YSC will be hosting a forum entitled "Thoughts on The Law" March 31, 6pm

The meeting was in an ecletic room complete with funky old couches and aburned out old cathode ray T.V. that probably screened the Kennedy-Nixon debate to an entire neighborhood. We started out the meeting with everyone introducing themselves and explaining why they like their favorite musician – this welcome introduced me to alot of musicians I didn’t know about including Alexander Rybak (violin and folk), Jack White (forget what), Star F***king Hipster (political lyrics), and Old Crow Radio Show (bluegrass) were scribbled down in my notes as definate ones to seek out. About 11 folks were in attendance and when another two others showed up a few minutes late we quickly did the rounds again to introduce ourselves. Taylor had an agenda set up for the meeting and after reviewing with the group what was on her list, asked if anyone else had other things to add to the agenda, and thusly the meeting began!

First off, the YSC is putting in a garden in a few weeks over in the Pleasant Valley Neighborhood – a whopping 19 beds, including two for Food Not Bombs and two for 2nd Harvest! They’ve already planted 400 starts, seeds included varieties of heirloom tomatoes! The YSC is looking for additional places to get starts growing – I mentioned that the EWU greenhouses might be a possibility.

Second, the Curriculum program for the Gardens. The YSC will be training 30 high school students age 14-24 in gardening, and is currently planning the curriculum for the garden. YSC members will teach the program whenever possible, and bring in experts when its just not possible for YSC folks to learn enough of the subject in order to teach it to others. Ideas include programs about gardening techniques, animal husbandry (field trip to Tolstoy!), and the history of the Spokane Tribe (including ethnobotany?!). If young folks from Sustainable-EWU would like to get involved in planning a curriculum, meet over at the Community Building 25 west Main Street, in the Community Minded Enterprises Office at 4:30 this Tuesday, March 29.

Youth Sustainability Council is seeking submissions for their upcoming Arts Extravaganza!

Third, YoSpo! YoSpo is a Young Spokane art event happening April 15 at the Old Music City Building 1011 W. First. So folks who are under 25, send in your submissions – art, video, and some music samples if you’d like to perform by April 3rd to the YSC website. There will be space for installation art and also human movement art in the store-front window (mimes, dancing, gesture art).

Fourth! The Grow Show installation. Essentially its like the Sister Cities project but even better — instead of exchanging students or just solidarity, Portland, Spokane, Olympia, and Tacoma are exchanging… shopping carts filled with food producing and native plants, and lots and lots of multi-city love. Check out a write up about this event by Black Magic Rabbit (BMR is a local Spokane art group that is dedicated to bringing to light current issues and providing solutions that are rooted in community, sustainability, creativity, and cultural equity). For folks interested in helping to make the cart, the YSC cart’s theme is around growing new life out of trash, so bring your trash that is able to be fashioned into a container to grow plants in — especially needed is colorful trash. Join in making the YSC cart over at the Peaceful Valley Community Center at 3:30 this Monday, March 28.

I’ve gotta say, this was one of the best meetings I’ve been to in a long long time – great people, incredibly creative ideas and so much enthusiasm! I’m glad to be living in Spokane County!

The University of Idaho regional Sustainability Symposium is next week! Sustainable EWU will be blogging about Bill McKibben’s speaking event Wednesday night and the Workshops and Skillshares on Thursday and Friday so if you can’t make it, we’ll be filling in everyone back here at home.

And now for some Old Crow Medicine Show…

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Thanks folks — they look great!

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Brent Schneider has also created some great looking logos. Take a look at these logo designs he sketched up for us:

Anyone else that has artwork can feel free to email us anytime with submissions. We’d love to have things to use on the website and in our newsletter.

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We’ve had two great movie nights, where we watched “Fresh: The Movie” and “Black Gold” and got to have some great snacks and discussion. Last time, for “Black Gold”, J.J. from Doma Coffee Roasting Company came out and did a free demo of some of his delicious, locally roasted, fair trade, organic coffee. J.J. also shared his knowledge about the Ethiopian coffee cooperative that his beans came from and contrasted it with the industrial/corporate coffee trade.

Alex and Nathan have been going to classes during the day, and giving a talk about the Sustainable Food Project which has both been getting a lot of signatures on our petition, and drawing new people into the group.

We’ve also befriended a faculty member, Paul Lindholdt of the English Dept. Paul has decades of personal experience with the local and regional environmental movement, and will be helping us with publishing our upcoming newsletter, setting up educational/recreational trips to Turnbull Wildlife Refuge, and preparing for two symposia (one at EWU and one at the University of Idaho) where we will be giving presentations about our group and what we are trying to accomplish.

We’re also working on drafting models for campus gardens and sustainable dining systems at EWU. (We’re in an early stage on these proposal, and this is a place where we need as much community feedback as possible – so come and share your ideas with us)

KYRS Thin Air Community Radio is going to be giving us some airtime, where we can talk about our current projects and goals. Traffic is steadily increasing on the website, and more and more people are stopping in and making suggestions and getting involved. Things are looking great here :) Get in touch with us if you want to learn more about what’s going on, or how you can help.

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Much of the site is under construction, but several things are working right now. At this point, the discussion boards are up and running, and are the preferred place for you to leave feedback for us regarding the website. It’s very easy to participate in the boards — just click “Start new discussion”. You probably won’t even have to create an account to start posting — if you’ve got Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo, or Twitter accounts, you can sign in with those with one click. Please drop by and share your suggestions and questions.

Another thing that’s working right now is online submission of the “Real Food” petition. This should make it a lot easier for us to gather signatures for the petition. Share this link with your friends, and have them sign the petition.

There is an online version of the Campus Garden proposal, up for review. Anything you would add or change? Any problems you see with it? Tell us about them.

We’ve also set up an events system that lets us input event information (e.g. date/location/contacts), and will automatically run a list of recent events through the website, in the sidebar (under “Upcoming Events”). If you have events you want to announce, just let us know, and we’ll show you how to add them in so that they appear on the website. Feel free to come up with events on your own — if you want to throw a local food cookout, let us know, and we’ll let everyone know about it.

Also in the sidebar, there is a collection of links to high-quality web resources on sustainability and social justice. We’ve focused heavily on things like the Evergreen College Center for Ecological Living and Learning (CELL) and Yale Sustainable Food Project — i.e. programs that demonstrate conclusively that getting sustainable food on campus is a win for everyone in the community. Hopefully, they can act as models for a successful program at EWU.

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