In this Arts and Artists podcast, you can listen to a lively conversation with sculptor Christine Clark who created the beautiful metal Tribute Baskets at Waypoint, Bill Baran-Mickle, of the Public Arts Committee, and Bruce Weiland, who coordinated the community effort to bring Waypoint Park into being.

Bruce tells the story of how Waypoint Park came into being, and how the community worked together to transform an ugly chain-link fenced-in property to a thing of beauty at the corner of 305 and Winslow Way.  

The Waypoint Park sculpture is the first new public art since the Public Arts Committee (and funding) were restored in 2014. Bill Baran-Mickle tells us how the restoration of the Public Arts program and its funding brought Christine Clarks’s large metal sculptures here to grace Waypoint as the culmination of its place in this community.  

... and Christine describes the inspiration and significance of the four large metal baskets, what the motifs represent, and how they honor BI’s cultural heritage.

Credits: BCB host: Channie Peters; BCB audio editor and social media publisher: Diane Walker.

From BCB... https://www.bestofbcb.org/tast-036-holidays-with-joe-pulicicchio/

In this podcast Joe Pulicicchio and Bob Ross talk with T&C Markets Becky Fox about the past year's adventures in produce and what to expect in 2017.

Becky, who serves as Web Content, Social Media and Advertising Manager for T&C Markets, joins Bob and Joe for their last interview for the 2016 year. Together they reminisce about their past discussions from early spring through the seasons and discuss some of the differences between planning for Thanksgiving and planning for Christmas meals.

Joe and Becky each offer their own personal perspectives about holiday food and what it means to them, and share with us some of what lies ahead as we consider what we might expect in terms of fresh produce as we head into the 2017 season.

Credits: BCB host: Bob Ross; BCB audio tech and editor: Chris Walker; social media publisher: Diane Walker.

In this “What’€™s Up” podcast, BCB host Sonia Scaer speaks with University of Washington Professor Leslie Rosenberg. He will speak at the next Open Mic Science on Tuesday, Jan 3rd, at 8pm at the Treehouse Cafe. His talk is titled “What’s The Universe And What’s It Made Of?”

Professor Rosenberg works in the Physics and Astronomy Building at UW. He describes himself as an experimental cosmologist. Through observations, and not just theory, he'll describe in his talk how we can measure what the universe is made of.

He says: “In the case of dark energy you measure the outward expansion of the universe (and) with dark matter you measure how things move relative to how you think they’re going to move given the masses you think they have.”

Experimental cosmology groups throughout the world collaborate on experiments in particle physics using shared resources to enable scientists to better understand what comprises the "dark universe".

The "dark universe" is a topic we may have heard about, but the perspective from a scientist in the trenches is unique. We expect Professor Rosenberg to talk about the Axion Dark Matter experiment and the implications of progress in this field at Open Mic Science night. The material will be presented in a way that will fascinate the layperson, making these complex concepts more digestible.

Credits: BCB host: Sonia Scaer; BCB audio editor: Chris Walker; BCB social media publisher: Barry Peters.

In this 18-minute community podcast for this holiday season of generosity, we meet a high school student leader, a City employee and a street ministry volunteer who have made it easy for you to donate dry, clean, warm socks to the nearby homeless folks who need them in this wintry weather.

Their "Boxes of Socks" donation program enables you to bring socks -- either new or freshly laundered -- to metal drop-off boxes that look like blue newspaper stands in numerous locations like:

• Bainbridge Island City Hall
• the Bainbridge ferry terminal
• Island Fitness, south of City Hall
• Wildernest, on Winslow Way
• Buckley & Buckley Real Estate, in Winslow Green, or
• Harley-Davidson in Silverdale

The idea was hatched during a recent conversation between the City's Communications Manager Kellie Stickney and Steve Rhoads.

As you'll hear on this podcast, Steve is a competitive cyclist and local volunteer for fundraising for good causes like Helpline House and Housing Resources Bainbridge. Steve has ministered to street people for the past four years, and knows their needs first hand as a formerly homeless person himself.

Joining our podcast conversation is Julia Gray, who is the student president of the Social Justice League of Bainbridge High School. She and her fellow students have focused their generosity this year on a series of activities for the homeless. For example, she and her fellow students have traveled to Compass House in Seattle to help provide warm meals to the downtown homeless. Her Social Justice club is asking for your help in reaching their goal of 1,500 pairs of donated socks this season.

For further information about donating, contact Kellie Stickney at the City of Bainbridge Island. The program is working in cooperation with a Seattle nonprofit called WeCount.

WeCount is a Seattle based 501c3 organization founded by tech entrepreneur Jonathan Sposato and community activist Graham Pruss. Using web and smartphone technology, WeCount.org enables people experiencing homelessness to ask for items they need to survive, and enables the community to make direct donations on a hyper-local basis. WeCount also works closely with social service organizations to help people transition out of homelessness permanently.

Credits: BCB host, audio editor and social media publisher: Barry Peters.

From BCB... https://www.bestofbcb.org/cafe-052-healthy-youth-and-socializing/

How can we help our youth create and sustain positive, healthy relationships?  

It’s an important question for all of us, adults and youth alike, and yet we all know how messy and challenging relationships can be. Who among us is able to navigate all of our relationships well? To be successful at relationships, we need a number of skills: active listening, compassion, boundary setting, collaboration, and the ability to regulate one's emotions and impulses. It is a lifelong journey.

In this podcast, BCB host Christina Hulet explores this ability to create and sustain healthy relationships--what psychologists call sociability--with soccer coach Ballan Campeau of BIFC club soccer and the Bainbridge High School team, and two of his athletes, Tyler Moravec and Quinn Millerd.

In sharing their experiences of creating solid relationships on the soccer field and beyond, they encourage us, as parents and community members, to think about what we might do from the sidelines to foster these skills and better support our youth.

This podcast is part of the Bainbridge Healthy Youth Alliance’s 9-month educational campaign called “Beyond the Report Card: Cultivating What Matters." Designed for local parents, educators and other adults who care about teens, the campaign focuses each month on a different attribute–such as sociability, empathy or curiosity–to help our youth thrive. These attributes are based on a framework called The Compass Advantage, which was developed by our very own Marilyn Price Mitchell, PhD, a local developmental psychologist and researcher.

To sign up for weekly resources or to learn more about the Bainbridge Healthy Youth Alliance and specific things you can do to support our youth, visit BIHealthyYouth.org.

Credits: BCB host: Christina Hulet; BCB audio tech: Channie Peters; BCB audio editor and social media publisher: Diane Walker.

[NOTE: December 16th post-publication update: The Bloedel Reserve did not have sufficient advance reservations to proceed with the New Year’s eve party discussed in this podcast. So that planned event is now cancelled. But if you like what you hear in this podcast about the idea, encourage Bloedel to consider offering something similar 12 months from now. The original podcast description is as follows.]

Ring in the New Year at beautiful Bloedel Reserve’s one-of-a-kind party!

In this podcast, Ed Moydell, Executive Director tells us about Bloedel’s first-time-ever New Year’s Eve bash and the many Bloedel programs it supports.

All of Bloedel’s friends from Bainbridge or around the county and Seattle are welcome to come and party the night away with interesting appetizers, a sumptuous sit-down dinner service, and late night snacks, swanky signature cocktails and abundant champagne, swinging dance music by the amazing Freddy Pink band.

If midnight Pacific time is past your bedtime, no worries - we’ll toast the ball drop in New York City at 9:00pm Pacific, and again at midnight when the Seattle skyline lights up.

Be a part of an exciting new holiday tradition designed to bridge generations, bring the community together, and sustain outstanding programming at the Bloedel, such as “Strolls for Well-Being” and events such as the Holiday Village, Family Day, as well as maintaining the beautiful gardens.

Tickets are still available at the Bloedel Reserve website -- but not for long. Reservations are requested to be made as early as possible, ideally by Friday, December 16th, to ensure that arrangements for the evening can be planned in advance.

Credits: BCB host: Channie Peters; BCB audio editor and social media publisher: Barry Peters.

Debby Haase describes the annual event called "Spiral of Light" which commemorates with candlelight, harp music, chanting and labyrinths the Wednesday December 21st winter solstice as the longest night of the year.

This annual event, initially celebrated at the local Waldorf School, will take place this year at the Dayaalu Center at 159 Wyatt Way in Winslow, from 7pm to 9pm. Doors open at 6:45pm.

As explained on the Dayaalu website, this is a "beautiful and profound ceremony that honors the symbolic rebirth of the sun and the promise of renewed life."

In this podcast, Debby explains to BCB's Channie Peters that the event was originally celebrated at the Bainbridge Island Waldorf School where Debby was formerly a teacher.

The event this year is facilitated by Debby and by Kathryn LaFond, with special guest Judy Friesem playing the harp. Participants will carry candles around labyrinth-like spirals, accompanied by the sounds of toning, chanting and song.

This ceremony for 2016 is likely to be an uplifting antidote to the stresses and anguish of a distressing year in the national news.

The suggested donation is $15. You may either register in advance at the Dayaalu website, or simply come early at 6:45 and pay at the door.

Credits: BCB host: Channie Peters; BCB audio editor and social media publisher: Barry Peters.

In this 15-minute podcast, BCB's Channie Peters and Victoria Irwin of Eagle Harbor Books welcome award-winning environmentalist and writer, Mary Ellen Hannibal, whose new book is "Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction."

Mary Ellen will speak with Eagle Harbor bookstore visitors on Saturday December 10th at noon. There, she'll invite conversation and describe the new citizen science opportunities for wildlife lovers. She has ideas for those of us who want to resist the ongoing extinction of species by participating as volunteers in wildlife observation and monitoring programs, some of which are now substantially assisted by mobile smartphone technology.

Mary Ellen's research had been already revealing the accelerated extinction and loss of animal and plan species even before the 2014 publication of Elizabeth Kolbert's influential best-seller: "The Sixth Extinction". Now, her new book about Citizen Scientists is receiving acclaim by many, such as climate activist Bill McKibben.

Mary Ellen gives examples of ways that birders and others who enjoy the great outdoors can help conserve species by identifying them and their locale.

She describes, for example, a new social media platform on iPhone called iNaturalist that collaboratively, through a network of enthusiasts and experts, identifies species and then systematically informs scientific teams and wildlife conservation managers about the presence of various plants and animals.

Both for adults and whole families, Mary Ellen is pointing to ways that we can both enjoy the beautiful outdoors and take a stand against the accelerated loss of species.

And, in a community where the City of Bainbridge Island has recently taken the lead on a program to restore and attract pollinators to our island -- like bees, butterflies and certain birds -- Mary Ellen mentions how significant the decline in pollinator species is proving to be to our food-production capacity. See BCB's previous podcast on the City's Pollinator Improvement Project.

Credits: BCB host: Channie Peters; BCB audio editor and social media publisher: Barry Peters.

In this 14-minute conversation with Rev. Jaco ten Hove, we learn about the 9th annual gathering in Winslow on Saturday December 10th for community members to read aloud the inspiring words of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

All are welcome to gather at noon that day, fair weather or foul, near the gazebo on Winslow Green, to be welcomed by local clergy, and to take turns for about a half-hour reading the 30 paragraphs from that inspirational UN document.

Rev. ten Hove from Cedars Unitarian Universalist Church, and Rev. Dee Eisenhauer from the Eagle Harbor Congregational Church, will open the event by reading the Preamble.

The Declaration has been acclaimed by a former Pope, and is celebrated and promoted by such organizations as the Quaker-affiliated American Friends Service Committee, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, the American Library Association, Amnesty International and a vast number of human rights organizations. It was signed by the US and 47 other UN General Assembly members from France and Britain to China; no country voted against it. The Soviet block countries abstained.

As noted by Jaco, this yearly tradition sponsored by the Interfaith Council of Bainbridge Island and North Kitsap is a much-needed inspirational vision in 2016 as an antidote to the divisiveness and hate speech directed toward immigrants, refugees and religious minorities during the US 2016 election campaign.

Joining Jaco in the arrangements for that day will be Reed Price, who is a long-time active member of the Interfaith Council. The tradition was started in 2008 in a year when the economy was collapsing and people were losing jobs to a sweeping recession and losing homes due to mortgage foreclosures.

Eleanor Roosevelt was among the world leaders responsible for writing the Human Rights declaration in the years of resolve following the close of World War II concentration camps and Japanese-American internment camps.

As Jaco notes, the noble mission of the United Nations is nowadays suffering hard times as the United States Congress has failed to authorize the full payment of US dues to the organization. Unlike 126 of our allies and friendly nations around the world that are fully funding their share of UN dues, the US has shorted the UN on more than a year's worth of dues for both its main mission and peacekeeping activities.

No reservation is needed to join in. You are welcome to simply show up on Winslow Green at noon on Saturday Dec 10th.

Credits: BCB host, audio editor and social media publisher: Barry Peters.