Who We Expect to See Where and Doing What
Some of you might have already heard of Christian Cooper via the 2019 One Earth Film Festival screening of "Birders: The Central Park Effect." Far more of us had a first introduction to him via his disturbing encounter with a dog walker in Central Park on Memorial Day and the subsequent news reports.
West Cook Wild Ones launches its 2020 Garden for Nature program by announcing grants totaling more than $4,500 to 14 nonprofit and public organizations in the Chicago area.
Garden for Nature funds projects mainly in western Cook County that engage young people in planting native gardens and natural landscapes to make their communities healthier and more beautiful.
In late 1989, hundreds of headless walrus washed ashore on the coastline of Alaska’s Seward Peninsula, the westernmost part of the North American mainland.
Was it the result of subsistence hunting by Native Alaskans who traditionally used the meat, hides, blubber, bones, and ivory tusks without leaving so much waste behind? Was it the consequence of poaching for ivory tusks alone? Or could Russian villagers on the opposite side of the Bering Strait have been responsible?
The art opening for “Trees Close Up” will take place from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 5, at the Oak Park Public Library Art Gallery, 834 Lake St., in Oak Park. The exhibition will remain on display through Oct. 30
These paintings pay homage to common native trees in our urban forest. Most are larger than life studies of buds, blossoms and seeds -- miraculous moments in a process where sun, wind and water interact with the wisdom encoded in trees to perpetuate life.
Some of our area’s oldest living beings are oaks that sunk roots here long before the first European settlers arrived. Ernest Hemingway might have walked under their branches. Generations of children played in their shade.
Celebrate OAKtober Tree Forum will honor these oaks and point us forward toward a “tree culture.” Featuring four exceptional speakers and information tables, the event will take place from 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 13, in the 2nd floor Veterans’ Room of the Oak Park Main Library, 834 Lake St.
August brought an end to another successful completion of Green Community Connection’s youth sustainability leadership program, formerly known as “I Can Fly.” This summer’s program, “Austin Grown,” was a collaboration between GCC and BUILD Chicago, an organization serving Chicago’s at-risk youth since 1969 through gang intervention, violence prevention, and youth development programs.
The 8-week “Austin Grown” program involved 10 students, hailing primarily from the Austin, Garfield Park, and North Lawndale communities of Chicago, including two who returned from GCC’s 2017 pilot cohort.
We are blessed with an abundance of mature trees on the Greater West Side of Chicago. And that means birds are flying above us all the time. What makes them want to stop and linger in a particular garden? Jim Gill and Elaine Petkovsek are making that discovery. For the past year, they have been working on creating a “bird garden” in their backyard. They are putting the finishing touches on a project that’s taken some muscle, a little research… and becoming a bit of a bird-brain.
Pembroke Township, in the southeast corner of Kankakee County, is full of treasures of both place and people. From its black oak savanna to its black rodeo, topography and culture meet to create a one-of-a kind, rural community.
This summer, six area high school students participating in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) documented some of what makes Pembroke so unique via three Young Filmmakers Workshops with Matt Wechsler of Hourglass Films.
People who are curious about easy, affordable ways to add beauty to their home landscapes or who want to attract more beneficial wildlife to their yards can attend the “Birds, Bees & Butterflies: A Native Garden Tour” from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday, August 10, in Oak Park and River Forest.
Appropriate for beginning to advanced home gardeners, the tour will feature eight enchanting Oak Park and River Forest native gardens featuring Illinois native plants, including shade, sun and rain gardens, according to Pamela Todd, director of West Cook Wild Ones, the tour’s organizer.
Join a book discussion of "Braiding Sweetgrass" at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 15, at Trailside Museum of Natural History, 738 Thatcher Ave., in River Forest. Sponsored by the Forest Preserves of Cook County’s Nature Book Club.
This collection of essays was a favorite of GCC’s co-founder, Sally Stovall, who passed away a little more than a month ago. “It opened up a whole new way of looking at things,” she said about the book a few years ago, when she organized a five-week reading group around it. Later, in writing a brief review, Sally wrote, “The stories in each chapter have delighted and nurtured me in a way that I find hard to describe. From the first essay on, I have been sharing my enthusiasm for this book like an evangelist!”
