January 2026 Meeting: Saturday 3rd January 2026, 10:30am online @ bit.ly/climate-network.
Meeting leader: Captain @cberthiaume
Note taker: Nic @Nic_McPhee
With agenda items, upcoming events, or more email wcmncn@googlegroups.com
Agenda:
- Community Check-ins - before checkins remind Syd to take a picture!
- Updates
- Container Farming Project
- Pollinator & Resilient Lawn “Friends” - is there interest in re-establishing a outside meeting time for folks to dig into this topic?
- This Month’s Main Conversation Topic: Movie Theatre Slide
- Timeline: Send final language for slide to @jeff by February meeting, ask Jeff to get us a draft/finalized slide to share with the group at the March meeting.
- Question to answer by February meeting: What language do we want on the movie theatre slide?
- Prompts to help us think about this:
- what is it about us that will help attract people to us? we have community to offer
- how are we we similar/different to other groups in the area? how do we showcase this group as something that is valuable?
- what about our group is valuable?
- Future plans/Upcoming Events
- Field Trips
- Things to think about when we want/have space for a new agenda item:
- Community garden events in the summer
- Longer term planning for a “community envisioning event”
- From Vern: “Primary Purpose: community education (“consciousness raising”) about the future long-term well-being of our Morris community. Ulterior Purpose: to build the visibility and social legitimacy of our Climate Group as a well-known, respected member of the Morris Community.”
- Book club/study group? (Syd would be interested in this!)
- Next Meeting
Notes
Joining us: Captain (@cberthiaume), @syd, @Jeff, @Stardrop, Barbara Burke, Arden, Nuzhat Fatima, @Susan_Gilbert, @Nic_McPhee
Check-ins
- Hard to find good living spaces, both within houses/apartments, and more broadly in a community – how do we make that easier?
- End of year radio show for Nic & Kayte
- Susan Gilbert is working on preparing a PRCA show that will happen in mid-summer.
- The Pomme de Terre Food Co-op is having volunteer shift issues and is debating how to deal with that. New volunteers would always be appreciated. (3 hours per week.) Next open mic (31 Jan) is going to be a fundraiser for the Food Shelf at the Stevens County Historical Society, with a variety of sponsoring/supporting organizations.
- How do we create the future by acting in the present moment? Garrett really made a big glow in @syd’s life by helping her build her annual snow fort.
- Moving and finding a place to live is both hard and exciting.
- We need people and interactions, but it can be hard sometimes to work up the energy to go out and engage/participate.
- Reflecting on the past year and thinking about the upcoming year. Important to give weight to our own thoughts before worrying about other people’s thoughts first/instead.
- Using EVs for long trips in the winter can be logistically complicated; the systems that are (and aren’t) in place don’t always support EV users effectively. Campus charger is free, but slow; charger by Ottertail office is faster, but costs.
Updates
- No updates on the container farming project. Position is posted for the farmer, but nothing else has changed.
- Resilient lawns: Who’s interested? Kim, Captain, Nic, Hunter, Arden. Captain is going to organize a sub-committee meeting. They will email the Network email list and give people a week to respond. Syd will make sure that Captain can see the specific emails for the groups. Upcoming 20 Jan webinar Intergenerational Care for Land and Community : A Conversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer and Esther Bonney" might relevant for this.
Movie theatre ad/slide(s)
- We want to get the final language to Jeff by the end of our February meeting.
- What is it about us that would attract people to us?
- Community; neighbors helping neighbors
- Well-connected to various aspects of Morris and what’s happening
- No pressure; guilt-free (low-guilt?) activism
- The meetings add no guilt to the guilt we already all carry.
- Optimism for a better future
- Not about constant reaction to events
- Refreshing
- Not re-iterating the problems; dreaming the solutions together
- Imagining/dreaming the future together
- How are we similar/different to other groups in the area?
- Lower pressure; not as stress inducing
- Trying to make the community a better place
- Focus on communication and community and less task oriented
- No charter (like Morris Model). We don’t have “institutional” engagement like the Morris Model does. The Morris Model is part of people’s jobs.
- Informal/social/casual.
- Community members sharing community enthusiasms.
- Multi-faceted group organized around climate but quite flexible about what that means and what we do.
Maybe just have a few bullet points on the slide. We could have a few slides, each with different pieces of information/bullet points.
Folks should comment/discuss ideas here.
Future plans and upcoming events
- Candlelight hike at Glacial Lakes in February
- Also an option in other parks around the state starting now in early January. See Candlelight events | Minnesota DNR for more details.
- More upcoming work on the Pomme de Terrace, including rain garden work. Maybe connect that to resilient lawn group.