By: Maryvonne Devensky
There will be a very important meeting on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2024 at 5:30 at the GRU building downtown, 301 SE 4th Street.
Please plan to come to that meeting to show that you are concerned about their decisions re: our utility plant.
The newly created board may decide to reduce or even eliminate the GRU transfer of funds to the City of Gainesville. 
This measure would be an exceptionally unique one for the entire nation if it is allowed to happen. It is common for a public municipal utility to transfer funds from their revenue to the city instead of paying taxes.
At present, the Authority is not fully staffed as they only have four members on what should be a seven-member board. They also have not met their charter requiring proper representation of Gainesville residents as only one member lives within the city, when the statute required a majority of Gainesville residents serve.
We need to worry about the legality of this measure. The consequences will be dreadful for the residents of Gainesville: cuts have already been made this past summer, and more cuts will decrease emergency services, fire and police funding, roads and parks maintenance, services to children and homeless people as well as cultural events.
Questions come to mind: Is this newly created board, with several members not living in Gainesville, willing to make life in this city even more dreadful?  Was not this board created to reduce bills for residents and businesses? What happened to this goal?
Please write an email to the members of the GRU Authority and ask them to keep GRU transfer funds going to the City of Gainesville as it is commonplace across the entire nation. 
For more information, you can check this recent blog from Gainesville Commissioner, Bryan Eastman on Substack.
You can create your own email or use portions of this article.
Here are their emails:

CarterCE8@gru.com
CoatsJG8@gru.com
KarowRJ8@gru.com 
LawsonCE8@gru.com 

Again, please come to the meeting on January 3, at 5:30 pm if you are available. We need to have a full house to show this board that we do care about Gainesville.

Be a part of history, hook up with the World’s First FLYING PIG PARADE. 

It’ll take wing in Downtown Gainesville, Florida, on December 30th. Our procession will be impossibly cute and enormous fun for both participants and spectators. As temperatures rise and the world gets crazier we need a good laugh… a humongous laugh! A sassy processional led by smiling swine can do that.

Please let us know if you have an interest in participating as a part of the Sierra Club SSJ Squad. It will be a fun and memorable event!

By: David Vaina
Sierra Club SSJ has two guided nature meditation walks scheduled for early 2024 that we hope you will consider as part of a happy and healthy new year.  

The walks were inspired in part by a growing interest in what’s broadly known as eco-therapy and more specifically, forest bathing. The SSJ outings can be seen as more casual on-ramps to further exploring either eco-therapy or forest bathing with a certified and professionally trained practitioner. 

As we will be walking through forests with our local meditation teacher (Shana Smith) we thought we’d talk a little bit more about forest bathing as outlined in Ben Page’s short, highly readable, and very affordable Healing Trees: A Pocket Guide to Forest Bathing (Mandala, 2021).  But please note: neither nature meditation or forest bathing need to be performed in a forest–one only needs a park or a yard to experience its healing qualities. Indeed, Page’s little book includes seven simple prompts one can practice when engaging in any nature immersion exercise.  

As Page points out, Forest Bathing as an immersion practice began in Japan in the 1980s at a time much like ours when Japanese society was being overwhelmed by all sorts of stressors and the full saturation of society by digital media and other technologies. Of course, Forest Bathing has spiritual roots dating back centuries in Japan. A direct translation of “shinrin-yoku,” Forest Bathing is a sensory experience that teaches us to focus more on the body (over the mind) and connect to the present. A key takeaway here is that we need to slow down the mind through the body so we can, ultimately, create a new and more attentive “mental space to relax and restore.” We should even let our minds be a little playful! Yet this embodied practice has positive, physical impacts on the body, too.  As Page describes it, Forest Bathing is both a “powerful preventative and adjunctive therapy.” As a mental health strategy, it can help us to deal with grief, loss, and even death.  

What I found most interesting about Page’s overview of Forest Bathing is that the practice is first and foremost about relationships.  Broadly, it is about dissolving the separation between humans and the world and instead, flattening those hierarchical divisions as much as possible: “We are nature.” When we look at a tree, Page suggests, we need to equally consider the tree’s relationship to the soil, the water and the land around it, and the birds that live in the tree which is, as a totality, a “living, thriving, dynamic ecosystem.”  Forest Bathing is also about healing and harmonizing social relations between humans. Though Forest Bathing can also be practiced as an individual, it is an opportunity to experience nature communally and share together what was revealed to us when we are immersed together in the same natural place.  

With that said, we hope you’ll join us in 2024 and let nature bathe our minds and bodies. 

Newly elected members:
- Jay Bushnell,
- David Hastings
- David Vaina

And returning members:
- Ray Moorer
- Michelle Rutledge
- Maryvonne Devensky
- Sarah Younger

Please feel free to contact the Executive Committee with your concerns at ssjsierra@gmail.com