Public Events
The Spring Creek Project organizes creative gatherings of people in public places to imagine new ways of thinking about, and thus acting in, the world. Spring Creek-sponsored events have included everything from informal conversations between poets, philosophers, and scientists to nationally recognized weekend symposia, from writing workshops to field trips.
Past Events
Friday, May 11, 7:30 pm
Corvallis High School Theater
This Land is Our Land: Music of Environmental and Social Change--Special concert featuring singer/ songwriters
Carrie Newcomer and Libby Roderick with Spartacappella
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Friday, May 11, 4 pm
Songs to Move the Earth:
A Brief History of Environmental Music with Lorraine Anderson
From Woody Guthrie through Pete Seeger and Joni Mitchell to Michael Jackson and Adrienne Young, modern songwriters have lamented and celebrated aspects of our relationship to the earth. Join musician-writer Lorraine Anderson on a tour of a dozen favorite environmental songs since 1940. Watch video performances, study lyrics, hear about the historical and personal context of each song, and nominate your own favorite environmental songs.
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Monday, April 9, 7 pm
LaSells Stewart Center, C&E Auditorium
Film Screening: Journey of the Universe
Narrated by evolutionary philosopher Brian Swimme, and produced by historians of religion Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, “Journey of the Universe” weaves together the findings of modern science with cultural traditions of the West, China, Africa, India, and indigenous peoples to explore cosmic evolution as a process of creativity, connection, and interdependence. We'll also recognize the winners of the OSU Student contest: "The Great Work: Re-imagining Humanity as the Planet Changes"
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Monday, February 20, 2012
Ceiridwen Terrill, Part Wild, reading, slide show, and conversation
Ceiridwen Terrill, author of Part Wild: One Woman's Journey with a Creature Caught Between the Worlds of Wolves and Dogs teaches science writing and environmental journalism at Concordia University.
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Boats and Bones: A Conversation
with Kate Stirr, Kathleen Dean Moore, Charles Goodrich
Please join us for a fascinating conversation between Bay-area sculptor Kate Stirr and Corvallis essayist Kathleen Dean Moore as they trade images and ideas - about the creative impulse, the inspiration of oceans, the resonance of art and nature, sculpture and essay, about the artist’s work of wonder. In a conversation led by poet Charles Goodrich, Kate will show still and video images of her projects “Creatures,” “Experiments,” and “Boats and Bones,” and Kathleen will read from new and published essays that speak to Kate’s astonishing vision.
Sponsored by the University Honors College and Spring Creek Project
Free and open to all. EVENT FLYER
Thursday, January 26, 7 pm, Corvallis-Benton County Public Library
Bill Porter / Red Pine
Bill Porter, whose renowned translations of ancient Chinese poetry and sacred texts appear under the name Red Pine, will share stories, poems and photographs from his extensive travels in China in search of Taoist hermits.
Porter has chronicled his travels in China in several prose books, Road to Heaven and Zen Baggage. His translations of such classics as Lao-tzu's Taoteching, and In Such Hard Times: The Poetry of Wei Ying-wu have been honored with NEA translation fellowships, American Literary Translators Asian Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. PRESS RELEASE POSTER
Tricycle interview with Bill Porter
Friday, January 27, 7:30, MU Journy Room, OSU
Bill Porter and Eric Paul Shaffer
Poetry reading and book signing. POSTER
Bill Porter is a poet and translator well known for his work with Buddhist texts. Translating under the name Red Pine his work has been honored with a number of awards including two NEA translation fellowships, a PEN translation award, the inaugural Asian Literature Award of the American Literary Translators Association, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. After living for many years in Taiwan and Hong Kong, he now lives and writes in Port Townsend, Washington.
Eric Paul Shaffer is author of five books of poetry, including Lahaina Noon and Portable Planet. His poetry has appeared in such journals as North American Review, Slate, and The Sun Magazine. Shaffer received the 2002 Elliot Cades Award for Literature, a 2006 Ka Palapala Po‘okela Book Award for Lahaina Noon, and the 2009 James M. Vaughan Award for Poetry. He lives on O‘ahu and teaches at Honolulu Community College.
Porter and Schaffer's reading is part of the Literary Northwest Series co-sponsored by OSU Department of English MFA program and the OSU Beaver Store.
Thursday, November 17, CH2M HILL Alumni Center Ballroom, OSU
Bill McKibben, "350: The Most Important Number in the World"
Called “the world’s best green journalist” by TIME magazine, Bill McKibben wrote the first general audience book on climate change,“The End of Nature,” which has been translated into 20 languages. A leading university scholar, environmental writer and?organizer, McKibben has launched 350.org, a grassroots effort with a big goal: to change the world’s response to climate change by involving people from every nation in the fight against global warming. MORE INFORMATION
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Thursday, Nov. 17
CH2M Hill Alumni Center, Willamette Multipurpose Room
Workshop with Bill McKibben: "Creating Change: New Ideas for Inspiring Action for Social Change"
What creates change? What gives people the courage and the vision to buck business as usual and stand up for what they believe in? Since efforts to create a wide-awake awareness of climate destabilization need to be creative, powerfully moving and — frankly — relentless, they also need to be inspiring — to sustain our efforts as we encourage others.
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Monday, November 14, LaSells Stewart Center, OSU
Aldo Leopold Day, public symposium
1 -5 pm— lectures and panel discussions--full schedule
7 pm -- Movie: Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time, C&E Auditiorium MORE INFORMATION : Green Fire movie
all events free and open to all
Friday, October 28, 7:30 pm, OSU Valley Library Rotunda
Reading by Brian Turner, poet laureate of New Zealand
Brian Turner, renowned poet and prose writer, and the 2003 Ta Mata Estate Poet Laureate of New Zealand, read from his work at the conclusion of his writer-in-residency for the Long-Term Ecological Reflections program at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest.
Brian Turner is one of New Zealand's most significant writers on landscape, environmentalism and sports. Winner of all his country’s major awards, Turner’s writing is funny, muscular and unsentimental. He has published numerous collections of poetry, as well as works of non-fiction. His work is frequently anthologized in collections of poetry and literary sports writing. Work from Turner's Andrews residency will be published on The Forest Log.
Friday, April 22, noon - 1:30 pm
Memorial Union room 109, OSU
"Dirt Still Clinging to the Words"
a poetry reading to celebrate Earth Day
Featuring award-winning Seattle poet Paul Hunter
with Karen Holmberg, Bill Siverly, Clemens Starck, and Alexis White.
Wednesday, April 6, 7 pm
Corvallis-Benton County Libray
Spring Creek Café:
"The Moral Responsibilities of Corporations" with Robin Collin Morris
Are corporations exempt from the virtues of justice, compassion, and integrity that empower our social contract and make us worthy of our humanity? What new ideas about the moral and legal responsibilities of corporations can redefine their rights and responsibilities?
Robin Morris Collin teaches environmental law at Willamette University College of Law. Winner of many awards, including a David Brower Lifetime Achievement Award at the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference and the Judith Ramaley Award from the Oregon Campus Compact for civic engagement in sustainability, she currently heads the school's Certificate Program in Sustainability Law.
Wednesday, March 2, 7:00 PM
Sheila Watt-Cloutier
"Everything is Connected: Environment, Economy, Foreign Policy, Sustainability, Human Rights and Leadership in the 21st Century"
OSU Philosophy Department's 18th Ideas Matter Lecture Series.
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Thursday, February 17, 7 pm.
Mary Wood, U of O Law School
"Nature's Trust"
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February 18-19, 2011, Free and open to all.
LaSells Stewart Center, OSU
Song for the Blue Ocean: Science, Arts, and Ethics
FREE AND OPEN TO ALL 
Featuring:
Carl Safina, ecologist and author, Song for the Blue Ocean
Rick Steiner, marine biologist, conservation activist
Julia Whitty, journalist and author, Deep Blue Home
Music by Shanghaied on the Willamette
Award-winning documentary film, A Sea Change
Ocean Action--a marine science and activist fair
plua other speakers, music, visual arts
Click here for the COMPLETE SCHEDULE
FRIDAY MORNING WORKSHOPS ARE ALL FULL.
Click here for the symposium Poster
Click here for directions, parking information, etc.
LINKS to more information aobut our speakers:
Carl Safina
Julia Whitty
Shanghaied on the Willamette
A Sea Change
Song for the Blue Ocean will celebrate oceans and also acknowledge the enormous environmental challenges that oceans embody. The symposium will include current science, literature, music and visual arts, interactive workshops, and a science and activist fair for organizations committed to action on behalf of oceans and the environment. Please plan to join us for this very special event!
2010 Events
December 2, Troubadour Music Center
Brian Doyle, author of Mink River
Reading and Book Launch, with Irish fiddle music.
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October 27, 7 pm, Corvallis Art Center
John Felstiner: "Can Poetry Save the Earth?"
Can poetry actually save the earth? Not right off, but it can help, and we need all we can get! As poems touch our full humanness, can they quicken awareness and bolster respect for this ravaged resilient earth we live on? Psalms and Job, the Romantics, Whitman, Dickinson, Frost, Williams, Jeffers, Millay, Neruda, Bishop, Levertov, Ted Hughes, Gary Snyder and others have ways of doing just that.
Please join us for this reading and lively discussion with an inspired and inspiring author and teacher based on his latest award-winning book, Can Poetry Save the Earth? A Field Guide to Nature Poems.
John Felstiner, from Stanford University, is the also author of the prize-winning Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew and Translating Neruda: The Way to Macchu Picchu.
Can Poetry Save the Earth? was featured on NPR's Morning Edition: click here to listen.
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October 28, 5 pm, OSU Hovland Hall 104
John Felstiner: “Translating Poetry: The Impossible Takes a Little Longer”
Many languages have a sour saying about translation. In Italian, Traduttore / Traditore, “Translator / Traitor.” Besides steering that very saying into English cleverly enough to disprove it, we’ll visit various languages for what our ancient art and practice can and maybe can’t achieve. Some samples—proverb, poem, graffito, pun, Native American prayer, sacred commentary—arise in German, Spanish, French, English, Yokuts, and Hebrew. We can also trace poets out of English: Whitman by Neruda, Dickinson by Celan, Yeats by Bonnefoy, Williams by Paz, Beckett by Beckett. Literary translation: a tireless tide that reaches into history, biography, culture, tradition, tosses up startling finds, and ultimately creates our fullest, truest form of interpretation and understanding.
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May 18, 7pm -- in Portland
Gary Snyder, Jerry Franklin, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Power of Nature: Mt. St. Helens, 1980 - 2010
First Baptist Church
SW 12th & Taylor, Portland
Illahee, the Mount St. Helens Institute, the Spring Creek Project, and the U.S. Forest Service co-sponsor this evening with three profound environmental thinkers together to reflect on the power and change inherent in our close neighbor, Mount St. Helens, thirty years to the day after its historic eruption in 1980.
FMI: Illahee website
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May 12, 7 pm
Jack Nisbet, author
Please join us for a reading by Jack Nisbet author of the new book
The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the Northwest
OSU, Memorial Union Journey Room
Free and open to all.
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Friday April 2, 7:30 pm
Jane Hirshfield, OSU Visiting Writers' Series
OSU Valley Library Rotunda
Jane Hirshfield is the author of six books of poetry, including Given Sugar, Given Salt (2001), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and her most recent collection, After, as well as a widely praised collection of essays on poetic understanding, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. She has also edited and co-translated The Ink Dark Moon, and edited Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women. Hirshfield’s many honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement by The Academy of American Poets.
Jane Hirshfield will be writer-in-residence for the Long-Term Ecological Reflections program at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in advance of her Corvallis reading. Her residency and reading are co-sponsored by the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word and the US Forest Service.
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Wednesday, March 3, 4 pm
Kelly Engineering 1001, OSU, free and open to all
Willis Jenkins: Environmental Problems, Cultural Change, and Religious Communities
Willis Jenkins is Margaret Farley Assistant Professor of Social Ethics at Yale Divinity School, and holds a secondary appointment to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. His research focuses on environmental ethics, sustainable communities, global ethics, and theological ethics. He is author of Ecologies of Grace: Environmental Ethics and Christian Theology, and editor of The Spirit of Sustainability.
Sponsored by the Spring Creek Project, the Hundere Endowment for Religion and Culture, and the Department of Philosophy.
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Thursday, February 25, 7 pm
Corvallis Benton County Public Library, free and open to all
Spring Creek Cafe:
"What are our obligations to future generations?"
with philosophers Michael Nelson and Kathleen Dean Moore, writer Brian Doyle, and singer/songwriter Libby Roderick
Do we have any obligations to the future? Why should we sacrifice now to help people who don’t even exist yet? What’s wrong with taking what we need from the Earth, even if we leave a diminished (or even wrecked) world behind?
Modeled on the popular Socrates Cafés, Spring Creek Cafés invite people to come together in an informal setting to participate in thoughtful, guided discussion on topics of deep human importance.
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Friday, February 26, 4 pm
Wilkison 108, OSU, free and open to all
Alaskan Karst and Caves: Exploration and Conservation
Steve Lewis, one of Alaska's foremost cavers, spoke at OSU about his experiences measuring and mapping many of the more than 500 known caves in Southeast Alaska.
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Tuesday, December 1, 7 pm
“Where Does Our Food Come From?”
An evening with Gary Nabhan and Frank Morton
to benefit Ten Rivers Food Web Historic Mary’s River Grange, Grange Hall Road, Philomath
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Friday, October 23, 2009
Vandana Shiva, "Earth Democracy: Women, Justice, and Ecology"
10 am – 5 pm Seminars and workshops on the intersection of environmental justice and women’s lives
7 pm, LaSells Stewart Center -- Dr. Vandana Shiva, “Earth Democracy”
Vandana Shiva is the Director of The Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy. She was the recipient of the 1993 Right Livelihood Award, commonly known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize". A contributing editor to People-Centered Development Forum, she has also authored many books, including The Violence of the Green Revolution; Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge; Monocultures of the Mind; Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit, and Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in Age of Climate Crisis.
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Monday, April 6, 7:00 pm: Jim Proctor:
"Geographies and Spiritualities of Ecotopia: Seeking and
Dwelling in Oregon Communities"
From meditative harmony to technological mastery, there
is a profound relationship between geography and spirituality in the
Pacific Northwest. Jim Proctor has conducted research on a range of
utopian Oregon communities-- ecovillages, destination resorts, and
GenX/creative class magnets. In this talk he'll discuss what he's
learned about utopias and dystopias at local, regional, and global
scales, how these ideal and nightmare worlds incorporate biophysical and
human nature, and how they mingle actual and imagined landscapes.
Read this Oregonian article, "Is Nature Sacred?" on Proctor's research.
Jim Proctor is Professor and Director of the Environmental Studies
Program at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. His visit is co-sponsored by The Hundere Endowment for Religion and Culture, and the Spring Creek Project.
March 2009
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The Columbia River Quorum: Bringing Science and Moral Imagination Together to Communicate about Climate Destabilization
Climate scientists warn us that environmental degradation and climate destabilization are fast exceeding society’s rate of response. But the bare facts have not moved people to significant action. Can we do a better, more effective job of alerting the public to both the physical, cultural dangers of environmental degradation, and our moral responsibilities to the future by combining the power scientific information with the moral values that are embedded in a culture’s literature and worldviews?
That question was the impetus for the Columbia River Quorum, convened in March 2009 by the Spring Creek Project with support from the US Forest Service. Held at Menucha Retreat Center in the Columbia River Gorge, the gathering of sixteen environmental scientists, social scientists, philosophers, communications experts, and creative writers explored possible synergies between the world of the environmental sciences and the moral world as it is expressed in a culture’s literature and its moral philosophy. The symposium was organized by OSU philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore and marine biologist Mark Hixon. Other OSU participants included atmospheric scientist Andreas Schmittner, forest sociologist John Bliss, and Forest Service geomorphologist Fred Swanson.
Conference participants’ ongoing efforts will focus in these areas:
New Partnerships:
- Increase the role of the arts in climate communication
- Engage philosophers in articulating the “Second Premise”—the place of values—in shaping climate responses
New Messages:
- Find effective language for discussing climate disruption
- Create new metaphors and stories to promote new social arrangements
- Tell the stories of ordinary heroes
New Methods:
- Understand how ‘framing’ can help transcend polarities
- Use new media such as eco-wikis, social networking, and web portals to reach broader audiences.
Through specific initiatives the Quorum participants hope to create a new context for climate education work, one that provides new leadership, new collaborations, and new conduits for funding.
Back row: Bob Frodeman, Scott Russell Sanders, Steve Vanderheiden, Andreas Schmittner, Hank Green, Fred Swanson, Charles Goodrich
Front row: Kathleen Dean Moore, Carly Johnson, Michael Nelson, Pam Sturner, Alison Deming, Kathie Olsen, Michaela Hammer, John Bliss, Mark Hixon
Thursday, March 5, 7 pm
"Environmental Degradation as a Human Rights Issue"
Steven Vanderheiden, Philosophy, University of Colorado Gilfillan Auditorium, OSU. Free and open to all.
Vanderheiden's talk is part of the IDEAS MATTER lecture series: "United Nations Declaration of Human Rights at 60"
For the complete IDEAS MATTER schedule click here.
Friday, February 27, 3 pm, Seminar with Flo Leibowitz and Tony Vogt, Hovland 104
Please join us for this presentation and discussion with the two previous Spring Creek Project Faculty Fellows.
Flo Leibowitz: "Picturing Nature in the Hubble Photographs."
The colorful astrophotographs from the Hubble Space Telescope and other space-based observatories arouse both scientific curiosity and aesthetic interest. Are the Hubble images of such objects as the Eagle Nebula and the Crab Nebula guiding 21st century imaginations of the cosmos much in the way that Albert Bierstadt’s paintings and Ansel Adams’ photographs helped shape 19th and 20th century conceptions of the American wilderness? How might these Hubble images influence our concepts of the sublime in nature, and the concept of “seeing” itself?
Tony Vogt: "Toward an Ethic of Solidarity."
The meanings of solidarity, and the ethical implications of solidarity as an embodied practice, are more often assumed than articulated. Social movements, including environmental movements, can offer insights into what might constitute an ethics of solidarity. How might an ethic of solidarity differ from, and perhaps complement, (some) other ethics? What promises and challenges might an articulated ethic of solidarity open to us, in terms of both our actions and perceptions?
Tuesday, February 24, 4 pm, “Changing Climates on Campuses,” with SueEllen Campbell, Memorial Union 208
Campbell will talk about Colorado State University's innovative, cross-disciplinary education initiative, “Changing Climates @ CSU,” and how two English professors have hooked up with atmospheric scientists, ecologists, political scientists, and many others to raise the visibility of the climate problem on a land-grant university campus--and to bring together many different ways of understanding and tackling it. So far the project has involved faculty from all eight colleges and some twenty-five departments in running four lecture series with total headcounts in the thousands. And it's all been remarkably inexpensive, not all that difficulty, and surprisingly rewarding.
SueEllen Campbell, professor of English at Colorado State University, is co-director of Changing Climates @ Colorado State University. Her latest book of literary/ environmental nonfiction is Even Mountains Vanish: Searching for Solace in an Age of Extinction; other publications include Bringing the Mountain Home and articles about American environmental literature and ecocriticism. She is now working on a guide to landscapes in nature and culture. The Web address for Changing Climates is http://changingclimates.colostate.edu.
Tuesday, February 17, 7-9 pm, “Re-inventing Ecological Restoration: Re-storation or Pre-storation?” with Anita Guerrini and Stan Gregory, Memorial Union 211
In these times of accelerating change -- new government and old policies, increases in hope and decreases in funding, increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide and sharply decreasing time to act -- we are offered a huge, maybe a last, opportunity to re-think the meaning and goals of ecological restoration. Join us for a discussion of the changing concept of ecological restoration with two exceptional thinkers, Anita Guerrini, Horning Professor in the Humanities, and Stan Gregory, professor in Fisheries and Wildlife.
We'll begin with a conversation between Anita and Stan about the relative importance of the past and the future in decisions about ecological restoration. That conversation will raise questions for smaller groups to discuss informally over dessert. Then we will come back together to share our observations, our questions, our insights. We hope you will join in the fray.
Professors are encouraged to bring one student. There is room for 40 participants, so please RSVP to Charles Goodrich by February 10.
Monday, November 17
Revitalizing Natural History Seminar and discussion with Thomas Lowe Fleischner , author, educator
Tom Fleischner is the author of two books, Singing Stone: A Natural History of the Escalante Canyons and Desert Wetlands, and he teaches Environmental Studies at Prescott College. He is a co-founder of the North Cascades Institute, and has served on the Board of Governors of the Society for Conservation Biology. Fleischner has written widely about rangeland issues, Canyonlands ecology, and the importance of natural history. He will be writer in residence at the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest the week preceding his visit to Corvallis.
FMI about Tom Fleischner’s work and links to his writings: http://www.prescott.edu/faculty_staff/faculty/tfleischner/
Wednesday, November 12
Trees and Forests of America Readings and slideshows with Tim Palmer, author / photographer Cosponsored with the OSU's Sustainable Forests Partnership
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Saturday, October 18
Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the Dark Reading with Kathleen Dean Moore, John Daniel and Paul Bogard, editor at Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, followed by Star Viewing sponsored by Heart of the Valley Astronomers at Adair County Park
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Book Launch:
In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens
7:30 pm, Friday, May 16 OSU Valley Library Rotunda Please join us for readings by Charles Goodrich, Frederick J. Swanson, and Kathleen Dean Moore, Tony Vogt
Most popular accounts of the momentous 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens have focused on the devastation it caused. More recent scientific work on the volcano tells a story of unexpectedly rapid and varied ecological and geological change. In the Blast Zone is the first book to present a cross-pollination of literary and scientific perspectives on the mountain’s history of cataclysm and renewal.
Click here to read a review of In the Blast Zone
Other IN THE BLAST ZONE events:
4 pm, Sunday, May 18 Powells Bookstore, 1005 W. Burnside, Portland With Ursula LeGuin, Kim Stafford, Charles Goodrich, Frederick J. Swanson, Kathleen Dean Moore, and Tony Vogt
7 pm, Wednesday, May 21 University of Oregon Knight Library Browsing Room With Charles Goodrich, Frederick J. Swanson, and Kathleen Dean Moore
7 pm, Tuesday, May 27, Bellingham, WA, Village Books with Nalini Nadkarni, Susan Zwinger and Charles Goodrich
7 pm, Wed., May 28, Olympia, Orca Books with Nalini Nadkarni and Charles Goodrich
7 pm, Thurs, May 29, Seattle, UW Books with Tim McNulty and Charles Goodrich
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Saturday, May 24, 2008
Working and Writing the Woods: Volunteer Work Party and Free Writing Workshop with Ann Staley at the Cabin at Shotpouch Creek
The Spring Creek Project will hold its fourth annual work party and writing workshop Saturday, May 24, 2008 with a writer and teacher Ann Staley at the Cabin at Shotpouch Creek.
From 10 a.m. to 1 pm we will enjoy the camaraderie of friends and the vitality of outdoor labor as we maintain the Shotpouch hiking trails and tree plantings. After lunch, from 2 - 5 p.m., we’ll turn to a free writing workshop, exploring the prose and poetry of forests and nature. All are welcome, whatever your level of writing experience.
“Working and Writing the Woods” is limited to 20 participants. Please call or e-mail to reserve a place. charles.goodrich@oregonstate.edu, 737-6198.
The Trillium Project -- April 20 -- May 18, 2008
We at the Spring Creek Project invite you to participate in the Trillium Project during prime wildflower season -- April 20 to May 18, 2008 -- at the Cabin at Shotpouch Creek. We're inviting ideas from people from a wide variety of backgrounds and interests—artists, botanists, writers, biologists, musicians, philosophers, etc.—who might like to visit or stay at the cabin for an afternoon, a day and a night, or several days, to study and write (draw, photograph, compose songs, etc.) about the Shotpouch place itself... read more>>
Libby Roderick: A Concert for the Commons
Wednesday, April 9, 7:30 pm Alaskan singer/songwriter Libby Roderick, with Cassandra Robertson, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Corvallis, 2945 NW Circle Blvd., Corvallis.
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Who Owns the Sky?-The Tragedy or Triumph of the Commons
The Ideas Matter Lectures, "Who Owns the Sky? The Tragedy or Triumph of the Commons," featured historian Charles Wilkinson, novelist Kim Stanley Robinson, environmental designer Ted Jojola (Pueblo), legal scholars Eric Freyfogle and Mary Wood, ethnoecologist Devon Pena, marine ecologist Mark Hixon, and futurist David Korten, among others. Click here for COMPLETE SCHEDULE.
Click here to view STREAMING VIDEO of Ideas Matter talks.
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Oct. 26, 2007
Mary Evelyn Tucker, "The Emerging Alliance of Ecology and Religion”
Clink on the link to view a video of Mary Evelyn Tucker's lecture,
"The Emerging Alliance of Religion and Ecology," Oct. 26, 2007 http://media.oregonstate.edu/ramgen/philosophy/spring-creek-tucker.rm
Mary Evelyn Tucker is a director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University where she has appointments in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies as well as the Divinity School and the Department of Religious Studies. She is the author of Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter Their Ecological Phase (Open Court Press, 2003), She co-edited Worldviews and Ecology (Orbis, 1994), Buddhism and Ecology (Harvard, 1997), Confucianism and Ecology (Harvard, 1998), and Hinduism and Ecology (Harvard, 2000) and When Worlds Converge (Open Court, 2002). She edited Thomas Berry's book, Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community (Sierra Club Books and University of California Press, 2006). She is a member of the Interfaith Partnership for the Environment at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and served as a member of the International Earth Charter Drafting Committee from 1997-2000. She is a member of the newly appointed Earth Charter International Council.
Director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University
http://www.religionandecology.org/About/founders.php
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November 9, 2007
Gary Holthaus, “From the Farm to the Table: Modern Agriculture in Community”
Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, Main Meeting Room
Gary Holthaus is the author of several highly regarded books, including Wide Skies: Finding a Home in the West. An ordained minister, Holthaus has held readings as far away as Baghdad, Iraq. His new book, From the Farm to the Table, explores farmers' experiences to offer a deeper understanding of how we can create sustainable and vibrant land-based communities by cultivating agrarian values.
Reviews of From the Farm to the Table:
"Farmers all over the world have begun to choose a new path--a way of farming that is enjoyable and profitable for the farmers, leaves a small footprint on the planet, and makes a beneficial contribution to rural communities. Gary Holthaus has taken the time to listen to, and share with us, the stories of such new farmers, most of whom live near his own community in Minnesota. Then he contends that these wonderful farmers may be the harbingers of the future."--Fred Kirschenmann, Distinguished Fellow for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University
"Rural America is not somehow 'behind us,' a part of a past that is no longer central to our lives. For all of us, Holthaus shows, the thinking of rural people is relevant to the well-being of the nation and far more complex than we have realized. This book provides fresh insight into what is going on in the rural countryside and what farmers themselves have thought about those changes."--Donald Worster, author of Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas
Co-sponsored by the Ten Rivers Food Web. http://www.tenriversfoodweb.org/
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Spring Term 2007 - Native American Philosophies
All lectures free and open to the public.
6:30 p.m. every Wednesday, Spring Term (April 4 to June 6, 2007), Gilfillan Auditorium, OSU. Available for course credit. Free to community members.
Wednesday, April 4 -- Leslie Marmon Silko, novelist (Ceremony)
Wednesday, April 25 -- Wilma Mankiller, Cherokee Nation leader
Wednesday, May 23 -- Linda Hogan, poet, novelist
Wednesday, June 6 -- Jan Michael Looking Wolf Reibach, native flute
Click here for the complete schedule.
Click here for more information about the Native American Philosophies course.
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May 2007 - The Trillium Project
The first annual Trillium Project took place at the Cabin at Shotpouch Creek during May, 2007. People with a wide variety of backgrounds and interests—artists, botanists, biologists, writers, musicians, philosophers, etc. came to the Cabin for an afternoon, a day and a night, or several days to study and write about the Shotpouch place itself, its history or philosophy or bird species or wildflowers or mosses or trout or soundscape or anything else on the land that excited their interest. As Trillium participants went about their ventures, exploring the creek, meadows, and upland forests, they also encountered new people and new ideas, finding inspiration and information in this special place, and also find interest in their encounters with others who are equally involved with the land.
The Trillium Project will be held again in the Spring 2008.
Download a full description of the Trillium Project, including directions on how to send us your proposal, and read more about the Cabin at Shotpouch. Please contact us if you have any questions.
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Sunday, April 1, 2007
Working and Writing the Woods: Volunteer Work Party and Free Writing Workshop
with Judith Barrington at the Cabin at Shotpouch Creek
The Spring Creek Project held its third annual work party and writing workshop Sunday, April 1 with a remarkable poet, memoirist and teacher Judith Barrington at the Cabin at Shotpouch Creek.
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January 25, 2007
"What Are Our Obligations to Future Generations?"
A Panel Interview with David Orr
What we do today -- the fossil fuels we burn or conserve, the toxins we choose or choose not to introduce into the air and water, the natural resources we mine or carefully steward, from the fish to the fertility of the fields, and the carelessness or the creativity and caring we bring to our decisions -- will determine the opportunities and lives of people not yet born. What obligations do we have to future generations? Do we have a responsibility to preserve natural resources and natural systems? To anticipate danger? Do we have an obligation to forbear from actions that risk irreversible harm? How can we balance our duties to the future against our obligations to meet the real and terrible needs of the present generation? These are the sorts of questions that were posed to environmental studies professor David Orr by four Corvallis panelists.
David Orr, best known for his pioneering work on environmental literacy in higher education, is Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies at Oberlin College. He is the author of five books, including Earth in Mind and The Last Refuge: Patriotism, Politics, and the Environment, and editor of The Campus and Environmental Responsibility.
Four panelists posed questions to David Orr: Charlie Tomlinson, Mayor of Corvallis; Courtney Campbell, Chair of the Department of Philosophy, Oregon State University; Cristina Eisenberg, graduate student, OSU College of Forestry; and Kathleen Dean Moore, OSU philosophy professor and author of The Pine Island Paradox.
The event was sponsored by the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word; and the Starker Lectures in the OSU College of Forestry.
David Orr also delivered a Starker Lecture, "To ourselves and our posterity: Climate change and the rights to life, liberty, and property," at 4 pm, Thursday, January 25 in the CH2M Hill Alumni Center, Cascade Ballroom 110. For more information about Dr. Orr: http://www.cof.orst.edu/starkerlectures/presenters/orr.php
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