Transition Cotati

Boy, things have been hopping!! The momentum just keeps building for Transition Cotati. It's great fun and so wonderful to have so many interested and eager folks working together on this. My gratitude cup runneth over!

The Transition Town presentation by Jennifer Gray that happened at FrogSong Cohousing on January 26 came off *really well*. Jennifer gave an excellent presentation, we had a full house of interested folks, and the buzz afterwards was intense! The Transition Town concept strikes a chord for a lot of folks, I think, because it's fun, positive, inclusive and deeply relevant to our times.

We've got a lot planned for the awareness-raising phase of our project: two events per month from now until August! The first event happens on Friday, February 8 at 7:30 pm at the Cotati Community Center (216 E School St), It's a showing of A Crude Awakening -- a powerful film about the implications of peak oil for all of us. When we screened it at FrogSong Cohousing people in the audience were stunned by its message. This has been called the best introduction to peak oil that's out there. So please come and bring some friends to discuss this movie over popcorn.

And that's just the first event -- we've got more movies, speakers, poets, local food events, and other juicy stuff to come. We're putting the finishing touches on some publicity -- a printed program and other items. They look fabulous, and we've gotten great help on understanding media outreach channels. Thank you, thank you! We're also working on developing a base of photos for Transition Cotati that we can use on our main website (when it comes online in all its beauty) and in other materials.

I've also had the opportunity to collaborate with other sustainability-related organizations in the county. A dozen of us met at Sonoma Mountain Village a few weeks ago to start a conversation around creating synergy among the groups. I'll report back as it evolves.

There's so much more I could tell you about, but this is getting long. Sorry it's been a while since the last update, but I hardly have a chance to catch my breath some days, it seems! Like I said, it sure is great, meaningful fun, though!

The next meeting of the steering committee is on February 4 at 4:30 pm at FrogSong. We would love to have you join us. We'll be brainstorming means to put together the person-power that will be needed to orchestrate the scheduled events. So come if you want to get more involved.

One other thing I wanted you all to know about is that Transition Cotati will be tabling at the Focus the Nation event at Sonoma State in the afternoon on February 7. If you haven't heard of it, it will be an all-day teach-in/sustainability fair and all are invited. See http://ssufocusthenation.com/Agenda.aspx

Last, but not least, I want to put in a plug for Wendy Krupnick's spring class series. Wendy was the garden coordinator for the Sustainable Agriculture program at SRJC for a number of years. She has a wealth of skills and knowledge to share in her classes that are so important as we head into a relocalized future. I've attached her class flier.

I'll end this here, but I think you get a sense of the groundswell of activity that's happening! Thanks for being part of it all, and I look forward to more. More fun, more energy, more meaning and more connectedness.