Water Is Life Zoom Talk Series
Join us each month from noon – 1 pm for the Water is Life Zoom Talk series! We highlight the role that water plays in our lives throughout Alabama and we share how you can participate in the efforts to protect water. You’ll hear from our partners across the state, and leading experts in water protection. We even have a few river and Alabama history lessons thrown in! The Alabama Rivers Alliance and our partners are always thinking about clean water and we know it means many things to many people in Alabama, that’s why we launched our new Water is Life webinar series on Rivers of Alabama Day in 2020.
UPCOMING WATER IS LIFE ZOOM TALKS
Beat the summer heat and join us from the comfort of your own home or office for our Water Is Life Summer Reading Zoom Series! We are excited to feature two local Alabama authors and one Southeastern author as we discuss their newly published books. The topics range from restoring rivers to the poetry of sustainable home building to the muddy story of environmental injustice in the Mississippi River Delta. Head out to your favorite local bookstore or your local library and pick up a copy or purchase from our favorite Thank You Books in Birmingham! We can’t wait to see you on Zoom!
Tuesday, July 16 from noon – 1 pm
Water is Life: Southern Rivers with Scot Duncan
Southern Rivers: Restoring America’s Freshwater Biodiversity explores the Southeast’s imperiled river systems and solutions for preserving them in the face of habitat loss, climate change, and extinction. The region’s rivers are the epicenter of North American freshwater biodiversity and are the top global hotspot for important aquatic animals including mussels, turtles, snails, crayfish, and fish, many of which have made important contributions to southern life and culture. As threats increase, it may seem necessary to choose between nature conservation and human needs, but Duncan persuasively demonstrates that this is a false choice. Conservation enhances human life.
Tuesday, July 30 from noon – 1 pm
Water is Life: Glass Cabin with James and Tina Mozelle Braziel
GLASS CABIN chronicles the thirteen years Tina Mozelle Braziel and James Braziel spent building their home out of secondhand tin, tornado-snapped power poles, and church glass on a ridge in rural Alabama. Their alternating voices support one another like parts of their cabin—every board needs its nail, every window needs its frame. These poems explore the work it takes to measure cuts for stairs, to haul water — one ton at a time — up the side of the mountain, and to write. It reads as a meditation on hope, on frustration, and on people’s places in the wilder parts of the world.
Tuesday, August 20 from noon – 1 pm
Water is Life: Muddy Thinking in the Mississippi River Delta with Ned Randolph
Muddy Thinking in the Mississippi River Delta: A Call for Reclamation uses the story of mud to answer a deceptively simple question: How can a place uniquely vulnerable to sea level rise be one of the nation’s most promiscuous producers and consumers of fossil fuels? Organized around New Orleans and South Louisiana as a case study, this book examines how the unruly Mississippi River and its muddy delta shaped the people, culture, and governance of the region. It proposes a framework of “muddy thinking” to gum the wheels of extractive capitalism and pollution that have brought us to the precipice of planetary collapse. Muddy Thinking calls upon our dirty, shared histories to address urgent questions of mutual survival and care in a rapidly changing world.
BONUS: Join ARA and Thank You Books in Birmingham on Sunday, August 25 for a book signing and further discussion with Ned Randolph about his book Muddy Thinking in the Mississippi River Delta.
Stay tuned for more details!
Using the arrows in the upper left of the video box below, scroll through and watch the past four years of Water is Life Zoom Talks.