October 2025 Meeting & Notes (4 Oct 2025 @ 10:30AM)

Monthly Meetings & Notes
1

Hybrid Meeting: Saturday 4th October 2025, 10:30am @ 11 Elm Street OR online bit.ly/climate-network.

After this meeting we will plan on going on our re-scheduled SWELL hike & picnic.

Join Online Meeting: Launch Meeting - Zoom

With agenda items, upcoming events, or more email wcmncn@googlegroups.com

Attendance: Syd, Captain, Nic, Garrett, Joel, Hunter, Anna, Sue, Jeff, Vern, Barbara, Ted
Notes:

  • Meeting Leader Rotation (a potential practice?)
    • Syd has been trying to figure out a way for the things she is involved in to revolve less around her coordination & leadership. She would like to practice transferring of roles and “control” because it aligns with her values. Syd also knows that people don’t love taking on more responsibility because it is a lot of work!
    • So in an effort to not add too much work to other folks’ plates, and also to practice what shifting responsibility looks like, Syd is proposing that at the end of each meeting someone is chosen to lead next month’s meeting. Syd will still take notes and send out meeting reminders (for now!), but having a new person guide the conversation and flow could be a nice step forward into more horizontal (instead of heigherarchal) group dynamics.
  • Community Check-ins - “what do you need to act the way you want to act this weekend”
    • Syd @syd (she/they) needs to get some good sleep in order to act the way she wants to act. She wants to be more present, calmer, and to get some manual labor done in the yard, so sleep must come first!
    • Nic @Nic_McPhee and Syd went to take pictures of the container in its “before” stage. Something he can do to act the way he wants to act is to say yes to less. He wants to do more things well, instead of doing more things.
    • Anna @Agkilian (she/her) has been reading a book on homesteading. She wants to become more aware of how to live sustainably without relying on these big systems that have the potential to (and actively are in) collapse.
    • Vern has been a promoter of the Farmers Market this summer. He downloaded some social media to continue his investigation into misinformation. He hopes to visit both his daughter and his son sometime soon.
    • Jeff @Jeff also wants to stop overcomitting. He is excited to work with Abby Spence (an accountabilibuddy) on the PDT Foods Mural this winter. He is going to make some new Open Mic Night (Oct 25th @7pm) posters to freshen up folks’ awareness of the event. He is excited for the UMM homecoming game this evening. He is able to make a WCMNCN slide for the Movie Theatre now, and would like to hear folks perspectives on what that should look like.
    • Sue @Susan_Gilbert shared about these things that have been bringing her JOY, she sent Syd the links before she even shared about them because Sue is a rockstar:
    • Captain @cberthiaume is not thinking about the world on a wide scale right now, but is instead doing more introspective thought. They struggle with the indecisiveness that comes with balancing anxiety and commitment to activities. Something that would help them act the way they want to act is to actually not go to SWELL and for Jeff to tell them to do one sketch by the end of the day.
    • Joel is also thinking about how the big picture is hard, and how the small scale is where he wants to focus right now as a way to care for himself. He is prioritizing checking off a bunch of small, “easy” tasks that don’t take as much time or effort, but are piling up in the clutter of his brain, making other tasks harder.
    • Hunter (he/him) is done with his seasonal bio tech work at Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge a couple days early because of the government shutdown. He is now done with work and will head back to his parents home in Kansas at the end of the month, until then he has a lot of time on his hands and is hoping to engage more intentionally with his hobbies: bird (watching, song recording), movement & exercise, video games (in moderation), bass guitar, drawing.
    • Garrett (he/him/they) is thinking about how its stressful to parent a young child and try and determine how much to tell them about the country’s shift into deeper fascism. He enjoyed the video from the University of Washington of folks hounding out someone trying to troll and disrespect people in a college class. He loved going to seed harvesting and is continually working on his hobbies of making twine and netting from things in his yard!
  • Container Farming Project
    • Eric & Joel can keep us updated as this project moves along. Nic & Syd went and took pictures of the container as it is now/as it was gifted to the WCROC. Nic will share those photos eventually!
    • Container Farming Project Proposal PDF: Solar Powered Container Farming-2025.pdf
  • Movie Theatre Slide
    • Jeff has been working with the movie theatre to get an ad up for PDT and WCMNCN. It is finally time to make that happen! What do we want on this slide? What energy do we want it to give off? What words do we want to use?
      • Pictures of people in person, and people online. We want it to give off the vibe of folks getting together and doing/discussing things they care about
      • A QR code leading to maybe the linktr.ee/WCMNCN that Syd just made?
      • Words that could go on there: West-Central MN Climate Network, first Saturday of the month at 10:30am online & in person, a group of neighbors meeting monthly to build a more sustainable, resilient community, we talk about waste, water, lawns, clean energy, local food, transportation, and more!
      • Here is the zine Syd made for the WCMNCN with other words and ideas
        WCMNCN Zine.pdf
  • Upcoming Events (add your own!)
  • Determine Next Meeting/Other Fall Plans
    • November meeting: Saturday, Nov. 1st @ 10:30AM online at bit.ly/climate-network, Nic will guide the conversation this meeting!
    • Winter community conversation/video screening/gathering
      • shorter video to allow for more conversation time?
      • movie theatre, library,
    • Other winter field trips?
  • Then we headed out to SWELL with Donna, Vern, Barbara, Ted, Nic, Anna, Hunter, and Syd!