Sierra Club Meeting: Wildflowers
John and Mary Beth Lohse will give a presentation on Wildflowers of Southeast Ohio. Come see why Ohio is one of the best places to be in spring. Bring your field guide and learn some tricks for identifying flowers in the wild.

Sponsor:
Good Earth Farm

Farmers' Market
Get your fresh, local, delicious groceries at the Athens Farmers' Market.

10am - 1pm

Market on State Street Parking Lot, 1000 East State St.

Transition Town: Athens
Transition towns is a movement developed by Rob Hopkins as a citizen's action approach for easing our transition from a more consumer lifestyle to a more sustainable existence. It was stimulated by the awareness of the pressing social issues of peak oil and climate change with the current economic crisis becoming a major factor as well. This is an introductory presentation of the history, principles, and steps that offer possible solutions to what a transition town might look like. Every community is different with their own unique solutions and approach. This framework offers possibilities for exploration on an individual basis.

Jim Merkel: Being Locavore
Are you tired of eating food that is grown by peasants in monocultures, doused with pesticides, zapped and wrapped, that sits in a warehouse and then gets shipped across a continent to you? Join Jim Merkel for a scrumptious lecture.

Initially trained as an electrical engineer, Jim Merkel spent twelve years designing industrial and military systems. After witnessing the devastation following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, however, he concluded that global problems had become so urgent as to require immediate action. He consequently quit his job and began a new career as an environmental activist and spokesman. Merkel is the founder of the Global Living Project founder and author of Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth (2003).

Vegan Cooking Workshop
Come at 7 pm to help cook, 9 pm to eat. Free to all but $3 suggested donation for a vegan meal focusing on local foods.

Grain Food - Sustainability Film/Workshop Series:
Local farmers Michelle Ajamian & Brandon Jaeger of the Appalachian Staple Foods Collaborative will kick off our Earth Month series with a presentation, "Building a Regional Staple Food System." We will add some food for thought with a few film shorts.

Sponsor:
Community Food Initiatives

Beehive Collective: Dismantling Monocultures
A presentation on "Dismantling Monoculture," featuring a 16 foot banner of original artwork storybook by The Beehive Design Collective.

The mission of the Beehive Collective is to cross-pollinate the grassroots through the use of imagery as an effective tool for organizing and educating. The graphic campaigns of the Beehive Collective are the product of interviews and exchanges focused on the globally pertinent issues of our time: from struggles for sovereignty and widespread indigenous resistance in Latin
America, to biotechnology’s pursuit of godhood, to ecosystem-shattering industrial development, and so-forth.

Most interesting is their methodology.  The "bees" create collaborative, hand-illustrated posters of dizzying intricacy which are patchwork “quilts” of personal stories related to them in their travels. In their incendiary “Dismantling Monoculture” presentation, the bees take participants on a tour through their larger than life graphic trilogy of the multifold effects of globalization, militarism, and resource extraction in the Western Hemisphere. 

Screening: End of the Line (2009)
Debuting at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and playing in hundreds of cinemas, aquariums, and universities across the US and the United Kingdom, Rupert Murray’s THE END OF THE LINE is nothing short of the inconvenient truth about the devastating effect of overfishing on the world’s ecosystems. The first major documentary to reveal the extent of the crisis facing today's oceans, THE END OF THE LINE challenges us to imagine a world without fish…period.

The New York Times calls it “vital”, “well-researched,” and “evenhanded ”: a film “that subverts our ancient faith in the ocean as an inexhaustible resource, offering a persuasive case that the major species of edible fish are headed for extinction.”

Filmed over two years, the documentary follows the indefatigable investigative reporter Charles Clover as he confronts the politicians and celebrity restaurateurs who exhibit little regard for the damage their policies—and their menus—are doing to the oceans. Taking us from the cod-depleted shores of the Atlantic to the Straits of Gibraltar and the coasts of Senegal, and on to the Tokyo fish market, THE END OF THE LINE sounds a powerful wake-up call to the world: If we continue fishing as we are now, we will see the end of most seafood by 2048.

Sponsor:
Good Earth Farm

Garlic Mustard Pull
Volunteer to help pull garlic mustard, an invasive weed, from various sites around Athens. Contact: Bob Houdek, houdek@ohio.edu, 740-664-2122

OHIO Ecohouse Open House
Join the Ecohouse residents for an afternoon exploring sustainable living in Southeast Ohio.

Vegan Cooking Workshop
Come at 7 to help cook, 9 to eat. Free to everyone, but $3 suggested donation for a vegan meal focusing on local foods.

Worms & Dirt - Sustainability Film/Workshop
Series:
learn about producing food and managing food waste in a very small space! Guest Will Dewees will demonstrate how easy it is to construct
a worm composting box. Participants will also learn about growing a garden in containers. There will be free giveaways & prizes!

Michael Pollan at Denison University
Michael Pollan is the author of more than a half dozen books, including In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma, which was named one of the ten best books of the year by both the New York Times and the Washington Post. RSVP by April 12 at 5pm to sustainability@ohio.edu. A carpool will be leaving at 4pm to go from campus to Denison University. Transportation will be provided for as many as possible.

Baker Center, Women's Center

[campus map]

Sponsor:
Community Food Initiatives

Campus Consciousness Tour
As part of Ben Harper's visit, the Campus Consciousness Tour will be running eco-trivia games outside Baker Center all day. Win prizes, learn interesting eco-facts.

Sponsor:
Good Earth Farm

Meet at:
Le-Ax headquarters, Poston Station Rd.

Meet at:
Dow Lake parking area, off US-50

Sponsors:
ReUse Industries, United Campus Ministry, Office of Sustainability

Sponsor:
Community Food Initiatives

Vegan Cake Decorating
Local baker and cake artist, Nalnee Khureya, will lead a workshop on vegan cake baking and decorating at the Eclipse Company Store. Free transportation and cakes provided. RSVP is required: sustainability@ohio.edu.

Sponsors:
My Cake Time, Office of Sustainability, Eclipse Company Town

Jerusha Klemperer: Online Food Revolution
Slow Food USA, an organization that seeks to rebuild our broken food system through the local work that their chapters do around the country,  tries to give people who are interested in food issues a place to plug in, and something to do about it.  Jerusha will discuss ways that the sustainable food movement is specifically building local food communities using online communications. What are blogs, Facebook and twitter doing for the movement? How does twitter help grow food?

Jerusha Klemperer holds an MFA in Acting from Columbia University. She spent five years at Population Council, an international non-profit that performs reproductive health research and implementation around the globe. Also a writer of all kinds of things including book reviews, plays and blog posts, she is the editor of the Slow Food USA blog and a contributor to the Huffington Post, Civil Eats and her personal blog eathere2.

West Side Community Garden

Thomas Smucker is a visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Assistant Director for Research in the African Studies Center at Ohio University. His research is concerned with understanding dynamic intersections of social and environmental change through investigations of evolving systems of land tenure, rural livelihood and resource management systems, and household and communities strategies for coping with drought and other hazards. 

Dr. E. Edna Wangui is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography. Her research focuses on the human–environment dimension of rural livelihoods in African countries. Most recently she has looked at the gendered consequences of climate, land use/cover and livelihood change among pastoralists in Africa's drylands.

Panel Discussion:
Is Ohio Food Policy Sustainable?

Panelists will include:

Discussion topics will touch on livestock care standards, agricultural pollution, public interest in raw, organic & local foods, school lunch programs, and more.

Vegetarian Lunch/ Dinner: West 82, Latitude 39
Celebrate Earth Day by enjoying a vegetarian or local meal at Baker University Center's West 82 food court and Latitude 39.

West 82
7:30am - 7:30pm

Latitude 39
Lunch: 11am - 2pm, Dinner 5 - 9pm

Sponsors:
Dining Services, Office of Sustainability

Brown Bag at lunch Women's Center with Cindy Parker
Learn the wise woman approach to herbalism with Cindy Parker from Healing Heart Herbals. Bring your lunch.

Earth Day Green Event (EDGE)
The Earth Day Green Event (EDGE) is promoting the sustainability of Athens, OH.  Our goal is to make people aware of small ways that they can contribute to the local economy, make less waste, and build a sense of community between the permanent residents of Athens and the students who live here.  It will be a block party with informational and fun activities as well as a live outdoor concert.  There are activities for people of all ages, including a children's activity tent.  

Screening: Big River and Deep Down

Big River:
Directors: Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney 30 min. U.S.A.
Following up on their Peabody winning documentary, the King Corn boys are back. For Big River, best friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis have returned to Iowa with a new mission: to investigate the environmental impact their acre of corn has sent to the people and places downstream. In a journey that spans from the heartland to the Gulf of Mexico, Ian and Curt trade their combine for a canoe – and set out to see the big world their little acre of corn has touched. On their trip, flashbacks to the pesticides they sprayed, the fertilizers they injected, and the soil they plowed now lead to new questions, explored by new experts in new places. Fertilizer runoff has spawned a hypoxic "dead zone" in the Gulf. And back at their acre, the herbicides they used are blamed for a cancer cluster that reaches all too close to home.

Deep Down:
Director: Jennifer Gilomen 57 min. U.S.A.
Deep Down follows the once-peaceful Appalachian mountain community of Maytown, Kentucky as neighbors find themselves in the center of a contentious battle over mountaintop removal coal mining. Through a complex human story that cuts across environment, economics, public policy, and culture, the story of two friends and their community reveals the devastating impact of our energy consumption against an explosive backdrop: Appalachia’s centuries-old struggle over the black rock that fuels our planet.

Note: Event is free to students.

Sponsor:
Good Earth Farm

Garlic Mustard Pull
Volunteer to help pull garlic mustard, an invasive weed, from various sites around Athens. Contact: Phil Cantino, cantino@ohio.edu, 740-594-3338 and Julie Chapman, jc251705@ohio.edu

It will be necessary to wade a small stream, which is usually ankle-deep but may be deeper following rainstorms; keep this in mind when choosing footwear.

1pm

Sponsor:
Appalachian Ohio Group Sierra Club

Food & Community - Sustainability Film/Workshop Series:
Guests from Community Food Initiatives will talk about CFI's programs & ways the community can become involved. With refreshments from local
sources.

Sponsor:
Community Food Initiatives, Alden Library Sustainability Committee

Redefining Soul Food: Politics and Pleasures of Food and Eating
Beyond the confines of Southern-style comfort food lies a culinary history and rich heritage of a people that have historically grown their own food and have employed gastronomic resourcefulness and creativity to transform local, seasonal, and sustainably grown food into hearty, humble, and satisfying fare. Join eco-chef, food justice activist, and author Bryant Terry for a discussion about the pleasures of food and eating in African American communities, along with a hands-on demonstration of a recipe from his latest book, Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy & Creative African-American Cuisine.

For the past ten years Bryant Terry has worked to build a more just and sustainable food system and has used cooking as a tool to illuminate the intersections between poverty, structural racism, and food insecurity. His interest in cooking, farming, and community health can be traced back to his childhood in Memphis, Tennessee, where his grandparents inspired him to grow, prepare, and appreciate good food.