I know some of you may not receive the Santa Rosa mothers group newsletter so I just wanted to pass a long this information about The Living Room's Gift and Clothing drive going on during the month of November.

The Living Room is a wonderful local agency that supports women and children in homeless situations. If you are able to donate gift items (for women or children), clothing or food items (particularly those listed below) or if you can donate some of your time at the organization during the week of Dec 14 while they are setting up for the holidays and making it a really special time for their participants, anything you can do to help would be greatly appreciated.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me or the Living Room coordinator Caroline Banuelos at 321-0976 or cbanuelos@thelivingroomsc.org

Thank you very much in advance if you can help in any way. - Emily Vincent


Here (below) is a copy of an article written in this months newsletter with more detailed info.....

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The Living Room Clothing and Gift Drive

By Mary Hortin & Emily Vincent – Community Service Coordinators

 For the last several years, the Santa Rosa Mothers’ Club has collected donations for The Living Room’s Holiday Store. We are proud to be continuing this tradition again this year. The Living Room is very concerned about receiving enough items this year.

 The Living Room is a daytime, drop-in center providing safe haven for women and their children who are homeless in Santa Rosa. Throughout the year, women who utilize The Living Room earn “points” which they use at the “store” to purchase donated goods for themselves and their children for the holidays.They serve people from 0-80 years old.

Don’t be intimidated by this long list, whatever you can do to help is greatly appreciated.

Please only NEW, unused items.

For their Christmas store and Santa’s visit: new children’s toys (no plush toys please) and adult gifts.

 High need items are:

• Pajamas (two piece sets sizes 4-14)
• Blanket sleepers (toddler sizes)
• Slippers for mothers and children (all sizes)
• Pocket calendars
• New underwear (kids to adult, especially ladies’ sizes 8 and up)
• Diapers (especially sizes 5 and 6)
• Sanitary pads and tampons
• Anything for cold and rainy weather (especially socks, gloves, scarves, hats, blankets, coats, sleeping bags and umbrellas)
• Stocking stuffer items
• Gift cards for teenagers (movies and clothes)
• Handheld games
• Arts and craft supplies
• Cosmetic bags
• Large shampoos
• Hair accessories (brushes, combs, clips, scrunchies)

The Living Room feeds 60-80 people two meals a day.

They frequently run out of items like :

• oatmeal packets,
• packets of hot chocolate,
• tea (especially herbal)
• dry cereal.

 Items need to be turned in to The Living Room by December 10 becasue the store and dinner party are the next week.

The Living Room is seeking volunteers for the week of December 14^th.Even a small amount of your time would be greatly appreciated. 

Duties would range from

• setting up the store for the women and children,
• assisting them in selecting items  
• wrapping gifts

If you are interested in helping please contact Caroline Banuelos at 321-0976 or cbanuelos@thelivingroomsc.org

Drop off sites all through November / Deadline Dec 9th:

 The Living Room

636 Cherry St

Santa Rosa 95404

cbanuelos@thelivingroomsc.org

Monday through Friday OPEN 8:30 am to 1:30 pm

       or) Emily Vincent

579-3566 or emilyvincent@hotmail.com

(I can pick up your items if you are unable to deliver to one of the drop off sites)

Mary Hortin

570-1621 or morthort@sonic.net

Here is an email I received recently from a local creek steward. It highlights the good work our community is doing to clean up our creeks as well as all of the work that still lies ahead  to return the water and habitat in the Santa Rosa creek system to health and vitality.

Hello Creek Stewards,

 With nearly 2 3/4 inches of rain in the last several days our creeks have started flowing again.  Not many leaves have fallen yet so the storm didn’t cause as much street flooding as a storm later in the fall might have.  I spent a little time on Santa Rosa Creek near Pierson Street this morning and didn’t see as much trash littering the shoreline or hanging in bushes as I expected.  I think that the work of the Youth Ecology Corps on creeks this summer and the 10 volunteer creek clean ups we’ve had this fall made a big difference.

 Six groups on Colgan, Spring, Matanzas and Spirit Creeks counted the trash they collected on tally cards and the results were turned in as part of the 3 week period of recording data for the California Coastal Commission.  Coastwalk led the Sonoma County effort and reports the following numbers from Sonoma County, with numbers from Santa Rosa in the second column:

No. of volunteers:              1,218                  182

Pounds of trash:               10, 564                 634

Pounds recyclables:           8,390                  236

Distance cleaned:             104.85 miles       3.5 miles

Quantified trash in the Santa Rosa area included:

211 plastic bags

28 balloons

59 pieces of clothing

45 toys

83 straws and stirrers

232 cups

884 food wrappers

125 plastic bottles

136 glass bottles

116 beverage cans

26 plastic six-pack holders

52 pieces of building material

3 tires

What can we make of these results?  Unfortunately, there is a lot of trash out there such as balloons, food wrappers, and plastic bags that can be mistaken as food by birds, fish, terrestrial, and marine animals.  The relatively low number of 26 plastic six pack holders might indicate that these are becoming less used as packaging to the relief of ducks, fish and other animals that can become entangled by them.  Food and beverage packaging is the most common form of trash.  There are 74 more tires somewhere in our creeks.  (This is calculated by having found 3 tires in 3.5 miles of creek and extrapolating that to 77 tires in the 90 miles of creeks within the City of Santa Rosa.  A similar calculation would estimate that 1,111 toys and 2,050 straws remain in our creeks.  Actually, I think these numbers would be high as the clean ups concentrated on creek areas with the most trash.)  Certainly, we can conclude that the volunteers made a difference. 

If you can, please join us for another volunteer creek clean up on Saturday October 24 on Steele Creek by Biella School.  Details are below.  And we’re certainly ready to support students, clubs, or businesses with a creek clean up as a community service project.  Sonoma Country Day School and Waldorf Summerfield School will keep the ball rolling with creek clean ups scheduled for later this month. 

A couple of animal sightings: I was surprised to hear from several people of a coyote wandering in Santa Rosa Creek not too far downstream from Stony Point Road.  I’ve heard of coyotes on the outskirts of town but not of them using the more urban stream corridors.  Sharp-eyed Mary Tressler spotted a river otter in Santa Rosa Creek by Gateway Park (the mosaic fish statue).  A Water Agency maintenance worker in the creek out by Willowside Road was startled when an inquisitive otter suddenly emerged between his hip boots.  A gaze of eight raccoons (time for the Funk and Wagnalls) raised havoc in garages as they used the storm drain pipes to move around a NE Santa Rosa neighborhood.  What have you seen?  It’s always fun to learn from the many eyes, ears, and voices on our creeks. 

Hands Across the County & Make a Difference Day

Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009,

9:00 a.m. to noon

Steele Creek clean up at Biella School – 2140 Jennings Avenue, Santa Rosa (west of Marlow Road)

Hands Across the County, a county-wide volunteer work day underwritten by Friedman's Home Improvement, mobilizes volunteer groups and individuals to make the community a cleaner, safer, brighter place while making friends and having fun too!  This will be the first time we’ve done a community creek clean up on Steele Creek.  Many parents and students will be working on the buildings and grounds.  This is a chance to clean up the neighborhood creek that drains the land as far away as Cleveland Avenue and enters Piner Creek a couple of blocks downstream of the school.  Tools and refreshments provided.  Rubber boots could come in handy. 

Insecta-palooza – explore the fantastic world of insects

Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009,

9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Darwin Hall, Sonoma State University

What’s the difference between a bug and an insect?  Do scorpions really glow in the dark?  Find out about the diversity of insects, spiders and other arthropods that live in our gardens, fields and forests.  Entomologists of all ages can explore the fascinating world of insects in a day long series of interactive displays, presentations and lectures and a chance to use the University’s top-notch microscopes.  Sounds like they will cover everything you didn’t know and didn’t want to know about insects.  The flyer for this event is available at

http://www.sonoma.edu/pubs/insectapalooza/images/insectapalooza.png

and details are online at:

http://www.sonoma.edu/pubs/insectapalooza.html

Baby Stroller Drive

During October, drop off a new or used stroller that's in good operating condition to a Community First Credit Union branch. CFCU will deliver each stroller (along with $20 for each) to The Living Room, a local agency that provides help to at-risk women and their children.

LOCATIONS in Santa Rosa:

Central Santa Rosa
501 College Ave.
(northeast corner of Mendocino & College avenues - just south of the JC)
9a to 5:30p, Monday-Friday; 9a to 1p, Saturday


West Santa Rosa 70A Stony Point Rd.
(just south of Finley Aquatic Center)
9a to 5:30p, Monday-Friday

Weekend Along the Farm Trails sponsored by Sonoma County Farm Trails
Over 40 Farms Open the Barn Doors
2009, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Sonoma County, CA –

On Saturday, September 26 and Sunday, September 27, dozens of local farmers and artisan producers throughout Sonoma County from Healdsburg to Petaluma will open their doors to tell the behind-the-scenes story of local food during Weekend Along the Farm Trails sponsored by Sonoma County Farm Trails.

Join local farmers for a weekend of tours, artisan foods, hands-on activities, cooking, pick-your-own, agricultural demonstrations, music and harvest. From hay rides to cheese-making, Weekend Along the Farm Trails offers a chance to experience Sonoma County's agricultural heritage. Participants of all ages will learn how and where their food is grown, and meet the farmers and artisans who produce it.

Admission is free to most farms: all you need is transportation, a map and a sense of adventure. The gates and barns of your local farms are wide open on Saturday, September 26 and Sunday, September 27 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. along the Sonoma County Farm Trails.

Free tour information and map available on www.farmtrails.org or visit Farm Trails FACEBOOK page for tales from the farms. Call Sonoma County Farm Trails for more information at (707) 837-8896.

Sonoma County Farm Trails is a non-profit organization formed in 1973 to promote buying fresh food directly from farms. Over 100 local farms and agricultural businesses comprise its membership

Pick up your free Farm Trails Guide for 2009 -  2010 at a local farm or business or email them and they will send you one for five dollars.

They are really nice this year with recipes and notes from local farmers as well as the typical maps and guides to all the local farms in Sonoma County.

 The Environmental Discovery Center of Sonoma County offers multi-sensory, hands-on activities for people of all ages. Rotating exhibits focus on a different aspect of the natural resources of Sonoma County.

 Center's Features

• Nature Trails
• Outdoor Amphitheater
• Storytelling Cavern
• Science Activities
• Technology Tent - interactive computer games
• Theater - Educational videos

For more information,check out their website

 SOLAR FAIR

 Saturday June 20

11-6 pm

Finley Center, Santa Rosa

http://www.solarsonomacounty.com/

Very cool new web site I just discovered featuring local businesses:

http://scgc.golocal.coop/

EARTH DAY ON THE GREENWAY

Celebrate  Earth Day’s 40^th birthday on the Prince Memorial Greenway with a clean up of Santa Rosa Creek.  The restored creek flowing through the heart of downtown provides a home for river otter, kingfishers, egrets, and steelhead trout as well as parks, public art, and recreation along the six mile creek trail.

Date: Saturday April 25

Time: 9:00 – noon

Location: Olive Park footbridge near the Vineyard Creek Hotel on West 3rd St.

Noah and I will be going to help out at this event. 

We hope you can join us for this great opportunity to introduce our children to the idea of  community service and environmental responsibility.

sat and sun

Mar 28-29

8:30- 4:30

Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa

 examples of items accepted include:

laptops, monitors, keyboards, TV, cell phones,  fax machines,

blenders, toaster, coffee makers, vacuum cleaners

SonoMax is a free service to  help keep good materials out of the trash.

Green Classified Ads.

IF IT CAN BE REUSED, POST IT ONLINE!!!

“After tens of thousands of years of children playing and working primarily outdoors, the last few generations have seen such interaction with nature vanish almost entirely. The implications -- for children's physical and mental health… -- are immense”  (Richard Louv, interviewed by David Roberts, 30 March 2006)

Yesterday we spent the day at Jack London State Park in Glen Ellen, less than a 30 minute drive from Santa Rosa. It was a beautiful park with a lot of history and easy trails for the kids to hike on. Not only did we learn a lot of neat information about Jack London, California writer and adventurer, but the beauty of the area was also incredible. 

One thing I have noticed with the kids in nature is that we almost never have behavioral problems with them. In nature, all their senses are engaged, nothing is off limits to touch, see, and smell. It is in the natural environment where kids really get to organically create and explore.

The state of California is sponsoring a Children in Nature Campaign. A few of the goals of the campaign are to:

• Encourage children to experience nature and give them the opportunity to develop a sense of wonder and joy for the natural world,
  
• Increase children’s awareness that nature is everywhere,
  
• Build children’s knowledge of the interconnectedness of natural systems,
  
• Help children develop the critical scientific and social skills necessary to address environmental issues, both locally and globally.

I am encouraged by the effort California is beginning to make by making the connection between nature and kids a priority. If you want more information on ways your family can participate in the Children in Nature Campaign, follow the link above.

If you family visits a regional or state park, I encourage you to post information on it to share your find with us. Jack London State Park was a gem of a place to find, with kid friendly trails and interesting history for any Californian.  

Santa Rosa recycling and collection now accepts the following itmes in your blue recycling bin.

-Plastic toys

-Plastic crates

-Laundry baskets

-Lawn furniture

-Play Equiptment

-5 Gallon buckets 

The Living Rooms is a daytime shelter for homeless women and children in Santa Rosa.  The following is from their website:

Every year, for our Annual Christmas Party, staff and volunteers from The Living Room collect items to create wonderful gift bags for the women and their children who visit our center every day.

The Living Room also has a Holiday Store where mothers can choose gifts for their children and women can choose gifts for adult relatives and friends.

We need your help in gathering items! This year, we plan to distribute 150 bags of holiday spirit.

Please visit their website, www.thelivingroomsc.org for more information.  They would like the items by December 12.  If you see me before then, you can give them to me, and I'll pass them on.