General Meetings

Previous Topics:

Pre-Thanksgiving Community Pot Luck & Conversation

Join us to eat, meet and talk about building a sustainable future together. Please bring a healthy dish to share. The Foundation of Sustainable Living meeting - Free at the Live Oak Green Grange, 1900 17th Avenue, Santa Cruz on Thursday, November 20, 2008 from 7-9 p.m.

Edible Landscape Anyone?

Brent Greene will talk to us about designing edible, aesthetic and multi purpose landscapes right in our own yards. It’s fun, beautiful and practical. Join The Foundation of Sustainable Living (FOSL) for the next General public meeting Thursday, August 28, 2008 at the Live Oak Green Grange, 1900 17th Avenue in Santa Cruz from 7-9 p.m. Open Leadership Council meeting after presentation.

Informative Potluck and meeting

How to gather oak acorns and prepare them for eating, how to store food and prepare for emergencies and how to mill wheat and other grains

We'd like to hear your thoughts at our Potluck and meeting

With world oil prices are soaring and gas creeping toward $4/gallon. We have problems coming our way. Can you afford that long commute much longer?

The average item on the grocery store shelf travels about 1200 miles. How much longer will the price of food imported from far away places be affordable? Already wheat prices have quadrupled in one year.

The real estate bubble is bursting, mortgages are being defaulted in record numbers and the government is having to bail out the financial institutions that made those risky loans. The economy is going into a recession

Meanwhile, atmospheric CO 2? levels are rising and the climate is changing. Has the rainfall in your bioregion fallen from previous levels? Does your community have enough water. Who owns the water supply?

Do you trust the government or the transnational corporations to take care of you in times of disaster. The Foundation of Sustainable Living was formed because the example of what happened to New Orleans did not inspire our confidence in either.

If you're you thinking about finding strength in community and self sufficiency, the Foundation Of
Sustainable Living has been thinking, talking and working on this for about five years.

We'd like to hear your thoughts. You're invited to our potluck and discussion on Thursday, March 27, 2008, from 7p.m. to 9p.m., at the Live Oak Grange, 1900 17th Ave. in Santa Cruz. Please bring a dish and your ideas.

Speaking of Solar

What are the most recent innovations to solar energy? How can communities best utilize this ample renewable resource?

Interested people can learn more about solar technology and how to best utilize it at the Foundation of Sustainable Living general meeting on Thursday, February 28 at 7 p.m. Admission is FREE. The meeting will take place at the Live Oak Green Grange, 1900 17th Avenue in Santa Cruz.

Dan Camacho, Santa Cruz Solar Consultant for REC Solar, discusses how advances in solar technology, the relentless rise of conventional electricity prices, and increasingly compelling environmental and geopolitical realities are leading homeowners, businesses and government entities to invest in solar power systems at an accelerating rate. In the process of going solar, you can contribute to a cleaner, safer, more sustainable future for us all.

Next Steps

We will celebrate our vision of Sustainability by taking FOSL to the next level. If community is part of your future we want to know who you are and what your wants and needs are. You will also be updated on the opportunities becoming available now and over the next few years.

There will be lively conversation and fun meeting each other. Please join us to celebrate sustainability. Please bring a snack to share if you feel so inclined.

FOSL and You: Where we are today and how to reach tomorrow

The next Foundation of Sustainable Living general meeting will be about our current progress toward realizing our goal of acquiring land in Mendocino County to create the community and an education campus for sustainability on all levels of life. We will be detailing the tasks for moving forward and asking our membership and friends to come aboard and lend a hand and/or a donation to keep the momentum going.

We cannot know what the future holds; but you, like many of us are, perhaps, uneasy and unsure of what you can do about it. Join us for an exploration of what FOSL is doing right and now how you can be a part of a sustainable future.

SOIL: The Mystical and the Practical

Our sustainable food supply begins and ends with the quality of our soil. Please join us to hear Parker Watwood, founder of FOSL, talk about how to steward the land for sustainability and quality yield. The presentation will be followed by a stimulating community conversation.

The Future of Food
Are you worried about the quality and safety of the foods on your supermarket shelf? Do you know how many of them came from genetically modified crops or livestock? Are you concerned about multinational corporations getting control of the world’s food crop seeds?

How can you be sure of getting wholesome real foods without any ingredients added to them without your knowledge?
If these issues concern you, come to the Foundation of Sustainable Living’s next general meeting at the Live Oak Grange at 1900 17th Avenue in Santa Cruz on Thursday, July 26 from 7-9 p.m.. There will be a showing of the film, The Future of Food and a community discussion after the film.
There is a revolution happening in the farm fields and on the dinner tables of America -- a revolution that is transforming the very nature of the food we eat.

THE FUTURE OF FOOD offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade.
From the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada to the fields of Oaxaca, Mexico, this film gives a voice to farmers whose lives and livelihoods have been negatively impacted by this new technology. The health implications, government policies and push towards globalization are all part of the reason why many people are alarmed by the introduction of genetically altered crops into our food supply.

Shot on location in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, THE FUTURE OF FOOD examines the complex web of market and political forces that are changing what we eat as huge multinational corporations seek to control the world's food system. The film also explores alternatives to large-scale industrial agriculture, placing organic and sustainable agriculture as real solutions to the farm crisis today.

The film's writer/director, Deborah Koons Garcia, the widow of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, is a prominent figure in the increasingly vocal antibiotech movement in California. Her film integrates vintage footage (e.g., from the 1973 Asilomar conference) with profiles and personal stories from critics of agbiotech. Agricultural policy expert Charles Benbrook, activist Andrew Kimbrell, and others appear as the film's heroes in a struggle against the release of GM crops into the environment.

"This stylish film is not just for food faddists and nutritionists.
It is a look at something we might not want to see: Monsanto, Roundup and Roundup-resistant seeds, collectively wreaking havoc on American farmers and our agricultural neighbors around the world. In the end, this documentary is a eloquent call to action."
--- The Telluride Daily Planet

Ethanol Auto Fuel: The Straight Scoop

Ethanol has been all over the news for months. Come hear David Blume, author of the soon to be released "Alcohol Can Be A Gas," give you the inside scoop of what's going on in the ethanol revolution. He'll cover the hot topics such as: Does it take more oil to make it than you get back? Food vs. Fuel, Can we really make enough, how clean is alcohol compared to gas, can any car run on it? and does it help or hurt global warming? Plus you'll hear about juicy tax benefits, and what's going on in organizing an alcohol fuel station in Santa Cruz.

David Blume, a nationally known local treasure, was the writer and host of the PBS 10 part series "Alcohol as Fuel."

The Liberty Dollar. A currency for the sustainable community.

Money makes the world go 'round. For thousands of years societies have used a variety of materials as mediums of exchange for goods and services, what we think of today as "money", some more successful than others. "We'll take a brief look at the history of money in the world, and in the United States, and how our money has undergone a fundamental change over the past 90 year" says Dave Lubeck. The core of that change has been moving from a commodity-based currency of gold and silver, to a debt-based currency of paper, and "promises to pay".

The Liberty Dollar offers a valuable commodity currency, backed by gold and silver. I will introduce what I like to call "people's money", and discuss how it might provide a dependable means for barter within sustainable communities.

The Social Side of Sustainability: The Unspoken Key to Thriving in Any Community

Many people yearn for community because we are social creatures who long for fulfilling relationships of all kinds. We want to live a meaningful life, to feel excited, energized, and passionate about our contribution. With the challenges we see in the world, society is hardly delivering on our dreams these days and it's not getting better. We are living unsustainably-on the earth and with each other.

Humanity is in a huge transition. Will we have a global collapse or will we survive and thrive? More than ever before, the future is in our hands. Sustainability is more than organic agriculture. We have to ask, " 'Who' is holding the shovel?"

The Foundation of Sustainable Living (FOSL) takes a balanced approach to building sustainable community by developing skill sets for both social and sustainable technologies. This month FOSL is hosting "The Social Side of Sustainability: The Unspoken Key to Thriving in Any Community," with Hina Pendle, Ph.D.

"There have been many communities and organizations that have come and gone. The most critical factor is human relationships; learning to work and play well together. Our future depends on it."

Join us for a lively interactive evening of presentations and playful practices about how to thrive together even in the perfect storm of climate change, political uncertainty, unsustainable consumption and financial imbalance.

To survive as a healthy humane culture, we must connect to talk, innovate, plan and act together now.

"The Social Side of Sustainability: The Unspoken Key to Thriving in Any Community," will take place at the Live Oak Green Grange, 1900 17th Avenue, Santa Cruz, on February 22nd from 7-9 p.m.