Greetings! We have a great schedule coming up this autumn; here are three events happening in the next two months:

• Bitterroot Climate Stories
• Green Home Tour
• Bitterroot Resilience Forum

Read the wonderful storytellers' bios here

Activities

We have two interactive activities:

• Voice Your Climate Story
  a workshop with Lara Tomov and Caitlyn Lewis.

This workshop will encourage folks to tap into their personal climate story. You'll get to hear how climate change has affected your neighbors, and have the opportunity to share how it has affected you. This gathering is an opportunity for folks to come together, because one of the most important things we can do to mitigate climate change is to talk about it.

• Climate Story Group Art Project

Barb Lucas will lead us in a group art activity that will weave together the climate storytelling that we have done with Lara and Caitlyn. The kids will have the chance to contribute to the group art as well.

Kids of all ages will love the art activity table. Adults are allowed too 🙂

Barb is also offering two sessions at Open-Ended Expressive Arts Studio for creating visual art that expresses the emotions our community is experiencing due to climate change.

• Friday, Sept. 1st, 10 am - 1 pm
• Tuesday, Sept. 5th, 6 pm - 8 pm

Special thanks to Chapter One Bookstore for supporting this Climate Stories event by hosting a nature-themed story hour for 2-5 year olds during their regularly scheduled storytime at 10 am on Tuesday, 5 September.

Join us for a tour of two super do-it-yourself houses that are great examples of green energy. We will spend about an hour at each location.

1. Daniel and Katherine's house is a load-bearing (without frame) strawbale and cob house with earthen floors and clay-based plaster finishes. The house utilizes a rubble trench foundation and earthbag stem wall to support the 2-1/2-foot thick walls.
   The home is heated with a batch-style rocket mass heater which heats the 750-square-foot home on two cords of wood each year. Also featured on the same property are pallet and cob-constructed composting toilets, an outdoor shower with tadelakt (Moroccan plaster), a strawbale workshop, freestanding cob garden walls, and a cob and straw bale guesthouse.
2. Jim and Star's house has decorative and insulating concrete construction, solar, and the Annualized Geo-Solar (AGS) attached greenhouse. This low-tech AGS system captures hot air in the summer and stores it below the greenhouse (or house) to be released in the winter. Read about it here and learn how to build it here.

You can ask questions and hear about the installation, use, and requirements for homes with these green innovations. We will carpool, and including transit time to switch houses and return to the parking lot, we expect to finish by 1 pm.

Donation: $10 per person

BCAG has partnered with the University of Montana: SpectrUM, Bitterroot Audubon Society, Trout Unlimited, and Great Bear Native Plants to give the Bitterroot Valley an opportunity to discuss resilience planning strategies that will address the impacts of a changing climate.

This event is the first Bitterroot open forum focused on discussing the impacts of climate change and what that means for our community. Drought, flooding, fire, smoke, and extreme heat are realities that we already face, and are all predicted to get worse.

The forum will include:

• Expert presentations to increase understanding of our community’s vulnerabilities to anticipated climate changes
• Resilience planning through facilitated group discussion and deliberation
• Defining our own local action strategies to adapt to and mitigate climate impacts
• Exploring a spectrUM science exhibit on climate impacts
• Intergenerational dialogue
• Ongoing follow-up planning for resilience preparedness

Topics:

• Drought & Flooding
• Smoke & Fire
• Extreme Heat

Find out more, including a bio of the featured expert speaker, Dr. Bruce Maxwell, a detailed schedule, and registration here.

We are so proud of our dedicated youth and were honored to support them by attending the second day of the trial.

Read more here