​On Saturday morning, Hill Avenue Library will host a presentation on Chumash Healing. Jim Adams, a professor of pharmacology at USC and healer, will talk about curing chronic pain, treating severe pain and other topics.

Adams studies the active ingredients in medicinal plants native to Southern California. A keeper of the native Chumash plant medicine wisdom, he trained under Chumash medicine woman Cecilia Garcia and co-wrote a book on the topic with her. 

The event is free.
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Saturday March 3, 10:30 a.m.
Hill Avenue Library
55 South Hill Avenue, Pasadena

Repair Cafe is a fun free party connecting local folks who love a challenge to fix appliances, garments,  jewelry, chairs, bikes and whatnot together with those who need the repairs. The buzz in the room is always exuberant. 

Repair Cafe helps keep stuff out of the landfill. But it is also about building a network of people who want to make the world a better place, find new friends and have fun.

​If you have repairs you can do yourself bring the project and work on it in the company of others! Our various stations are always willing to give guidance on your progress. If you'd like to help us organize this event, please RSVP here.

As always, this is a free event. It comes with side projects such as the Really, Really Free Market, Seed and Seedling Swap, and there will be live music and free hot drinks.

Make sure to stay in touch with Repair Cafe on our website or via Meetup!

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Saturday, March 17, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m.
Side Street Projects (adjacent to John Muir High School)
Canada Ave
Altadena 91001
Map 

My first experience with Repair Cafe was to bring my broken toaster. The toaster had sat sullenly on the kitchen counter for months, reminding the housemate that she broke it. Several kitchen items met their fate on the kitchen floor since she moved in.  The next large item to succumb to my roommate's butter fingers was the glass blender jar. Something had to give — and it was not the toaster. That faithful toaster had worked for 20 years, surviving not one but two divorces.

After hearing about Repair Cafe, I was not willing to give up on it. Shortly after my housemate vacated, the next date for Repair Cafe arrived. It was a gorgeous sunny day. I packed the toaster in my bike bag and rode with a friend who wanted to go with me. Our mutual interest in sustainability  cemented our friendship that day.

We arrived to tables and tents set up in a local coffee shop parking lot. When my turn came, I gave my toaster to the tinkerer, anticipating the worst. He looked it over, plugged it in, and it was still dead. I felt relief that this was not a car going to the mechanic that works once it arrives at the shop. He turned it upside down, and crumbs fell out. He found the crumb tray tab and gently pulled on it. The toaster held fast to the crumb tray. He tugged a little harder, and out popped a small piece of charcoal that was once a square of toast. All three of us startled and laughed. He plugged the toaster in again, in case that was the issue, and the elements lit right up. 

My faithful toaster, it turns out, did not need a repair at all. Had there not been a Repair Cafe in Pasadena though, it would have met its fate. The roommate had been all too willing to throw it out. I became a Repair Cafe volunteer soon after. These days, my toaster resides in the cupboard, retired. The friend who went with me on that first trip, and I, are living happily ever after, anticipating the next Repair Cafe.

—Kathleen McGregor

One of the Transition Pasadena projects, Beautiful Swales, has been in conversation with Pasadena Water and Power (PWP) and Water LA, and it is exciting news that those two connections met each other on January 8th, 2018. It was electric.

It’s a case of synaptic activism; an example of passionate people making new connections. In this case, our common goal is water capture.

We met with Ursula Schmidt of PWP, who is Water Conservation Program Manager, and Melanie Winter, Director of Water LA. The topics ranged from installing swales at Pasadena Public Schools to choosing an area in Pasadena that would benefit from an entire neighborhood working together building water capture projects on their own property, similar to the Water LA Phase 1 Pilot program.  I predict cooperation in the near future.

In the Phase 1 Pilot program in Panorama City there were multiple teams of five or so families who agreed to participate. And part of the agreement was “I will not only work on my own water capture, I will help my neighbors work on their water capture.” So they got to know their neighbors, and they all worked together.

When Pasadena is upgrading a street, they occasionally add a swale, which is terrific. But Water LA is leveraging the fact that homeowners can also put in swales to increase the water going to our local groundwater. And we don’t have to pay engineers to make a huge plan with a lot of concrete because it’s just one person with a shovel!

On January 23rd I went to the City of Pasadena Municipal Services Committee (MSC) meeting. They had a presentation given to them about the Climate Action Plan (CAP). The CAP has five areas of influence: transportation, energy, water conservation, greening the city, and waste. I spoke about how swales will help two of the five; they are water conservation and greening the city. 

Usually metrics are required when deciding where to spend city time and money. So I  asked the MSC to make an exception for having data or evidence of success about the benefits of swales. Metrics are important but with swales the success is invisible, because the success, the water captured, is underground.

But wouldn’t it be better if we could have the data, the evidence of success? Stay tuned because PWP and Water LA will be meeting in February to explore exactly this possibility. More synaptic activism!

—Sylvia Holmes

Two young Frenchmen, friends since childhood, embark on a global journey to discover the roots of the social, economic, environmental and spiritual degradation that has impacted life on our planet. Their discoveries reveal harsh realities but are also imbued with beauty, hope and new understanding. Their encounters with philosophers, scientists, activists and holders of ancient traditions lead them to an appreciation that meaningful, restorative change in our inner selves, human society and the natural world is not only possible, but within our grasp.

The film features Vandana Shiva, Trinh Xuan Thuan, Satish Kumar, Federic Lenoir, Pierre Rabin, Herve Kempf, Bruce Lipton, Cassandra Vieten and Marianne Sebastien.

In recognition of Black History Month, the program at the Armory will begin with a brief introduction by artist Andre Barnwell of his recent work, African USA Flag, which is newly installed in the studio where the screening takes place. ​

David Cutter of Transition Pasadena will facilitate a community discussion following the film. 

For more information contact Marty Coleman at 818.517.8878 or visit https://aquestformeaning-themovie.com.

Conscientious Projector is a documentary film series sponsored by Sustainable World, a Peace & Justice Ministry of All Saints Church, in association with Armory Center for the Arts. Following a new, quarterly schedule, the next Conscientious Projector event will be on Thursday, April 12. 
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​"A Quest for Meaning"

Thursday, February 8, 7 p.m. 
Armory Center for the Arts
145 N Raymond Ave, Pasadena 91103

Admission is free. The facility is accessible to people with disabilities.

This month, I would like to take a crack at despair. If you are not feeling some despair about the world then either you are not paying attention or you've stuffed your feelings into a compartment where you don't have to deal with them. I think many people cope with life this way. I know I got very good at compartmentalizing and disassociating just to survive my childhood.

The problem with this practice is that you don't just put away the despair. You end up cutting yourself off or numbing all of your feelings. As Joanna Macy says, "Your pain is evidence that you care."

So it's really for the better to stay aware even if that means facing the despair.

Hope in the Face of Despair

That said, the best way to deal with despair is to accept it. Maybe you can devise a daily, weekly ritual that is personal and satisfying to you. The main concern I hear when a conversation turns despairing, is that people worry about admitting the despair will lead to some kind of paralysis or disfunction. I think this is a reasonable concern; but not feeling the despair is to some degree not being present to your feelings. 

I would like to offer some hope in the face of despair. I'm not saying hope to counteract the despair. The despair is real and for good reasons. So feel your despair and then consider the following ideas.

I have discovered two forms of hope in recent years. One is easy to explain and the other is not. Both are available to anyone so let me start with the easy one, and hopefully I will be able to distill the harder one into a short coherent explanation by next month. 

Community Work as an Antidote

Think of a time when you did something for someone else. That felt good I would guess. Now imagine all of the possible things you could do for the community. It doesn't matter what you actually might choose. In fact choose something that appeals to you. Have some fun doing this kind of work. There are all kinds of community level projects you could engage in. At the community level, sometimes it's hard to see the positive results. Doing something for an individual is clearly positive, and you can see those results. 

The benefit of doing community level work despite the results being less obvious is that you get to work with others. Sometimes many others. Working with others on an important goal that serves people, is rewarding and, as Joanna Macy also says, creates a feeling of "active hope."

I've been doing community work for many years now, and whether I call it active hope or just hope, I feel hopeful because of the work I do with others. I recommend community work as an antidote for despair. It helps me to feel happy and hopeful. I get to do good work that benefits many others.

Stay tuned for Despair (Part Two).

— David Cutter
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This post is the first in a loose series of entries on the topic of inner transition.