New daytimers open? Ready, set, go …

* Monday, January 15, 6 to 9 p.m. at Harbourside Cohousing: An open meeting of the Transition Sooke core team. Everyone on our email list is welcome to attend. We’ll serve vegetarian soup and break bread together, then conduct our regular core team agenda with plenty of time for feedback, discussion and fresh thinking from all involved. Also planned is our annual dotmocracy process (i.e., our way of tapping your opinions on where we should be spending our volunteer energies in the months ahead). Expect a reminder early next month, and please RSVP by email if you plan to attend. Sincere thanks to Harboursiders (and TS team members) Michael, Paivi and David for welcoming us back to their common room with a view.

* The TS Book Club, organized and launched by our Paula and Bernie, debuts on Wed. Jan. 24 with Naomi Klein’s No Is Not Enough: Resisting the New Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need. 6:30 pm at the Sooke library, all welcome, no charge.  The one-night discussion will be followed with sessions dedicated to The Wayfinders by Wade Davis (March 21) and On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy D. Snyder (May 23). Email Paula for more details. PS Copies of the Klein and Synder titles are available as on-demand e-books from the Vancouver Island Regional Library. If buying your own copies, we urge you to shop local at Sooke’s Well Read Books(where Shannon Babbage can help you track each down) or at one of Victoria’s indie bookstore landmarks.

* Saturday, January 27, 10 am to 4 pm at Harbourside Cohousing. Compassion In Action: A Nonviolent Communications Workshop with Rachelle Lamb. Learn the late Marshall Rosenberg‘s vital life skill from Rachelle, a veteran certified trainer of a relational communications approach involving observations, feelings, needs and requests.   As she says, “NVC techniques give us the tools to resolve differences with others peacefully. It teaches one how to make clear requests, not demands, while creating space so that everyone else will also have their needs acknowledged and valued.”  Rosenberg took the work into war zones with remarkable impact, and his teachings have touched hundreds of thousands.

Maximum 30 participants. Sliding scale of $20 to $50. Please register ASAP with Susan Nelson via email or call her at 778-528-2299.  (In honouring our commitment to making community learning experiences accessible to everyone, we’re offering this workshop on a sliding scale. The normal charge for one-day trainings with Rachelle is $140 per person.  Our expenses will be approx. $1500, so we are grateful for any extra $$ that our registrants can contribute if they can afford more than $50).   

 * Grid-Tie Solar Info Night with Viridian Energy Cooperative. Tuesday, Jan. 30, 7 pm, in the EMCS library. Viridian’s Steve Unger will raise awareness, dispel myths and share information. Free admission.

* TBA in the works is a Sooke info night on electoral reform presented with Fair Vote Canada’s Greater Victoria chapter. With a referendum slated for late next year, the BC government has set a deadline of Feb. 28 for submissions to its “How We Vote” survey. (Read this non-partisan Fair Vote Canada guide to filling out the survey before you start.)

* Our Sooke Region Multi-Belief Initiative (SRMBI) has now produced a “Quest” document that defines our working group’s aims, principles and strategic objects. It’s the foundation for the SRMBI’s activities going ahead, notably the launch of a local Charter for Compassion awareness effort next year. This initiative is intended to be inclusive of all beliefs (or non-beliefs for that matter) with the golden rule as the common tread tying us all together.  Download a copy of the Quest document from our website archive.

* Finally, a new TS working group has formed to build greater local awareness about the impacts of glyphosates in the environment. The team plans to seek out allies in the region with the ultimate goal of convincing the District of Sooke to join the 40 or so other BC municipalities (a quarter of them on Van Isle) which have banned the use of cosmetic pesticides within their respective borders. If the Province of BC won’t follow the lead of most other provinces in restricting non-essential pesticides, then it’s up to us locally to take the step.