Note on campus-based events: CCBC and Community Book events will adhere to the guidelines and protocols outlined in Maryland Strong: Roadmap to Recovery. For the most up to date information regarding COVID-19 protocols, visit the CCBC Coronavirus webpage.
Accessibility Statement: All events are free and open to the public. Most/All events are open-access; ASL interpreting will be provided by CCBC Interpreter Preparation Program student interns and mentors.
CCBC students who participate in this year’s community book are invited to submit work to be considered for the CBC Student Showcase in Spring 2023. We accept research projects, essays, presentations, and all creative works related to Under a White Sky.
Share the Student Showcase Submission Form with your students and encourage them to submit!
Contact Lauren Pollak
Under a White Sky Library Research Guide contains resources for this year's Community Book, including pages on topics by chapter, and the author Elizabeth Kolbert
Contact Debra Sambuco
A Plastic Ocean is an award-winning documentary featuring dedicated scientists, filmmakers, social entrepreneurs, scholars, environmentalists and journalists. It explores the fragile state of our oceans and uncovers alarming truths about the consequences of our disposable lifestyle. It documents the global effects of plastic pollution and highlights workable technologies and innovative solutions that everyone - from governments to individuals - can do, to create a cleaner and greener ocean. Available for streaming at the CCBC Library at this link.
Join an invasive plant talk and walk along the Big Gunpowder Falls led by Joyce Kelley, Faculty Instructor of Sustainable Horticulture. Learn to identify native and invasive plant species and their effects on the environment. The trail is mostly flat with some grade, rocks, muddy spots, and roots to maneuver. Dress for the weather and wear tennis shoes or hiking shoes. Bring drinking water and a snack or lunch to enjoy in the park after the hike.
RSVP to Joyce Kelley. In case of inclement weather, the host will contact confirmed attendees.
Personal transportation required. Directions to parking lot: https://goo.gl/maps/HkaFr47ri6LmPYLH7
Cultivating the practice of mindfulness is essential in the face cascading threats of climate crisis, racial and social injustice, war, and gun violence. How do we cultivate groundedness, awareness, and calm when our lives are touched by fear, vulnerability, ambiguity, and uncertainty? Based on the teachings of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, this highly interactive virtual program offers you practical, hands-on training in mindfulness practices in the Plum Village tradition to develop resilience, clarity, and understanding to care for yourself and care for your environment. Leave the program with new skills that you can apply in daily life to promote well-being and foster healing within our communities.
Contact Lauren Pollak
A naturalist from Irvine Nature Center will visit CCBC to present "Successful Native Plants for the Average Yard". Native plants get a reputation for making a yard look ‘wild’. Find out which trees, shrubs and flowers are easiest to grow with minimal maintenance, will ‘fit in’ and thrive in any yard but will make your yard bird and pollinator friendly.
Contact Lauren Pollak
In preparation for Indigenous Peoples Day, this workshop is for participants to learn how the Doctrine of Discovery has affected both the European colonizers and the Indigenous peoples of the United States since 1492. The facilitator, Paula Palmer, a bilingual sociologist, writer, and activist for racial justice, human rights, and environmental protection, will stimulate reflection, discussion, and appropriate actions toward justice, healing, and “right relationship” among all the peoples of this land
Contact Patricia Quintero-Hall
Join us for CCBC’s third annual Indigenous Peoples’ Day Ceremony, co-sponsored by the Office of the President. This virtual ceremony will acknowledge and honor Native American traditions and cultures. We will share a moment of silence in remembrance of the discovery of indigenous children’s unmarked graves in Canada.
Invasive species are non-native species that may cause harm to Maryland’s wildlife, plants, environment, aquatics, recreation and human health. Join our speakers from the department of National Resources, the National Aquarium, and Gunpowder Valley Conservancy for an informative conversation about how our day-to-day activities that involve live organisms such as pets, seafood, and classroom and laboratory biological supply trades have led to the introduction and spread of invasive species.
Contact Ann-Marie Thornton
Award-winning comic scholar Michael Sheyahshe will discuss the historical representations of indigenous individuals in comics and graphic novels. He will reflect on the current state of representation and how his work and others are providing spaces for Indigenous writers, artists, etc. to tell their own diverse stories. Co-sponsored by Global Education.
Contact: Myron Strong
Drawing on Indigenous knowledge and practices, the Honorable Cheryl Demmert-Fairbanks (Tlingit-Tsimpshian), Christy S. Chapman, Esq. (Zuni) and Rainey Enjady (Mescalero Apache) of Sovereignty 360 will facilitate the creation of a sacred space for healing, reflecting, and learning about the human bond with the natural world.
Contact: Kim Jensen
Learn about contemplative practice, with the goals of enhancing cognitive performance, empowering creativity, managing stress and emotional challenges, developing the “whole person”, and staying present and connected to the community and to the world. Gerard Yun, Assistant Professor of Community Music at Canada’s Wilfred Laurier University, will present on the contemplative and meditative aspects of music, and our connections to communities and to Nature.
Free for all CCBC faculty/staff or currently enrolled CCBC students! Registration link: https://javawebapp.ccbcmd.edu/QuickReg/Register.jsp?frc=CEWELL (CRN 32476).
Contact: David Hewitt or Alyssa Simms-Clark
Learn about contemplative practice, with the goals of enhancing cognitive performance, empowering creativity, managing stress and emotional challenges, developing the “whole person”, and staying present and connected to the community and to the world. Gerard Yun, Assistant Professor of Community Music at Canada’s Wilfred Laurier University, will present on the contemplative and meditative aspects of music, and our connections to communities and to Nature.
Free for all CCBC faculty/staff or currently enrolled CCBC students! Registration link: https://javawebapp.ccbcmd.edu/QuickReg/Register.jsp?frc=CEWELL (CRN 32476).
Contact: David Hewitt or Alyssa Simms-Clark
Joe Toolan, Chair of the State of Maryland Commission on LGBTQ Affairs and former Central Atlantic Region Community Cultivator for OUT for Sustainability, will discuss environmental challenges, their impacts on disadvantaged populations, and how diverse people are working towards a sustainable future. He will share his experience as a Guatemalan American and his efforts to increase diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice within the movement to mitigate climate change.
Contact: Morgan Slusher
Want to spend a Saturday exploring the Chesapeake Bay on a canoe and boat? Explore the estuarine ecosystem with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and environmental science professor, Dr. Cristina Cardona. Sample water quality, dredge for oysters, trawl for plankton and nekton (i.e. fish), use kick seines, and discuss ecology of the area from the luxury of a boat! A maximum of 30 people may attend.
Contact: Dr. Cristina Cardona
Join us for an exciting panel of storytellers and griots as they regale us with stories from their lives and communities. We’ll also talk about the art of storytelling, and how stories can be a pathway to connection, transformation, and healing in our communities. This event is co-sponsored by the Creative Writing Forum.
Contact: Carr Kizzier
ENVS and ERSC faculty, Anna Jaworski, Jenny Allen, David Ludwikoski, and Cristina Cardona, will lead a panel on climate change. Faculty will discuss the causes, local/global consequences, and solutions to this pertinent and important issue. Under a White Sky discusses the use of geoengineering as a solution; the panel will also touch on the benefits and drawbacks for its use.
Contact: Dr. Cristina Cardona
In honor of National American Indian Heritage Month, a naturalist from Irvine Nature Center will present Indigenous Lifeways: Maryland’s First People. Maryland has a long history of settlement by indigenous people, from early mammoth hunters to large villages along the Chesapeake Bay and recent migrants to Baltimore. While providing a timeline of these changes, this program focuses on the Eastern Woodland Indians and their adaptations to living in Maryland and use of its natural resources, including looking at recreated artifacts and trying some traditional skills.
Contact: Lauren Pollak
Creative Writing Forum and Community Book Connection are honored to host a conversation with Elizabeth Kolbert, author of this year’s book Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future. Kolbert will discuss topics from the book and engage in Q&A with attendees. She will sign books for in person attendees after the presentation.
Contact: Carr Kizzier
Melly (aka Melissa Denizard) is a 23-year-old cultural worker, activist, and organizer bridging public speaking, music, and visual art to illustrate Black Feminist Queer futures. Denizard will share what she learned while filming the documentary “How to Celebrate Thanksgiving without Clean Water” which captures the experiences of citizens and community leaders in Flint, Michigan navigating the Thanksgiving holiday during an ongoing water crisis. She will also discuss what it means for Black and Brown folks to be involved in the environmental justice movement.
Contact: Ingrid Sabio-McLaughlin
In this workshop, we’ll use science fiction to think toward a different future. We will read and discuss some brief science fiction stories, then give attendees a chance to write and share their own. No experience necessary.
Contact: Jamey Gallagher
In this era of “reconciliation,” Indigenous land is still being taken at gunpoint. INVASION is a new documentary film about the Wet’suwet’en Nation standing up to the colonial violence of the Canadian government and corporate oil and gas interests. The film will be followed by a conversation about Indigenous sovereignty, frontline climate justice, and movement media making with Chief Sleydo (Molly Wickham) and filmmaker Melissa Cox.
Contact Kim Jensen
Joe Toolan, Chair of the State of Maryland Commission on LGBTQ Affairs and former Central Atlantic Region Community Cultivator for OUT for Sustainability, will discuss environmental challenges, their impacts on disadvantaged populations, and how diverse people are working towards a sustainable future. He will share his experience as a Guatemalan American and his efforts to increase diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice within the movement to mitigate climate change.
Contact Lauren Pollak
ENVS and ERSC faculty, Anna Jaworski, Jenny Allen, and Cristina Cardona, will lead a panel on ocean acidification’s and climate change’s impacts on coral reef marine biomes. Faculty will discuss the causes, consequences, and solutions to this pertinent and important issue. Examples from Under a White Sky will be discussed.
Contact Dr. Cristina Cardona
Stoop stories are not memorized, performed, or read—they are shared. Join us for the third iteration of this special program in which students, faculty and staff share stories about their relationship to their environment — natural or social. Co-sponsored by the Mellon Foundation Humanities for All initiative, Student Life, and the Creative Writing Forum.
Contact Carr Kizzier
Stoop stories are not memorized, performed, or read—they are shared. Join us for the third iteration of this special program in which students, faculty and staff share stories about their relationship to their environment — natural or social. Co-sponsored by the Mellon Foundation Humanities for All initiative, Student Life, and the Creative Writing Forum.
Contact Carr Kizzier
Join Mandy DeLeo, Stream Monitoring Program Coordinator at Patapsco Heritage Greenway to investigate the macroinvertebrate community at Bull Branch, one of the streams on CCBC’s Catonsville campus. We will collect, sort, and identify the organisms in the stream using protocols developed by Izaak Walton League’s Save Our Streams. Within our streamside time, we will work to get an overall reading on the health of the stream as either in ecologically acceptable condition, ecologically unacceptable condition or in between. Please dress for the weather, bring water to drink, and wear boots or shoes that can get wet.
Contact Lakshmi Rajkumar
Invasive plants threaten native plant health and biodiversity of natural areas. A naturalist from Patapsco Heritage Greenway will visit CCBC Catonsville to walk through identification and removal of several local invasive plant species, including wisteria. You will learn more about the importance of native plants in our environment and how to identify and remove invasive plants. Join us to learn how to spot and stop invasive plant species! Please dress for the weather, bring water to drink, and wear boots or shoes that can get wet. A meditation activity will also be provided during the event to help tune yourself to the natural environment around you!
Contact Lakshmi Rajkumar
The life cycles of native plants and animals are intricately connected, such as when a bee emerges from its underground winter nest just when a particular plant is flowering. If our warming climate changes when plants start to grow, flower, and make seeds, it can have ripple effects on all the animals that depend on them for food. A naturalist from Irvine Nature Center will present on some of these important relationships between local species and how climate change is already impacting plants in Maryland.
Contact Lauren Pollak
Invasive plants threaten native plant health and biodiversity of natural areas. A naturalist from Patapsco Heritage Greenway will visit CCBC Catonsville to walk through identification and removal of several local invasive plant species, including wisteria. You will learn more about the importance of native plants in our environment and how to identify and remove invasive plants. Join us to learn how to spot and stop invasive plant species! Please dress for the weather, bring water to drink, and wear boots or shoes that can get wet. A meditation activity will also be provided during the event to help tune yourself to the natural environment around you!
Contact Lakshmi Rajkumar
Eric Jackson, Servant-Director of Black Yield Institute (BYI) will discuss his book, BoOTS: Liberation in the Masses and in the Margins which offers up an approach to the study of historic and contemporary examples of liberation through public, massive and private, marginal methods. Written as a tool for popular political education, this book illuminates the need to squelch the debate about whether “freedom struggle types” are somehow better or worse than others. Eric asserts that 21st century freedom fighters must be concerned with studying all matters of liberation methods.
Eric Jackson is an award-winning author, filmmaker, educator and he is the Servant-Director of Black Yield Institute. Black Yield Institute is a Pan-African power institution based in Baltimore, Maryland, serving as a think tank and collective action network that addresses food apartheid. He is leading the movement building work through designing, training, and organizing in the pursuit of Black Land and Food Sovereignty with many other organizers and contributors.
Contact Ingrid Sabio-McLaughlin
Want to spend a Saturday exploring the Chesapeake Bay on a canoe and boat? Explore the estuarine ecosystem with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and environmental science professor, Dr. Cristina Cardona. Sample water quality, dredge for oysters, trawl for plankton and nekton (i.e. fish), use kick seines, and discuss ecology of the area from the luxury of a boat! A maximum of 30 people may attend.
Contact Dr. Cardona
Come celebrate World Migratory Bird Day with a birdwatching tour of the Essex campus led by Joseph Norris, Faculty Instructor of Chemistry and bird photographer. Learn to use the Merlin App and binoculars to identify resident and migratory birds by sight and sound. The trails on Campus are mostly flat with some grade, rocks, muddy spots, and roots to maneuver. Dress for the weather and wear tennis shoes or hiking shoes. Bring drinking water and a snack or lunch to enjoy. Some Binoculars will be available to borrow.
RSVP by May 10th
Contact Joseph Norris
In case of inclement weather, the host will contact confirmed attendees.
All events are free and open to the public. Most events are open-access with ASL interpreting provided by CCBC Interpreter Preparation Program student interns and mentors. For more information on the Community Book Connection, email director Lauren Pollak: lpollak@ccbcmd.edu
*Event does not have interpreting services confirmed, but can be provided upon request.