IAT
NEWSLETTER
March 2006
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"IT'S ABOUT TIME WE BEGIN IT,
TO TURN THE WORLD AROUND . . . "
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ORGANIZATION INFORMATION
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Co-Founder/Former President - Marcelle Orswell
(notmartha2@yahoo.com)
Co-Founder and Secretary -- Theresa Shea (Tree1A@aol.com)
Co-Founder/Webpage Designer-Sandy Clark (tybrenn@comcast.net)
Co-Presidents -- Ann Schnitz (aerie01@comcast.net)
and
Mary Ledford (eagleshorses@yahoo.com)
Web Site -- -- http://home.comcast.net/~tybrenn/iat/
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LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
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Dear Friends,
It's as if the weather has one foot in winter and the other in spring – the day here in the Northeast US started out at 36 degrees, but the cherry blossoms outside my window have already popped, and I saw daffodils this morning, driving home from New York. So it's coming, kids, slowly but surely. How will you celebrate the arrival of spring at your house? We'd love to hear. And btw, please keep your "Conscious Choice" suggestions coming in – this feature is really being enjoyed by our members.
And now, on with the show!
My heart to yours,
Ann
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QUOTE OF THE MONTH
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All good things are wild and free.
~Henry David Thoreau
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FUNDRAISER
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Nothing to report this month
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CALENDAR OF EVENTS
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April 22, 2006 - Bucks County, PA - Chris Westfall at the Churchville Nature Center
Proceeds will benefit the non-profit CNC, which is part of the Bucks County Parks & Recreation
Department / 501 Churchville Lane / Churchville, PA *
www.churchvillenaturecenter.org
7:00pm pattianncr@verizon.net
April 22, 2006 - St. Paul, MN / River cleanup in Battle Creek Regional Park 8:45am (Bagels, donuts,
juice & water will be provided with lunch afterwards at 11:30am). Curtis.Griffy@Guidant.com
April 22, 2006 - Altadena, CA - Earth Day Concert / Phil Christie with Mike Valentine, Steve & Ellen
Stapenhorst
and Jan Seides / 2029 N. Lake 7:00pm $15 (626) 398-7917
http://www.philchristie.com
April 28-30, 2006 - PA Friends of John Denver – Annual Spring Retreat - Bitter Goose Lodge $55 -
Deposit of $20 required. Make checks or money orders payable to Susan Spohn / 628 Hemlock Street
/ Pittsburgh, PA 15202 Info: < spohn@infionline.net >
April 29, 2006 - UK - Friends of John Denver Spring Denver Day 10:00am - 5:30pm Village Hall, Walton on the
Hill, Stafford, Staffordshire ST17 OLD lookingforspacerg@yahoo.com / Send a SASE to Rose Gwilt /29 Oldcroft
Road / Walton on the Hill / Stafford ST17 OLS Tickets: L6 each
May 6, 2006 - San Diego, CA - Phil Christie - San Diego Folk Heritage Concert / Solo Acoustic Show
Venue: TBA http://www.philchristie.com
May 20, 2006 - U.K. - Country Roads Walk - A walk is being planned in Northamptonshire. 10:00am Red Kite
Centre, RSPB Barn, Top Lodge in the Rockingham Forest. It is a 4 mile walk.
http://lookingforspace.bravehost.com/index.html rockymountain.high@ntlworld.com or
01485 570911
May 20, 2006 - Covina, CA - Mack Bailey & Chris Nole at the Fret House / 309 N. Citrus Avenue in Covina
8:00pm (626) 339-7020 Tickets $15
May 21, 2006 - Altadena, CA - Mack Bailey & Chris Nole at the Coffee Gallery Backstage 2029 N. Lake 7:00pm
(626) 398-7917 Tickets $20
June 17, 2006 - Baltimore, MD * 2nd Bi-Annual "Nightingala" "A Musical Tribute to John Denver
" Concert for John Hopkins School of Nursing. / Peabody Conservatory of Music / 1 Mount
Vernon Place / Peabody Concert Hall 8:00pm / 6:00 - VIP "Great Chefs" Reception in the
Peabody Library *
http://www.musicunites.com/Schedule.htm
July 1, 2006 - UK - Country Roads Walk - 6 mile walk in Haworth Yorkshire. 10:00am Meet at the car park at
the
Haworth Church and the Bronte Parsonage Museum. http://lookingforspace.bravehost.com/index.html
rockymountain.high@ntlworld.com or 01485 570911
July 2-9, 2006 Cruise Alaska with Jim Curry / "Alaska & Me Cruise" - Jim Curry will perform
John Denver's Alaska songs and hits in concert with a full band. 800-826-6732 http://www.cruisemust.com
/ sales@cruisemust.com
http://www.jimcurrysmusic.com 7 day cruise $50 deposit needed by January.
July 15-22, 2006 Princess Cruise to Alaska with Christopher Westfall
http://www.newbeginningtour.com It will feature a lot of sing-a-longs, including many favorites sung
by John Denver. 732-282-3108
http://www.chriswestfall.com
August 4, 2006 * Estes Park, CO * Brad and Kathy Fitch and their band will present a tribute to John Denver.
Long's Peak Inn on Colorado Hwy 7, just south of Estes Park. Benefit for the Rocky
Mountain Nature Association www.rmna.org * (970) 586-0108
http://www.cowboybrad.com
August 12, 2006 - Hesston, PA - "Rocky Mountain High in the Alleghenies - 3rd Annual Tribute to
John Denver" 6:00pm - 10:00pm at Raystown Lake in Hesston. Performers will include Christopher
Westfall, Tim Dabbs, Mark Cormican and others. Free, donations accepted. /
spiritwsconnections@yahoo.com;
http://www.geocities.com/spiritwsconnections
Weekends - Every Friday & Saturday - Branson, MO * "John Denver Lives" - Dinner
5:00pm & performance 5:30pm-6:30pm $24.95 Hillbilly Inn & Dinner
Theatre / Hillbilly Inn Motel / 1166 West Highway 76 / Branson, MO 65616 info@hillbillyinn.com *
1-800-535-0739 www.johndenverlives.com
* rodphil549@aol.com
(thanks to Emily Parris and the Rocky Mountain High newsletter for many of these dates; thanks too,
to Karen Tupek for keeping us up to date with Mack Bailey’s schedule, Judy Therrien for
information on Chris Westfall’s engagements, and Deb Sanderson for news of events in California)
REMINDER::: The John Denver Memorial Peace Cloth is available
for all JD-related events. Please email peaceclothinfo@yahoogroups.com for more information,
or see our website at www.johndenverpeacecloth.com
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LETTERS & POETRY
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Dear Highway Friends of John Denver,
We have scheduled our first cleanup of the year for Saturday, April 15th. As usual, we will meet at the eastern end of the Friendly Farm parking lot on NH Route 101 in Dublin at 1 p.m.
Anyone coming for the first time... if you have questions, please email or call.
In the event we have snow or rain or some unimagined natural disaster, check your email before you leave home in case of a last minute cancellation.
I hope to see many of you on the 15th!
- Diane
603-878-0967
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"Nature, Heal Thyself....."
by Carole Romanowski -whispjesse@aol.com
I recently read in my local newspaper, The Journal News, an interesting article about Brooktrout Lake in Adirondack Park in upstate New York. The lake became a symbol of nature's ability to heal itself.
Brooktrout Lake once was fully stocked with trout before air pollution and acid rain from faraway cities devastated the chemical nature of the soil in Adirondack Park. In 1984, biologists learned this lake plus others in the area were "dead" lakes - shockingly completely devoid of fish.
However, the lakes started to recover rather quickly after the 1990 Clean Air Amendments were enacted which fostered emission limits on Midwest coal-burning plants, significantly decreasing the acid rain levels. As the pH levels of the Adirondack lakes began to rise, levels of acidity were curbed. The surprising thing was how fast it happened since most predictions were for decades of recovery, according to Clifford Siegfried, a freshwater ecologist who has studied the Adirondack Lakes since 1984.
This past fall, biologists stocked Brooktrout Lake with over 20,000 trout - the first time a once-dead Adirondack lake had been restocked with fish after improving enough to sustain fish life. The lake will be checked by researchers this spring to determine how the fish fare, reproduce and grow since melting winter snow floods the lake with acid deposits. They will continue to monitor the lake's ecosystems to document changes in plankton, algae, insects, loons, herons and other species plus flora of the lake as the natural balance of the lake returns.
Sampling, or testing of the lake will be done numerous times every year because significant changes in the lake occur from week to week, since the lake's acid level is affected by precipitation and temperature causing the number of different organisms in the lake to rise and fall over short periods of time.
Charles Boylen, a biologist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Darrin Fresh Water Institute, has studied the Adirondack lakes since 1994 under a $7-mill. grant from the Environmental Protection agency and feels "the whole ecological lake experiment is of the highest order."
Interesting to learn a once "dead" body of water can heal itself and be saved ---with human help ...through the "conscious choice" of concerned and dedicated biologists, researchers and ecologists who walk in John Denver's footsteps to protect the environment!
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CONSCIOUS CHOICES – TIPS AND TRICKS FOR SAVING $, TIME AND THE ENVIRONMENT
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Here's something I do – do you have a paper shredder? Shred up documents and so on, and then throw the shreds away? Well, why not use the shredded paper for packing material when you mail out boxes? It's a perfectly cushiony material for protecting anything you send through the mail, and far better for the environment in the long run than styrofoam peanuts.
How about recycling CDs? Here's a whole bunch of ideas -- http://www.roxio.com/en/support/discs/recyclecds.html and don't forget that the cases can be saved and reused too.
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WEBSITES OF INTEREST
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None this month
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FOR SALE
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Peace Cloth Items!
Don't forget to check out www.johndenverpeacecloth.com (Peace Cloth Store) for exclusive John Denver items. All proceeds benefit The John Denver Memorial Peace Cloth. We now have a shopping cart to make your purchases easier!
Also -- if you shop online, please visit our virtual mall: www.johndenverpeacecloth.onecause.com -- every sale at a store in the mall returns a donation to the Cloth. The Peace Cloth now has eScrip -- please see our website for more information.
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If you're looking for something special for a special someone, come check out what Wildlife Creations (http://www.geocities.com/wldlifecreation) has to offer!! We have many items relating to John Denver and other items that would make fantastic gifts for people you know and love! Or gift someone who is hard to buy for, something that they will talk about for years! From keychains, snowglobes, t-shirts, potpourri jars and more!!! We're sure you'll find something! And remember, whenever you purchase from Wildlife Creations, you're not only giving a gift to someone you know, but to the Windstar Foundation and also the National Wildlife Federation, in John's memory, for wolf education as all proceeds are given to them. Wildlife Creations is now offering a feature product.
Checkout the website for this month's offering! For more information, you can email us at
wldlifecreation@wildmail.com.
In this healing time...
Thank you for helping to make the world
a better place in which to live,
Diana and Susan
Wildlife Creations
http://www.geocities.com/wldlifecreation
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From Sherry Cook <backhomagain@yahoo.com>
*UPDATE*
Hello friends!
I will still donate a portion of my Mary Kaye proceeds to Windstar, so please contact me directly through my e-mail from now on (backhomagain@yahoo.com).
Peace and joy,
Sherry :)
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ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS
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Climate Data Hint At Irreversible Rise In Seas
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published in the New York Times, March 24, 2006
Within the next 100 years, the growing human influence on Earth's climate could lead to a long and irreversible rise in sea levels by eroding the planet's vast polar ice sheets, according to new observations and analysis by several teams of scientists.
One team, using computer models of climate and ice, found that by about 2100, average temperatures could be four degrees higher than today and that over the coming centuries, the oceans could rise 13 to 20 feet — conditions last seen 129,000 years ago, between the last two ice ages.
The findings, being reported today in the journal Science, are consistent with other recent studies of melting and erosion at the poles. Many experts say there are still uncertainties about timing, extent and causes.
But Jonathan T. Overpeck of the University of Arizona, a lead author of one of the studies, said the new findings made a strong case for the danger of failing to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in a greenhouselike effect.
"If we don't like the idea of flooding out New Orleans, major portions of South Florida, and many other valued parts of the coastal U.S.," Dr. Overpeck said, "we will have to commit soon to a major effort to stop most emissions of carbon to the atmosphere."
According to the computer simulations, the global nature of the warming from greenhouse gases, which diffuse around the atmosphere, could amplify the melting around Antarctica beyond that of the last warm period, which was driven mainly by extra sunlight reaching the Northern Hemisphere.
The researchers also said that stains from dark soot drifting from power plants and vehicles could hasten melting in the Arctic by increasing the amount of solar energy absorbed by ice.
The rise in sea levels, driven by loss of ice from Greenland and West Antarctica, would occur over many centuries and be largely irreversible, but could be delayed by curbing emissions of the greenhouse gases, said Dr. Overpeck and his fellow lead author, Bette L. Otto-Bliesner of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
In a second article in Science, researchers say they have detected a rising frequency of earthquakelike rumblings in the bedrock beneath Greenland's two-mile-thick ice cap in late summer since 1993. They say there is no obvious explanation other than abrupt movements of the overlying ice caused by surface melting.
The jostling of that giant ice-cloaked island is five times more frequent in summer than in winter, and has greatly intensified since 2002, the researchers found. The data mesh with recent satellite readings showing that the ice can lurch toward the sea during the melting season.
The analysis was led by Goran Ekstrom of Harvard and Meredith Nettles of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., part of Columbia University.
H. Jay Zwally, a NASA scientist studying the polar ice sheets with satellites, said the seismic signals from ice movement were consistent with his discovery in 2002 that summer melting on the surface of Greenland's ice sheets could almost immediately spur them to shift measurably. The meltwater apparently trickles through fissures and lubricates the interface between ice and underlying rock.
"Models are important, but measurements tell the real story," Dr. Zwally said. "During the last 10 years, we have seen only about 10 percent of the greenhouse warming expected during the next 100 years, but already the polar ice sheets are responding in ways we didn't even know about only a few years ago."
In both Antarctica and Greenland, it appears that warming waters are also at work, melting the protruding tongues of ice where glaciers flow into the sea or intruding beneath ice sheets, like those in western Antarctica, that lie mostly below sea level. Both processes can cause the ice to flow more readily, scientists say.
Many experts on climate and the poles, citing evidence from past natural warm periods, agreed with the general notion that a world much warmer than today's, regardless of the cause of warming, will have higher sea levels.
But significant disagreements remain over whether recent changes in sea level and ice conditions cited in the new studies could be attributed to rising concentrations of the greenhouse gases and temperatures linked by most experts to human activities.
Sea levels have been rising for thousands of years as an aftereffect of the warming and polar melting that followed the last ice age, which ended about 10,000 years ago. Discriminating between that residual effect and any new influence from human actions remains impossible for the moment, many experts say.
Satellites and tide gauges show that seas rose about eight inches over the last century and the pace has picked up markedly since the 1990's.
Dr. Overpeck, the co-author of the paper on rising sea levels, acknowledged the uncertainties about the causes. But he said that in a world in which humans, rich and poor, increasingly clustered on coasts, the risks were great enough to justify prompt action.
"People driving big old S.U.V.'s to their favorite beach or coastal golf course," he said, should "start to think twice about what they might be doing."
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NEWSLETTER NEWS
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If you would like to submit articles, news items, stories, poetry, or any other pertinent information to IT'S ABOUT TIME, please e-mail any of the IAT staff. The submission deadline for the next edition is April 19, 2006. Please be sure to include any contact information so that members can e-mail or snail-mail for further details.
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The contents of this newsletter are entirely at the discretion of the "It's About Time" staff. Contributions, as always, are welcomed, although inclusion is not guaranteed. All contributed material may be subject to editing for content and length.
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". . . IT'S ABOUT TIME WE START TO LIVE
IT,
THE FAMILY OF MAN,
IT'S ABOUT TIME
AND IT'S ABOUT CHANGES . . .
AND IT'S ABOUT TIME."
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