The 21st Century Matriarch

The biggest take away from day 2 – and really from the conference as a whole – is the shift in the conversation focus re climate change from problem to solutions….it is hopeful rather than doom/gloom.

So much good material referenced in the conference….here are some of the sites I’ve looked at so far.

Project Drawdown. Drawdown is the point in time when the concentration of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere begins to decline on a year-to-year basis. The focus of this is site is, therefore, about solutions…things we can implement now….with the goal of reaching drawdown by mid-century. There is also a 104-page downloadable The Drawdown Review (free) available from the site.

American Public Health Association page about Climate Change. There are regional factsheets about the health impact of climate change plus some climate-relevant COVID-19 resources.

The UK Health Alliance on Climate Change. Infrographic about “Health and climate: co-benefits.”

Center for Climate Change & Health. Climate Change and Health: A Framework for Action (another infographic)

These links are skewed to the last session of the conference because I’m still overwhelmed and trying to figure out how to organize what I have in my notes. The conference organizers are posting the videos and saved chats to the shared folder by sometime next week (I think). I’ll start with reviewing my notes this week and then add to the summary of what I’ll keep over the next few weeks. I’m envisioning a list of annotated links – at minimum. Some parts of the conference were done as concurrent breakout sessions….so the videos for the sessions I did not attend will be totally new material for me.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

**Summer squash custard**. Before I went to pick up my share for the 3rd week of the CSA, I used up all the summer squash I had in the crisper making a custard with pecan topping. It made an excellent light lunch.

**Lots of day lilies.** The deer have eaten more day lily buds…so I am cutting all the ones that are mature enough. Today it was 6 stalks. There will be more ready to cut tomorrow….if the deer don’t get them first

3rd week of CSA. Look at the list of veggies. It was 2 overflowing bags (the fennel, carrot, and beet tops were sticking out)!

I was glad I cleared out the crispers before I did the pickup. When I got home, I managed to get almost everything into the two crispers. The Caraflex (pointy head) cabbage didn’t fit. Tomorrow I will probably have to process some of it into the freezer.

The Mid-Atlantic Climate Change Education Conference (MACCEC) was a conference that went virtual because of the pandemic. I anticipated that it would be an intense 4 hours in from of my computer. I set up to use both of my screens – one for the WebEx and one for note taking/agenda/etc. Initially, I thought I might use a headset for the audio but quickly decided that 4 hours was too long for that. I also thought that I might get up and move around more during the sessions, but I was too busy interacting with polls and chat…and taking notes. I only got up and moved during the breaks!

Now that it is the ‘morning after,” I’ve had some hours to digest what happened on the first day. It was overwhelming at times while it was happening – and in a different way than an in-person conference is overwhelming. The flow of chat during the presentation is often invigorating but also distracting. It requires multi-tasking. Sometimes I tuned it out to focus on the presenter entirely.

Like most conferences, the speakers were often rushed so that we could stay in the time windows on the agenda. The charts were posted which made up for the rush somewhat…but not completely.

There were breakout sessions that ended up having some similarities with in-person conferences since one time I got lost for about a minute…couldn’t find my session!

The big take aways from the first day were:

information is out there for climate change educators…choosing what works best for their situation
education on climate change is interlinked with JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion)
always get to solutions…don’t stop with defining the problems

The ice-breaker activity was to determine the native inhabitant of land where participants were located using the https://native-land.ca/ website. I learned that where I live is Piscataway land. Where my daughter lives in Springfield MO is Kickapoo, Osage, and Sioux land. The land where my parents and sisters live in Texas (Carrollton, Flower Mound, and Sherman) was Kickapoo and Wichita land. Got us all thinking about how the land, water and air have changed since then…what we can and should restore.

Unique activities for yesterday:

Deer found the day lilies. The deer ate many of the day lily buds in the past few days. I am cutting a few every day as they manage to mature enough to bloom indoors.