Page 33 - Sonoma County Gazette 6-20

What’s Up in Windsor
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By Teresa Hendrix tjmariani@gmail.com
Viva los Muertos! Right now thanks to Zoom, a dedicated group of volunteers is meeting to plan Windsor’s El Dia de los Muertos events this coming October. The Town of Windsor has partnered with the Dia de los Muertos Committee to make the event happen. Last year, the final Dia de los Muertos celebration was cancelled due to the fire and evacuations.
Developing Our Capacity Toward a Regenerative Future
This year’s workshops and finale fiesta all depend on the status of the Covid 19 outbreak and Sonoma County Health Officer Sundari Mase’s orders in place at the time, stressed committee chairwoman Angelica Nunez Lopez. Dia de los Muertos events will respect whatever maximum crowd/gathering size county health rules allow – or could be cancelled at the last minute if health rules change.
“We are stardust, billion year old carbon, we are golden caught in a devil’s bargain, and we got to get ourselves back to the garden.”—Joni Mitchell
But right now the committee is planning to hold the popular free Children’s Sugar Skull workshop and screening of the movie “Coco” on Saturday, Oct. 17 in Huerta Gymnasium. Children receive a sugar skull and all the materials needed to decorate it as a ‘Calavera’ – a piece of Mexican folk art. Last year the event drew more than 200 children and their parents.
As a community, we need to appreciate and reconcile our relationships to a changing climate across three considerations:
Added to the Oct. 17 lineup this year is a new event: A Day of the Dead Calavera face painting and makeup tutorial for teens and adults. An expert makeup artist will lead the workshop and explain the tradition, and then supervise participants in creating their own Calavera face.
Climate Change What does it mean to me? Reconciling & harmonizing me in my relationship with Healdsburg. Shift our thinking from things to systems.
Developing capacity to adapt. What does it mean to us as a community? Reconciling and harmonizing our community’s relationship to each other, and our place, to develop our capacity to be a community.
The annual Dia de los Muertos FESTIVAL on the Town Green, is scheduled for Saturday Oct. 24 from 3 to 8 p.m. Things will kick off with the popular Lowrider Classic Car Show, food and arts vendors, and music. There will be ballet folklorico performances, a mariachi band, DJs, and a Catrina costume contest. New to the celebration this year will be a display of Ofrendas: colorful altars set up by families in memory of friends and family now among the dead – Los Muertos. You will be able to vote on their favorite ofrenda and favorite car.
What do we have in place to begin, what is being called for?
Aztec dancers will perform at sunset, giving the traditional blessing and then leading participants in a procession around the green in honor of Los Muertos, complete with giant Catrina and Catrin puppets. Tentative plans call for a family dance with a salsa band through 8 p.m.
Action #1 Develop an elegant aim and direction of our community’s regenerative future across generations. Aim and direction guide our journey as a community toward a regenerative future. By definition the community does not “arrive” in this endeavor, but is in service to the community to hold and evolve aim and direction over time. See this as a guiding North Star.
All of the celebrations, however, depend on two things:
Action #2 Develop a story of our place that serves as a transforming remembrance of how humans have thrived in this place to move our community’s collective heart, head and hand. The story of our place helps the community to see how this place developed and has worked in harmony over time in our relationship with
health orders and sponsorships. The town is generously providing the Huerta gymnasium and the Town Green for events, plus the sound system for the
Oct. 24 Muertos fiesta. The Committee is currently looking for donations and sponsorships to raise the roughly $11,000 it takes to put on the events. Sponsors have their businesses featured in event promo materials and advertising. Watch for a GoFundMe page coming to the web soon for individual donations.
it as humans. This action contributes to our understanding as to “who” we need to become as a community in a renewing and regenerating relationship with our ecological place.
Anyone interested in a sponsorship can contact Lopez at windsormuertos@ gmail.com. The committee is also currently looking for food and crafts vendors for the Oct. 24 fiesta. Cost for a food vending booth is $200, a crafts/products booth is $100, and a nonprofit booth is $50. Vendors will get their money back if the Viva los Muertos celebration is cancelled. Vendors can find application forms online at www.windsormuertos.com or email windsormuertos@gmail.com.
Action #3 Partnering with our place. Our community partners with the place we are part of to regenerate our ecosystems and the human spirit. The story of our place resources the community towards healthy social and ecological relationships of how we move back into a regenerative relationship with our place.
Action #4 Develop community capacities—forever. By definition a healthy community is developing its capacities and capabilities continuously. Sustainability is a by-product, not an aim of the process. A community’s capacity for climate-adapting capabilities is dynamic and always, and through knowing our place and being in relationship with a changing world.
Action #5 Ground our work in the “potential” of our place - not a focus of fixing problems of existence. Most of our thinking to date as a community has been about fixing problems, which only works with existence—what is. Working from potential—what could be—is not in conflict with the doing, but serves to coalesce the community to work on the potential of a regenerative future.
Action #6 Increase our capacity as a community for climate adaptation through investments and economies in natural, social, human and built capital. This work is grounded in community investment, where equity is defined as all community members having capacity to invest into the community.
It is absolutely essential that we develop the capacity to invest into our community, in a way that develops nourishing fooding systems, affordable sheltering systems across all phases of our lives, and all members of our community have the capacity to invest into the community. It is just an issue of will and direction to what is being called for in our community and watershed.
The Windsor Garden Club is another group relieved about the recent changes in Covid 19 health restrictions. The group raised funds over the years
to begin replacing wooden beds in the Town Green Community Garden. The wood originally used to make the beds a decade ago is rotting, and all the beds need to be dug up and relined with smaller wire mesh to keep out Windsor’s very vigorous gopher population. The group raised $8,000 to pay for reconstruction
of the oldest 11 beds in the garden in March. The Windsor High School Lacrosse Teams dug all the soil out of the beds in February as a service project.
But the stay-at-home orders deemed the garden bed rebuild a non-essential project, leaving the garden in a bit of a mess through April. When orders changed in May, construction crews from The Center for Social and Environmental Stewardship were able to complete the project in 3 days. The Center is a nonprofit agency; one of its missions is to train people in carpentry and construction skills. They did a fantastic job and we are looking forward to getting back into the dirt.
By Ray Lucchesi—Regenesis
Our community needs to engage in the work of improving our systems and place, and develop a capacity to disrupt and arrest the disorder in our current human, social and ecological relationships. This will allow us to evolve with the systems we are currently a part of as a means of developing ourselves to prepare for what will be required to regenerate our relationship with our place and ourselves.
What does it mean for all of us as a community and our relationship with our ecological place? The following represents six actions that can start now toward developing our capacities and capabilities as a community:
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