Boston 2nd Tour de Hives, 10-4, will be starting at the Growing Center (Somerville) with Warre Hives, continue in Inman Square (beekeeping and research), picnic with the Bee-U. Beekeepers club, and a Grand Finale at the Museum of Science. Check https://www.facebook.com/events/297115667029162/ Pre-registration is now open: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/247983
Some people proclaim that free-range, grass-fed animals taste differently from conventionally produced meats and that once you try sustainable meats you won’t want to go back. Join The Museum of Science at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts Boston at 215 First Street in Cambridge as special guest chefs showcase their recipes in a four-course dinner featuring organic lamb, beef, pork, and chicken. It’s an ideal way to taste the difference for yourself. Also hear from them about raising animals sustainably and how what they eat and where they live affects the flavor of the meat they yield. Menu details and more event information available at mos.org/events.
Price ($70 for four course dinner, including tax and gratuity, but beverages not included) also includes a voucher for discounted Exhibit Halls admission, applicable for entry to Meaty Matters. Purchase tickets in advance at mos.org/events. Sponsored by Le Cordon Bleu, College of Culinary Arts. Sustainable meats provided by Whole Foods Market.
Join The Museum of Science in the Gordon Current Science & Technology Center prior to the screening of the new documentary film, American Meat, as each of the individual panelists is interviewed in depth on the subject of sustainable meat agriculture and production. Discover the real difference between organic foods and their traditionally grown counterparts when it comes to nutrition, safety, and price. Talk with the experts during the question and answer sessions after each interview. Attend our Small Footprint, Big Flavor dinner and receive discounted Exhibit Halls admission for this program. Panelists include Jonathan D. Kemp, president, FoodEx/Organic Renaissance Food Exchange, New Bedford, MA | Dan Mandich, owner, Westminster Meats, Westminster Station, VT | Danielle Nierenberg, senior researcher and director, Nourishing the Planet Program, Worldwatch Institute | Theo Weening, global meat coordinator, Whole Foods Market | Nick Zigelbaum, livestock manager, Siena Farms, Sudbury, MA.
At 2:30 pm, Food on Film presents American Meat. This new documentary chronicles America’s grassroots revolution in sustainable meat production. The film, an official selection of Food Day 2011, explains our current industrial meat system and shows the feedlots and confinement operations, not through hidden cameras but through the eyes of the farmers who live and work there. Featuring legendary sustainable farmer Joel Salatin, American Meat frames the debate on whether sustainable meat production could ever meet the needs of the consuming public and showcases the people who could change everything about the way meat reaches the American table.
A discussion follows the screening about the sustainable meat industry and whether it can meet the needs of the world’s, and New England’s, growing population. Advance registration begins at 9:00 a.m., Saturday, February 25 (Wednesday, February 22 for Museum members) at mos.org/events.
Admission is free thanks to the generosity of the Lowell Institute. Additional funding provided by the Richard S. Morse Fund.
The Coolidge Corner Theatre kicks off a new season of its popular Science on Screen series on Monday, October 3 with a special showing of B-movie maestro Roger Corman’s 1960 horticultural cult classic The Little Shop of Horrors paired with a pre-screening talk on carnivorous plants by Aaron Ellison, Senior Research Fellow in Ecology at Harvard Forest. The program begins at 7:00 pm.
The Little Shop of Horrors tells the tale of a hapless plant-shop clerk who breeds a new species of plant named Audrey Junior that not only talks, but also needs a special kind of food to survive: humans. Famous for having the shortest shooting schedule on record – two days and a night – this hilarious black comedy helped establish director Corman as an underground legend. Starring Jonathan Haze, Mel Welles, and Jackie Joseph, the film also features an iconic cameo by a young Jack Nicholson as a gleefully masochistic dental patient (possibly not a stretch theatrically.)
Unlike Audrey Junior, carnivorous plants in nature don’t actually devour people – or bellow “Feed Me!†But because these plants grow in habitats where soil nutrients are in short supply, they must rely on animal prey for sustenance. They catch their dinner using a variety of strategies, from snapping their leaves shut on unsuspecting insects to snagging snacks with sticky tentacles to sucking in their prey like a vacuum cleaner.
Before the film, Dr. Ellison sheds light on the curious world of carnivorous plants and on how these fabulously complex plants can further our understanding of how a complete, functioning natural ecosystem works.
At Harvard Forest, Harvard University’s 3,500-acre outdoor classroom and ecological research laboratory in Petersham, Mass., Dr. Ellison studies the evolutionary ecology of carnivorous plants, food web dynamics and community ecology of wetlands and forests, and other phenomena. He has received the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Faculty Fellow award for excellence in research and teaching.
Science on Screen is co-presented by The Museum of Science, Boston and made possible by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Tickets are $9.75 general admission, $7.75 for students, seniors, and Museum of Science members, and free for Coolidge Corner Theatre members. For more information and to purchase tickets online, visit www.coolidge.org/science. Tickets are also available at the Coolidge Corner Theatre box office, located at 290 Harvard Street in Brookline. Phone: 617/734-2500.
We are at an underwater crossroads. Food from the sea is increasingly important to the human diet. Yet fish stocks are more fragile than ever, made scarce by overfishing and endangered by environmental assaults. What are the factors that contribute to overfishing and what steps can we take to avoid them? Are regulations the answer? Are farmed fisheries good, bad, or some place in between? In this Museum of Science session, we examine how to preserve and protect the vitality of food sources drawn from our waters. Free, but seating is limited; advance registration is required. To register: http://survey.mos.org/public_survey/Checkbox/Survey.aspx?s=9494d2fafc03486a94c4db2f760d70bb. This forum is part of the Food for Thought series, encouraging conversation about what we can do to improve how we grow our food and feed our bodies. Thank you to www.chefsblade.monster.com for the image below.
Filmmakers Michael Graziano and Ernie Park were originally inspired by the Organic School Project, a now-defunct school garden project in Chicago, and had intended to focus their film Lunch Line on it. Once they started production, however, they realized that there was a much larger story to be told. The resulting film adopts a visually striking style as it portrays the surprisingly long and tortuous history of school food in this country. $5, co-sponsored by Slow Food Boston and The Museum of Science, at The Cahners Theater at The Museum of Science, 1 Science Park in Boston, at 2 pm on Sunday, March 20. To reserve, log on to www.slowfoodboston.com/reserve.cfm?eno=872.
Diabetes. Heart Disease. Obesity. What is going on in our society? Why are we so sick? The next film in Slow Food’s 2011 Winter Film Series explores these issues, and even tries to make some recommendations for what we can do to stop sliding down this slippery slope of illness.
On Sunday February 13th at 2:00PM come by the Museum of Science (co-sponsor of the event)Â for a screening of Forks Over Knives, an amazing and eye-opening documentary about the connection between our diet and the diseases that are so prevalent in our society today.
Now, the health side of the eating equation isn’t our normal stomping ground, we know — but encouraging folks to eat more sustainably is. And we believe that eating more sustainability means eating closer to the source: locally grown fruits and vegetables, pasture-raised antibiotic & hormone free meats and dairy…. (You know the drill by now!) Eating sustainably also means cooking more, taking time to enjoy the process of preparing and eating your meals. And frankly, we believe that all of this dovetails nicely into the questions raised in the film. Because it is our oh-so-humble opinion that many of society’s health related ills could be solved by eating this way.
But enough of the soap box rant! Come check out the film for yourself, and learn more from the *special* speaker planned for afterward. We can guarantee you’ll walk away with your eyes opened wide and a few small changes ready in your toolbox! $5 fee. Reserve now at   www.slowfoodboston.com/reserve.cfm?eno=851.
Spotting fireflies is a special part of any warm summer night, because we so rarely see them. Are fireflies disappearing from our landscape? If so, why? What can we do about it?
The Museum of Science has linked with the Citizen Science website, co-sponsored by the Museum of Science, Tufts University, and Fitchburg State College, helping researchers determine why fireflies seem to be declining, and offering the general public an opportunity to learn how to collect scientific data in a manner that is both useful to firefly researchers and fun for the whole family.
Using your own backyard as a data collection site, chart the occurrence of fireflies from May to August. Each week, you can upload your observations to the website, joining the data from hundreds of other citizen scientists to track the status of fireflies in your area.
Becoming a citizen scientist is easy and fun, and your collective data is essential to helping scientists learn why firefly numbers are declining, as well as what can be done to reverse the trend. Whether you participate as an individual or family, it is a great way to foster a lifelong interest in science and a greater understanding of natural history. To learn more about the project, and to register, log on to www.mos.org/fireflywatch.
Please join members of The Museum of Science on Wednesday, November 3, from 7 – 9, for this Reno Family Foundation Symposium, sponsored by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and part of the Celebrity Science Series. Mark Bittman is known for his no-nonsense style and no-frills approach to cooking. Drawing links between diet, health, and climate change, the popular food writer shows us how our bodies and our planet are paying the price for overproduction and overconsumption of food. In Food Matters, Bittman takes the mystery out of what terms like “organic” and “agricultural sustainability” mean to focus on what small, but powerful things we can do to eat in an environmentally responsible and budget-friendly way. He explains how to eat more consciously and to become less reliant on animal products and nutritionally worthless food. By making simple adjustments to his diet, Bittman lost 35 pounds, improved his health, and reduced his carbon footprint. Join us for an evening that will make you rethink your relationship with food. Purchase tickets ($28) in person at the Museum box office, by phone at 617-723-2500, or online at store.mos.org.
Celebrate the Power of the Parklands at the Charles River Conservancy’s 10th Anniversary event on Tuesday, June 15, beginning with a reception at 11:30 am, followed by a luncheon at 12:30 pm, at the Washburn Riverfront Pavilion at the Museum of Science in Boston. This year the Conservancy will honor Henry Lee, Founder of the Friends of the Public Garden, and Conservancy supporters Carolyn and Peter Lynch. Guest speakers include Tom Ashbrook, host of National Public Radio’s “On Point,” and Fred Salvucci, former Secretary of Transportation. The Conservancy gratefully thanks its principal supporters InterSystems, Fidelity Investments, and Bank of America, for their help with this event, as well as Equity Office, Harvard University, Polaris Public Relations and Novartis. For tickets ($150 per person) and sponsorship information ($500 and above), call 617-608-1410, or email crc@thecharles.org. You may also find details on the Charles River Conservancy’s website, www.thecharles.org. Photo by Tom Christiansen.
