touches on broad range of topics relating to that issue - social justice, biological extinctions, the global economy, and also more personal aspects such as friendship, the process of country living, the joys of physical exertion, the challenges of a writer’s life, and the natural history and seasonal delights of a life lived close to nature. An overarching theme is the destructiveness of consumerism, and how even a simple life affects a wide range of organisms and adds strain to the earth’s systems. The author uses her own experience as an entry point to the discussion with self humor and lyrical prose that bring big topics to a personal level.

Her book: Epicurean Simplicity is beautifully crafted, fluid, inspiring, and enlightening, examining topics of critical importance that affect us all. It celebrates the pleasures, beauty, and fulfillment of a simple life, a goal being sought by Americans from all walks of life, from harried single parents to corporate CEOs. For fans of natural history or personal narrative, for those concerned about social justice and the environment, and for those who have come to know and love Stephanie Mills through her speaking and writing, Epicurean Simplicity is a rare treasure. So many people who have read this book, have genuinely been touched by it, and wish that they could - yes - live that life. Her new book, published and released in 2007 is called Tough Little Beauties and examines issues that remain timely: overpopulation, ecological degradation, and the Peak Oil crisis as well as a lived spirituality.

The Award will presented on April the 18th at the Annual NMEAC Environmentalist of the Year Award from 6 – 9 pm at the Waterfront Conference Center in Traverse Cit. For more information about the event and NMEAC, visit their Web site at www.nmeac.org

Wow. Thank you to all of those who made last night one of the most exciting Monday nights the Traverse City State Theatre has seen- in March no-less. We had a strong turn out of over 450 view King Corn, which, according to co-producer and c0-star Ian Cheney might just be the most who have seen the film at one time since its release. Ian was in attendance and led an intriguing conversation about food and food culture after the film. If you missed it, try to catch IPR’s Bob Allen’s piece this afternoon or online after today for a little taste.

We started off the night with a grand potluck across the street at the Serenity Tea Bar and Café. Over 150 came to participate in the Locavore Hors d’Oeuvres Challenge, watch the premier of Talkin’ Bout Making Culture, and check out Traverse City’s new downtown hangout.

The Great Lakes Bioneers says thank you to our co-sponsor Oryana, our reception host Serenity Tea Bar and Café and Edible Grande Traverse & Michigan Land Use Institute for additional contribution.

Hope to see you soon!