Program Meetings

List of poems read at Lane County Audubon Society Meeting “Poetry of the Natural World,” April 24, 2018 (Click for file download)

Anita Sullivan read:

“All Asleep” – excerpt from poem by 7^th century BC Greek choral lyric poet Alkman 

“Clear Cut” - Anita Sullivan (from Garden of Beasts)

“As Tree” - Anita Sullivan (from And If The Dead Do Dream)

“Subjectivity” - Jorie Graham (only a fragment of this poem) (from Materialism)

“Song for the Deer and Myself to Return On” - Joy Harjo (from In Mad Love and War)

“The Salmon Had Moved Me” - Anita Sullivan 

“That They May Breathe” - Anita Sullivan

Ce Rosenow read:

Ancient forests have been a great source of inspiration for Chandra LeGue, Oregon Wild’s Western Oregon Field Coordinator. For many years she has worked to protect and restore these natural treasures.

“The work of poetry is to direct our attention, with words, to the place without them, so understanding can occur."
 —Anita Sullivan

This month we focus on words instead of images, but what image-words! We’ve invited Alan Contreras, Ce Rosenow, and Anita Sullivan to give us a tour through the vivid world of nature poetry as they see it. Reading from their own work and the work of their favorite poets, they will also talk about different forms of poetry and how they and other poets have tried to convey particular images or themes through their poems.

In the late fall of 2017, longtime birders Dennis Arendt, Kit Larsen, Roger Robb, and Jim Regali traveled to Queensland, Australia. They are looking forward to sharing their adventures and misadventures with you.

In 2014-15 Clean Water Services (CWS) implemented a massive habitat restoration project within the Fernhill Wetlands in the Portland Metro region. Joe Liebezeit, Avian Conservation Program Manager for Portland Audubon, will detail the restoration that transformed 90 acres of unused sewage ponds into a complex native wetlands habitat designed to treat wastewater. Fernhill Wetlands has historically been an important Portland-area birding location. Designated as an Important Bird Area, it provides ecological connectivity for local wildlife. The Audubon Society of Portland (ASOP) has been working with CWS since spring 2015 to assess bird response to the habitat restoration effort. This community science effort has involved local birders, using formal bird surveys designed and conducted by ASOP, and analysis of historical birder surveys conducted at the site for decades. General predictions were that use of the restored area by bird species dependent on open water would diminish, while use by uncommon/vulnerable marsh species (e.g. rails, bitterns) and other species dependent on native wetland habitats would increase. Joe will tell us how that is working out.

The LCAS Board was notified the morning of January 25 that our Program speaker, Tim Blount, Director of Friends of Malheur, had been snowed in on the East Coast and would not make it to Eugene for the next night’s Program Meeting. We decided we should stick with the topic of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge since it had become such a hot news item, even though last fall when we scheduled the Program we of course did not know that an armed occupation of the refuge would occur.