Join us on November 19 at 6 pm for the Commonwealth Club’s Virtual Gala. Raise your glass to Good Health, as we celebrate the leadership of women in science and medicine. Visit

Join us on November 19 at 6 pm for the Commonwealth Club’s Virtual Gala. Raise your glass to Good Health, as we celebrate the leadership of women in science and medicine. Visit commonwealthclub.org/2021gala to learn more or Text Club2021 to 41444 to register and donate today! Many nations have a national poet, whose poetry helps carve out their own unique cultural niche in human civilization. Italy has enjoyed many literary geniuses for over two millennia, but still looks to one man the most: Dante. Like major poets in other cultures, Dante’s influence on the Italian language can hardly be overstated. The Divine Comedy was the first major work of literature to leave Latin behind in favor of Italian, and it remains the world standard of poetic excellence. Dante’s fertile imagination also inspired artists, writers and theologians, making him almost as influential about the afterlife as he is linguistically. Join Humanities West in person at The Commonwealth Club, or via livestream, to celebrate the 700th Anniversary of Dante’s death—which ironically occurred not that many months after he completed his speculations about post-death possibilities—with a two-hour, three-lecture Dante feast: • Timothy Hampton on "Dante After Dante: the Forms of Memory." Though there were many "in the know" about the achievement of Dante's great poem during his lifetime, his vast influence on Italian poetry and world literature was uneven in the centuries following his death. In some areas of artistic creation—for example, in the painting of Botticelli—Dante was powerfully present. In other areas (poetry, philosophy, literary criticism) his influence was definite, but diffuse and oblique. This lecture will speak about the ways in which Dante's work did and didn't shape Italian and European culture in the early modern period. • Kip Cranna on "Dante at the Opera: From the Divine Comedy to a Comic Puccini Delight." In "The Inferno," part one of The Divine Comedy, Dante introduces the condemned sinner Gianni Schicchi, consigned to the Eighth Circle of Hell along with others guilty of fraud. His crime: impersonating the deceased Buoso Donati to falsify Buoso's will for his own benefit. Dante personally knew the Donatis (he was married to one), and therein lies an intriguing tale of medieval Florentine society. The story of this fraudulent will and the legend surrounding it became the inspiration for the famed composer Giacomo Puccini's only comic opera. After outlining the Dante-Puccini connection, San Francisco Opera's Dramaturg Emeritus Kip Cranna will present brief video highlights from the opera Gianni Schicchi, including the ever-popular aria "O mio babbino caro." • Marisa Galvez on "Dante Before Dante Become Dante." In retrospect it almost seems like Dante invented Italian literary culture, but he arrived on the Italian literary scene as a love poet—an admirer of courtly love and the troubadour traditions which had begun a century earlier in Occitania, and had spread to Italy, Spain and then most of Europe. Dante defined the troubadour lyrics as rhetorical, musical and poetical fiction — which is also a good description of The Divine Comedy. OCTOBER 22, 2021 SPEAKERS Kip Cranna Dramaturg Emeritus, San Francisco Opera Marisa Galvez Professor of French and Italian, and by Courtesy, of German Studies and Comparative Literature; Faculty Director, Structured Liberal Education, Stanford University Timothy Hampton Aldo Scaglione and Marie M. Burns Distinguished Professor of French and Comparative Literature; Director, Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California, Berkeley George Hammond —Moderator 💯SUBSCRIBE for more VIDEOS: https://www.youtube.com/user/commonwealthclub 📆 UPCOMING EVENTS: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events 🎉 BECOME a MEMBER: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/membership 💰 DONATE NOW: https://support.commonwealthclub.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=298 📺➕📻 Watch & Listen https://www.commonwealthclub.org/watch-listen CWC Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonwealthclub/ CWC Instagram https://www.instagram.com/cwclub/ CWC Twitter https://twitter.com/cwclub The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum 📣, bringing together its 20,000 members for more than 400 annual events on topics ranging across politics, culture, society and the economy. Founded in 1903 in San Francisco California 🌉, The Commonwealth Club has played host to a diverse and distinctive array of speakers, from Teddy Roosevelt in 1911 to Hillary Clinton in 2010. Along the way, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have all given landmark speeches at the Club.

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The Reconciling Ways of Knowing Forum in collaboration with the Victoria Forum, shared the fifth dialogue in our Online Forum series, “Millennia of Experience: Drawing on Indigenous Knowledge in

The Reconciling Ways of Knowing Forum in collaboration with the Victoria Forum, shared the fifth dialogue in our Online Forum series, “Millennia of Experience: Drawing on Indigenous Knowledge in Responding to COVID-19.” on November 12, 2020. This dialogue explored how collaboration between Indigenous knowledge and science can improve public health outcomes throughout Canada in the face of COVID-19. Preliminary reports from Indigenous Services Canada suggest that First Nations communities are experiencing 1/4 of the infection rate and 1/5 of the mortality rate from COVID-19 experienced by the general Canadian population. The session will explore how Indigenous Peoples have leveraged their millennia of experience enduring past pandemics to protect their people and foster their resilience in the face of new public health challenges. Speakers Elder Dr Dave Courchene, Jr, an Anishinaabe Elder and spiritual leader; Grandmother Katherine Whitecloud, a Dakota knowledge keeper and Indigenous health and wellness advocate; Miles Richardson, OC, a Haida political leader and negotiator focused on Nation-to-Nation relationships between Indigenous Peoples and Canada; Tom Swanky, JD, a historical researcher focused on the role of smallpox in the foundational relationship between Indigenous Peoples and the Crown in British Columbia; and Dr Sabina Ijaz, a medical doctor who has built deep relationships in Indigenous communities, in dialogue with moderator Darrin Mah, JD, discussed the history of what Indigenous Peoples have learned in responding to pandemics, how this informs their responses to COVID-19, and what can be learned more broadly within Canadian society and the global community from these lessons. The speakers discussed issues including: How Indigenous knowledge has been marginalized by a presumption within policy- and decision-making circles that (Western) science is the only valid form of knowledge upon which to base and inform their work; How the devastation of Indigenous populations during previous smallpox and Spanish Flu pandemics has influenced Indigenous responses to COVID-19; How Indigenous Peoples have exercised their sovereignty and self-determination to protect their nations and communities; The role of traditional medicines and healing practices in protecting community health and recovering from the pandemic; How Indigenous knowledge has helped mitigate negative health outcomes that may result from factors such as remoteness from healthcare facilities, food security challenges, higher poverty rates and housing shortages on reserve; Opportunities for collaboration between Indigenous knowledge and science for improved health and social outcomes as we navigate our way through the pandemic together. More information at https://www.waysofknowingforum.ca/dialogue-5 and https://www.waysofknowingforum.ca.

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INTERNET LANGUAGE INTERPRETATION

Global Women are Leading for Water Protection! During this event "Women for Climate Justice Leading Protection of Water," we heard from grassroots women

INTERNET LANGUAGE INTERPRETATION

Global Women are Leading for Water Protection! During this event "Women for Climate Justice Leading Protection of Water," we heard from grassroots women leaders, water protectors, and international policy experts, who addressed the impacts of climate change and destructive projects on global water, and shared ongoing solutions and strategies for the protection of oceans, freshwater, rivers, and aquatic ecosystems based in a climate justice framework.

This is a formal side event of the UN Water Conference happening right now in New York City. In addition to the event, WECAN is submitting a commitment and releasing a Call to Action urging governments to increase and improve their ambition to protect global water sources by enacting a rights-based approach and ensuring women’s leadership in decision- making spaces. Read and share the call to action here: https://bit.ly/3LJNZgE

Speakers include:
Great-Grandmother Mary Lyons | Band of Ojibwe, Ojibwe Elder, Women of Wellbriety, International, United Nations Observer on Women/Indigenous Issues, Turtle Island/USA
Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner | Poet, Director for Marshallese youth nonprofit Jo-Jikum, and Climate Envoy, Marshall Islands
c (Cofán) | Indigenous rights & Land Defender, Goldman Prize Winner, Ecuador
Maude Barlow | Founding Member of the Council of Canadians, Co-Founder, the Blue Planet Project, Canada
Aurora Conley | Bad River Ojibwe, Anishinaabe Environmental Protection Alliance, Turtle Island/USA
Vasser Seydel | President at The Oxygen Project, USA
Moderation and Comments by Osprey Orielle Lake | Executive Director, Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN)

Links and resources from the event are available here: https://bit.ly/3JFnTZJ

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Stop me if you've heard this one: Alice Algae and Freddy Fungi took a LICHEN to each other. Lichens are unique organisms. Traditional definitions describe them as a close relationship of fungi

Stop me if you've heard this one: Alice Algae and Freddy Fungi took a LICHEN to each other. Lichens are unique organisms. Traditional definitions describe them as a close relationship of fungi (the mycobiont) living together with algae (the photobiont). The fungi protects the algae, and the algae uses photosynthesis to make food. Recent research, however, highlights that this symbiosis is far more complex than we thought. It turns out that there may be even more organisms involved, forming a micro-ecosystem in every lichen. Even though lichens are biologically fascinating and ecologically important, they are regularly overlooked. People often associate lichens with lush fairy-tale forests of the Pacific Northwest, where these organisms are large, conspicuous and abundant. But even in hostile desert habitats of the Southwest, lichens are an extremely diverse and very common element of the landscape. In fact, the Greater Sonoran Desert Region supports more than a third of all lichen species found on the North American continent. In this Speaker Series talk by lichen expert Dr. Frank Bungartz, learn all about what lichens are, what they look like and where they can be found, as well as the fundamental role they play in ecosystems. Dr. Bungartz will share his research on lichen diversity and function in the Sonoran regions, Galapagos, and Ecuador. Dr. Frank Bungartz is the Collections Manager of Lichens and Digital Data at the Lichen Herbarium of the Arizona State University Natural History Collections. His research focuses on biodiversity, evolution, ecology and conservation of lichenized fungi in the Sonoran Desert Region, Central America, and the Galapagos. He has been a contributor and editor to the Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert Region and has published numerous treatments of lichens from the Galapagos, where he continues to work on a comprehensive inventory of the lichen biota of this archipelago. Dr. Bungartz always had a strong interest in how lichens affect rock surfaces that they grow on. With his graduate student Guillermo Ortiz, he has recently been using photogrammetry to create 3D models of lichen communities from high-resolution macro photos to better understand the dynamics of biodeterioration and biomineralization caused by these organisms.

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Global women and feminist leaders are calling for urgent action, rising for Climate Justice and Future Generations! In honor of International Women's Day, WECAN is celebrating by releasing a new

Global women and feminist leaders are calling for urgent action, rising for Climate Justice and Future Generations! In honor of International Women's Day, WECAN is celebrating by releasing a new video uplifting the voices and solutions of women and gender diverse leaders fighting for a just climate future. As the climate crisis escalates, and social inequities persist, we are rising for bold systems change and transformational leadership to stop further destruction in our communities and Mother Earth. Women, feminists, and gender diverse leaders are at the forefront of our movements and solutions for food sovereignty, Indigenous rights, Rights of Nature, fossil fuel resistance, feminist and new economies, and so much more. Our voices and solutions must be heard. WECAN is delivering a call to action, demanding governments declare a climate emergency. We are challenging governments, financial institutions, and corporations to stop extractive and exploitative practices, and rapidly pivot towards a Just Transition. We will never stop fighting for our beautiful Mother Earth. Many thanks to: 💠 Casey Camp-Horinek (Ponca Nation), Environmental Ambassador for the Ponca Nation, WECAN Board Member 💠 Great-Grandmother Mary Lyons (Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe), Global Indigenous Wisdom Keepers 💠 Sônia Bone Guajajara (Guajajara), Executive Coordinator for the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) 💠 Helena Gualinga (Kichwa), Environmental and Indigenous Rights Defender, WECAN Young Women Project Lead 💠 Katherine Quaid (Nez Perce, Cayuse, Paiute), WECAN Communications Coordinator 💠 Osprey Orielle Lake, Executive Director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) 💠 Filmmaker Teena Pugliese

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Invitation to attend the SEED Institute's Wisdom from the Origins Conference, The Mayan Calendar, and other Prophecies on the Future of Humanity on September 13-17, 2012. (

Invitation to attend the SEED Institute's Wisdom from the Origins Conference, The Mayan Calendar, and other Prophecies on the Future of Humanity on September 13-17, 2012. (Schedule) The video features video clips from videos of conference presenters Gregg Braden, Grandmother Flordemayo (Mayan), LeRoy Little Bear (Blackfoot), Barbara Marx Hubbard, Sequoyah Trueblood (Choctaw), Tata Pedro Cruz (Mayan), and footage from a Dancing Earth performance, Of Bodies of Elements.

Produced by Ruth Ann Barrett, EarthSayers.tv, Portland, Oregon.

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In an engaging and personal talk -- with cameo appearances from his grandmother and Rosa Parks -- human rights lawyer

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