Sustainable Crown Hill 4th Annual Green Halloween Dance Party

On October 30, kids and adults enjoyed an evening of dining, dancing, and hunting for inedible treasure to celebrate Halloween at the Crown Hill Activity Center.  The wet, miserable weather pushed the fun indoors but didn’t dampen spirits.  The lively music from Glenn Dudley, Jerry Berger, and Suzanne Giardot coupled with calling from Sherry Nevins got everyone off their feet moving in space.  Thanks to several rock club members from the North Seattle Lapidary and Mineral Club the lucky party goers scoured the darkened halls for 12 rock specimens (petrified wood limbs, chunks of obsidian from Oregon, nephrite, grossular, jaspagate chunks, polished beach agates from Whidbey Island, olivine samples from the Nooksack River, amethyst, quartz crystals, and calcite beauties, thundereggs and pumice).

Maybe we’ll see YOU next year!

Hallowe’en Hoedown 2010

Sustainable Crown Hill and the North Seattle Lapidary and Mineral Club have teamed up with local musicians and caller Sherry Nevins to create an all ages costume dance followed by a flashlight treasure hunt for rocks (obsidian, petrified wood, geodes…)

Don’t forget your flashlight, costume, and dancing shoes!

We’ll make Bottle Cap Jewelry, Paper Sack Gift Tags, Stamped Cards, and Collages.

If you have any miscellaneous crafting supplies you’d like to contribute, we can use everything (stamps, stamp pads, markers, scissors, paper, magazines, glue, acrylic paint, watercolor paints, paint brushes, bottle caps, paper garbage sacks, newspaper, crayons, yarn).

Halloween 2009 Flyer

Come to the Third Annual Crown Hill Halloween Celebration. For kids of all
ages (from 0-100) and adults too. Come in costume, prepared to feast with
your neighbors. Bring something to share with everyone. Flashlight
treasure hunt at 6:30. Please RSVP to halloween@sustainablecrownhill.org
with the number of adults and kids so we can plan for the treasure hunt.
Bring a flashlight.

The world famous Bucket Brigade (headquartered right here in [drumroll
here] Crown Hill) will make a rare public appearance to entertain us with
drumming and dancing. And, for all you closet drummers, there will be a
fantastic chance to try out your rhythmic skills on the same buckets using
the same drum sticks as the pros.

October 24th 6:00-8:00 PM
Crown Hill School Play Field
South end of Crown Hill School
(in case of rain, we’ll move inside the building)

See you there!

I recently learned of another way to enjoy potatoes that doesn’t involve eating or growing them. A friend shared the following suggested exercise for seniors to build muscle strength in the arms and shoulders.

The original article suggested doing it three times a week. It’s so easy, I thought I’d pass it on.

Begin by standing on a comfortable surface where you have plenty of room at each side. With a 5-pound potato sack in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your sides and hold them there as long as you can. Try to reach a full minute, then relax. Each day, you’ll find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer.

After a couple of weeks, move up to 10-pound potato sacks. Then use 50-pound potato sacks, and eventually try to get to where you can lift a 100-pound potato sack in each hand and hold your arms straight for more than a full minute.

After you feel confident at that level, put a potato in each of the sacks.

And if you’re looking for music to memorialize the death of the PI,  former Seattle-ite Heidi Muller has this finely crafted contribution “Goodnight PI” to mark the passage.

Join your neighbors for a post Thanksgiving leisurely paced walk to Carkeek Park. Neighbor Doug Gresham will be on hand to talk about and answer questions on the salmon restoration in Piper’s Creek. Doug has worked extensively for the restoration of Salmon spawning habitat in the creek.

Meet at the big oak tree at 13th Avenue NW and NW 95th Street.  We’ll leave at 10 AM and enter the park at the 12th and Norcross.

This will be kid friendly and paced appropriately. Come for the stroll with your whole family from new-born to 90, there will be something for everyone. This is a rain or shine event.

Information kit@crownhillneighbors.org

For those attending the potluck, people are encouraged to bring or prepare foods that are local or as local as possible. Let’s not be fascists about it, but be thoughtful about what you make or bring, and use it as an opportunity to understand where our food comes. Come prepared to talk about what you learned from the process.

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
The DVD focuses on Cuba’s transition from an industrial petroleum-based society to a sustainable society, as a result of their loss of petroleum when their source, the Soviet Union, collapsed.

The goals of this film are to give hope to the developed world as it wakes up to the consequences of being hooked on oil, and to lift American’s prejudice of Cuba by showing the Cuban people as they are. The filmmakers do this by having the people tell their story on film. It’s a story of their dedication to independence and triumph over adversity, and a story of cooperation and hope. Several Cubans expressed the belief that living on an island, with its natural boundaries, breeds awareness that there are limits to natural resources.

“Everyone who is concerned about Peak Oil needs to see this film. Cuba survived an energy famine during the 1990′s, and how it did so constitutes one of the most important and hopeful stories of the past not just of individual achievement, but one of the collective mobilization of an entire society to meet an enormous challenge.”
Richard Heinberg, author of The Party’s Over, Powerdown
RUNNING TIME: 53 minutes
RELEASED IN 2006

Flashlight Treasure Hunt at 6:30pm
Use your expert map reading skills to locate hidden treasure!

Clever Costume Contest
Prizes will be awarded to those in costumes created from items discovered at home. Mass-produced, disposable costumes will be admired…..but not rewarded!

Bring a potluck dish for all to share

Musical Entertainment Will Be Provided by our locally grown Bucket Band, and will offer plenty of opportunity to make music of your own.

This is a joint effort between Sustainable Crown Hill and the North Seattle Lapidary and Mineral Club

Where: Carol’s house: 10060 Mary Ave NW (789-8693)
Kids welcome.

The Potluck: Please bring a dish to share, and if you are inclined, try to use ingredients that are grown or produced “locally.” — however you want to define that. Some think of local as West Coast, others as not further than Eastern Washington. No judgments will be cast! Let it be fun and come prepared to share what you learned.

Who Killed the Electric Car?
Amid ever-increasing gas prices, this documentary delves into the short life of the GM EV1 electric car — once all the rage in the mid-1990s and now fallen by the roadside. How could such an efficient, green-friendly vehicle fail to transform our garages and skies? Through interviews with government officials, former GM employees and concerned celebs (such as EV1 driver Mel Gibson), Chris Paine (former EV1 owner) seeks to answer the question.

COME!

Come play in the mud and learn how to build with the oldest, simplest, and (I think) most beautiful technology in the world – cob! We’ll be firing up our
recently finished cob pizza oven for the Sustainable Crown Hill Meeting in the evening, while we continue work on the adjacent cob bench. Cob is just sand, clay and straw and it is mixed with your feet and built with your hands so anyone can join in the fun – kids are welcome and you don’t need to have any building skill or cobbing experience. Part of the fun is getting messy so wear you grubby clothes.

Below is a pic of a simple bench I built with some students at school. Hey, if
thirteen year old girls are convinced it’s fun, what are you waiting for! : >)
Come join us!!

Bert