The City of Houston Solid Waste Department and CompuCycle are providing monthly one day E-Recyclable collection events on the first Saturday of the month at the Kingwood Metro Park & Ride lot. Keep Kingwood Green encourages you to do the right thing and drop off your old electronics.

Swap toys with other families, and keep usable toys from entering the landfill.

Jacob Martin, greenhouse manager at Mercer Botanic Gardens and owner of Old School Produce, will teach participants how to preserve tropical plants in your garden over the wintertime. He will demonstrate how to cut and cover large tropicals and give tips for storing smaller plants when the temperatures drop.

Lunch Bunch is recommended for ages 12+. Bring lunch and enjoy this gardening presentation. Call Mercer Botanic Gardens at 713-274-4160 to make a reservation or receive more information

Swap toys with other families, and keep usable toys from entering the landfill.

A principal creator of the climate movement, Bill McKibben returns to The Progressive Forum on the eve of worldwide climate demonstrations scheduled in September, while the City of Houston develops its Climate Action Plan for year-end. Furthering the importance of the event, McKibben will be joined onstage by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner for a brief Q&A on climate change and planning at the local level.

McKibben is the co-founder of 350.org, the first organization to launch a planet-wide movement including 20,000 rallies held in every country except North Korea, while spearheading the fast-growing fossil fuel divestment movement. Foreign Policy magazine named him to its inaugural list of the world’s most important global thinkers. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science and the recipient of the Right Livelihood Prize, called the “alternative Nobel,” as well as the Gandhi Prize and the Thomas Merton Prize. He wrote the first book for a general audience on climate change, The End of Nature, in 1989, plus a dozen other books. In May, he published Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? He is the Schuman Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College in Vermont.

Books will be on sale at the event, and McKibben will sign books and greet fans at the end of the evening

Three levels of ticket prices. A $150 ticket includes a private speaker reception and reserve seating near the front. $70 and $45 general admission.

Swap toys with other families, and keep usable toys from entering the landfill.

Susan’s presentation will address the 5 W’s (who, what, where, when, and why) and the one H (how) the Nash Prairie came to be owned by The Nature Conservancy.

Susan became a Cradle of Texas Master Naturalist in 2001 and have been a volunteer land steward for the Nash Prairie since 2010. Recently she have completed an 11-month job as an AmeriCorps Member working as an assistant land Steward for the Columbia Bottomland Preserves for The Nature Conservancy, which includes the Nash Prairie, Mowotony Prairie, Brazos Woods, and The San Bernard Woods in Brazoria and Matagorda county.

The Rothko Chapel and Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice present the 5th Annual Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold Endowed Lecture Series in Peace, Social Justice and Human Rights, which honors Sissy for her relentless pursuit of social justice.

The 2019 lecture will feature Ruth Wilson Gilmore, a renowned activist and public scholar known for her work on prison abolition. Gilmore is professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences and American Studies, as well as Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In addition to her scholarly work, Professor Gilmore co-founded several grassroots organizations, including the California Prison Moratorium Project, Critical Resistance, and the Central California Environmental Justice Network.

Gilmore’s lecture, Meanwhile: Making Abolition Geographies, explores how visions of abolition guide and connect organizing across a range of social justice struggles. Examples in the talk will highlight: environmental justice, public sector labor unions, farm workers, undocumented households, criminalized youth, community based approaches to prevent and resolve gender and interpersonal violence, and organizing by people while incarcerated. The vivid stories demonstrate how abolition is a practical place-specific program for urgent change based in the needs, talents, and dreams of vulnerable people.

About the Farenthold Lecture series:
In line with Sissy’s own history of exposing and responding to injustices and inequality as both a public servant and citizen, the lecture series brings to Austin and Houston internationally renowned scholars, activists and politicians who will inspire their audiences to think and act creatively to respond to some of the greatest challenges of the 21st century.

To register:  https://law.utexas.edu/prison-abolition/registration/

The Woodlands G.R.E.E.N. is sponsoring a Going Green Sustainability Lecture. The USGS has been monitoring groundwater table levels in hundreds of water wells in our region for more than 40 years, including wells that are pumping water from the Chicot, Evangeline, and Jasper aquifers–sources of drinking water for much of Montgomery County.  At September’s Woodlands G.R.E.E.N. lecture, speakers Chris Braun and Jason Ramage (both with United States Geological Survey) will discuss the results from the latest round of measurements and will highlight various trends that have developed over the past decades of data collection and analysis.

Chris Braun is currently a Hydrologist and Groundwater Specialist with the USGS Texas Water Science Center.  Chris’ work as a hydrologist covers a full spectrum, including water quality, surface water, and groundwater projects through his 26-year career with USGS.  In July, 2019, Chris transferred to the Texas Water Science Center Gulf Coast Branch to serve as a hydrologist.  He holds a B.S. degree in Geological Sciences and a M.S. in Water Resources Engineering, both from the University of Texas at Austin.

Jason Ramage is currently a Hydrologist with the USGS Texas Water Science Center.  Jason’s project work has been focused on groundwater, compaction, and subsidence in the Gulf Coast Aquifer System.  He has also been involved in groundwater quality sampling in production wells looking at a variety of constituents from major and minor ions, trace metals, radiochemical isotopes, age dating isotope, and others.  Jason holds a B.S. degree in Geology from the University of Houston.

Registration for this event is not necessary.

Swap toys with other families, and keep usable toys from entering the landfill.