September 28, 2014: Online Work Bee

== Agenda == * Check in * Review WWWs * Daily Practice * Weekly event logistics * Review Agenda * Newsletter * Sci-fi stories on the wiki * Project work ** Eric: Update the Finance Spreadsheet ** Eric: Sermon!!!! ** Eric: Rotate the Duck Weed and Record its progress ** Ben: Update the wiki news section ** Ben: Upload story from spring and link to stories * Evaluation == Parking lot == * Newsletter check-in == Check-in (gratinews) == * Eric … grateful that I got to go to the UU Religious Education classroom and do a play I wrote called [[Hammy the Hammer]] with the kids … they were so cooperative and happy … it was great … we also played board games with the Ottawa Naturists (ON/NO) (but wearing clothes :-) * Ben … I had a pretty nice small birthday party yesterday … got to play Settlers of Catan for the first time in a long time and I’m almost caught up on watching Doctor Who. == WW(W)s from last time == * Ben ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing * Ben ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing * <s>Ben … finish the climate presentation … by Thursday * Ben … finish a draft of the newsletter</s> * <s>Eric ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing * Eric ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing</s> * Brandon ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing * Brandon ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing * Brandon … get metric numbers together for last week so that we understand what the number looks like … Sunday after next * Brandon … kindred 2015 proposal … by Sunday after next * Brandon … write a “stewards circle outside of glassfrog” policy proposal … by Thursday == WWWs == * Ben ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing * Ben ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing * Eric ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing * Eric ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing * Brandon ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing * Brandon ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing == Daily Practice == * https://tdp.me/person/brandon-cs-sanders * https://tdp.me/person/EricOfSolseed * https://tdp.me/person/SciFiBen tips: * Make things green … lots of green lights feel nice! == Weekly Events Logistics == Weekend :Service rotation: Eric, Shelley, Brandon, Ben * October 4 Service: 9:00 AM PDT, 12:00 EDT (Ben) * October 5 Work-Bee: 5:30 PM PDT, 20:30 EDT Midweek * October 2 Work-Bee: 6:30 PM PDT, 21:30 EDT == Newsletter == SolSeed members have had a busy, exciting summer, from camping trips and a cottage repair project in Canada, to volunteering for the Sierra Club at festivals around Seattle, to visiting Mini Maker Faires in Ottawa and Portland. Naturally we missed a lot of work bee calls, but thanks to our new schedule with both Sunday and Thursday meeting times, we still managed to hold twelve work bees this summer. So what have we accomplished? Quite a lot, as the unusual length of this newsletter indicates. Our outreach efforts are starting to bear fruit! We're now in contact with Dr. Michael Mautner of the Interstellar Panspermia Society, whose goal is to send simple lifeforms to kick-start evolution in newly-formed star systems across the Milky Way. Clearly, we all need to read his book! I also took a trip to southern Washington State to renew our contacts with the Windward intentional community, which seeks to model sustainable ways of life that work with nature rather than against it. And Eric recently joined the blogging community on the Humanistic Paganism website, with a beautiful first entry about why he loves the SolSeed Movement. Eric's main point in that post is about the value of shared religious practice, so it's particularly appropriate that we've just completed our first liturgical year, a sequence of eight Sabbath rituals that celebrate the evolution of life, intelligence, and space colonization. The two "liturgical seasons" of summer celebrate the origin of humanity and the rise of civilization, thus setting the stage for the futuristic stories of autumn in which life expands to take root on worlds across the solar system, the galaxy, and ultimately the wider universe. As a first step toward realizing that vision, Eric and his son Patrick are experimenting with growing duckweed in sealed containers. Like any scientific research program, this one has had its share of failures, but we're committed to improving our methods until we can consistently keep these simple plants alive long enough to harvest them. Brandon is helping by researching sensors we can use to monitor the duckweed's environment. Speaking of greenhouse environments, the SolSeed Movement joined a Portland rally and march on the Autumn Equinox as part of the largest global climate-change protest event in history. The previous day, I had presented a half-hour talk at the Seed Village on the basics of greenhouse emissions and what people are already doing to counteract global warming, followed by a sign-making party. This event attracted three new acquaintances, including a polar-bear keeper from the Oregon Zoo! Our outreach efforts will continue to expand this autumn, as Eric presents a sermon at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ottawa next week, I continue working on the next music video for "The Seed," and we all make a big push to get the ball rolling on next summer's Kindred Festival! Stay tuned for more details. == Evaluation == * Eric … I enjoyed building the [[Stories]] page … it's really useful and brings together a lot of things we can be proud of * Ben … Yay I’m looking forward to reading your stories and play.