Earth Month Series @ Grace

Grace Episcopal Church | 160 High Street, Medford

Wednesdays @ Grace

Community Meal at 6pm | Classes at 6:45pm

• April 8, 2015 | Erik Jacobs, Farmer, Plough & Stars CSA Project & Rosie Gill, President, Board of Directors, Medford Farmers Market
• April 15, 2015 | Russell Cohen, Rivers Advocate at Div. of Ecological Restoration/Riverways Program, Mass. Dept. of Fish and Game
• April 29, 2015 | Movie: “Trashed – No Place For Waste” with actor Jeremy Irons

Weds., April 8, 2015

Erik Jacobs, Farmer, Plough & Stars CSA Project

Plough & Stars Project is a Medford based farm. It is a celebration of community and food’s unique capacity to draw people together. Our members are all neighbors – households bound by geography but separated by the pace of modern life. We know each other from a distance, maybe even by name, but rarely do we find the opportunity for deeper connection. Our CSA strives to challenge that, to designate time and create space for those openings.

Through our farming we seek to live and nurture lives of meaningful connection: connection to the earth, connection to each other, connection to our work and connection to our food. Through these connection we strive to steward land, nourish bodies, quiet minds and foster community. We believe that living closer to the earth brings us closer to the divine. And that, at its essence is what we celebrate…The Plough and the Stars.

Rosemary (Rosie) Gill, President, Board of Directors, Medford Farmers Market

Rosie Gill is dedicated to building healthy communities around food. She works primarily with non-profits engaged in improving food security through educational means.

Weds., April 15, 2015

Russell Cohen, Rivers Advocate at Division of Ecological Restoration/Riverways Program, Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game

Russ Cohen currently serves as the Rivers Advocate for the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game’s Division of Ecological Restoration. One of his areas of expertise is in riparian vegetation. He has compiled a list of native plant species suitable for planting in riparian areas; written numerous fact sheets on the ecological and other beneficial functions of naturally vegetated buffers along rivers and streams intended to aid the effective implementation of the Mass. Rivers Protection Act; and (with the Appalachian Mountain Club) prepared Trees, Paddlers and Wildlife, a set of outreach materials intended to raise the awareness of paddlers, riparian land-owners and managers, and others about the ecological and other beneficial values of retaining trees and other woody vegetation in and along rivers and streams.

Cohen has won numerous awards for his rivers work, including: the 2013 Education Award from the New England Wild Flower Society in recognition of both his rivers work and foraging programs; the River Steward Lifetime Achievement Award from the League of Women Voters and Sudbury-Assabet-Concord River Stewardship Council in 2012; a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Massachusetts Wetland Scientists in 2011; an Environmental Merit Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2003; and the Public Servant of the Year Award from the Environmental League of Massachusetts in 1997.

Weds., April 29, 2015

Movie: “Trashed – No Place For Waste”

“Trashed – No Place for Waste” looks at the risks to the food chain and the environment through pollution of our air, land and sea by waste. The film reveals surprising truths about very immediate and potent dangers to our health, a global conversation from Iceland to Indonesia between the film star Jeremy Irons and scientists, politicians and ordinary individuals whose health and livelihoods have been fundamentally affected by waste pollution. Visually and emotionally the film is both horrific and beautiful: an interplay of human interest and political wake-up call. But it ends on a message of hope: showing how the risks to our survival can easily be averted through sustainable approaches that provide far more employment than the current ‘waste industry’.

Rating: Unrated | Genre: Documentary, Special Interest | Written/Dir. by: Candida Brady | Runtime: 1 hr. 37 min. | © 2012