KAW Council’s current projects include:
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Prairie Roots: Growing a Sustainable Future: We are working with a dozen organizations to plan our 30th anniversary spring gathering, to be held May 4-6 at Camp Hammond (between Lawrence and Topeka), and featuring Gene and Joyce Marshall, long-time writers and leaders of the bioregional movement, and Stephenie Mills, bioregional writer extraordinaire, plus over a dozen
local presenters. More details and on-line registration coming soon! To join our meeting, please see the calendar, or contact Ken Lassman, seasonsandcycles@yahoo.com, 785/843-0253.
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Walkabouts: We meet monthly to walk together, visit on the trail and visit afterwards too. Walkabouts are a great way to learn about the prairie ecosystem, and our walks tend to be both nature hikes and great visiting time. If walking is difficult for you, please join us and set up a chair in the shade, and we’ll visit with you once we get back around. Please join us, bring food to share if you wish, and bring water, a hat and whatever else you need for yourself. For more information, please contact Caryn at 766-7159 or CarynMirriamGoldberg@gmail.com.
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The Kaw Valley Seed Saver Project, promoting seed saving a variety of ways, including a large and very successful annual seed saving festival. Please join us for the Seed Saving Fair 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., Sat., Feb. 11 at the Douglas County Fairgrounds.
- Fundraising: KAW Council completed a very successful fundraiser for the Kansas Poet Laureate program to help sustain this vital program until it can find a new organizational home. While our initial goal for the first stage of the fundraiser was $1,500, we raised over $5,000 in just over three weeks. See a short video here.
KAW Council’s past projects include: Bill Hatke’s Writings: KAW Council Press, Lawrence Environmental Education Project, The Sky Begins At Your Feet: Narrative Medicine for Earth and Body, and the Kaw Valley Seeds Project.
Bill Hatke’s Writing: KAW Council Press: Through the hard work of Dan Bentley, who is editing Bill’s extensive writing, we are proud to be publishing Bill’s prose and poetry in coming years. Bill, who died in the fall of 2007, is well-known to many for his passion for gardening and living simply, often on less than a few hundred dollars each year, in his East Lawrence home. He would bike everywhere, including to large gardens he maintained and helped with, both south and north of East Lawrence. He was a rascally-rascal, a great storyteller with a wild laugh and an ear for gossip, and wonderful and imaginative writer. Read more about Bill in the Lawrence Journal-World and in Cup of Joel. For more information, contact Dan at Dan66044@yahoo.com.
Lawrence Environmental Education Project: Environmental education is LEEP’s mission, and the project is currently focused on sharing aspects of multi-faceted environmental education for Lawrence children, including book club discussions, community field trips, and action plans centered on quarterly themes. The first theme is energy, and LEEP’s Ecoliteracy Book Club will soon discuss Big Coal. LEEP will offer two field trips to Bowerstock Mills, one for adults, and one that is more kid-friendly, and LEEP is working on an energy-related action guide, focusing in part on the Kansas legislature. For more information, please contact Sandy Beverly at sbeverly@sunflower.com.
The Sky Begins At Your Feet: Narrative Medicine for Earth & Body: KAW is happy to offer a special weekend of events related to writing, bioregionalism and sense of place, cancer and community, and embodiment (what it means to live in a body), all related to the book launch for KAW member Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg. This event, held in October of 2009, included a panel on “Narrative Medicine: How Our Stories About Illness Can Foster Healing and Community” featuring area healers, doctors, artists and writers from several traditions; Mirriam-Goldberg doing a reading from her memoir, The Sky Begins At Your Feet, which includes an information festival for cancer awareness and environmental groups; and a community writing workshop, “Imagination, Memoir & Place: Writing Ourselves Home.” The book is being published by Ice Cube Press, and cover art is by Joan Foth. For more information, please see Caryn’s site or contact her at CarynMirriamGoldberg@gmail.com.
