But what of giving forward?
You do it every day, as do those around you. In those smiles, those quiet openings of your door, allowing a friend or neighbor to transit over the threshold into your home.
The phone call checking in. The daydreams you share with a neighbor about how you could plan a joint neighborhood potluck.
The curiosity you find to ask why that town policy has to be that way. The courage to stand up and speak about it.
These workings to reconnect, to envision a better way, to speak up, mark a new world we’re entering, a world where local matters—a lot.
Like wounded birds returning to the sky, many of us are taking wing with a new sense of agency and urgency. About our home towns. About our home planet.
No, we didn’t send a US delegation to the critical COP 30 Sessions in Brazil, yet we are forming and gathering a climate corps of our own. Some of us will teach climate in the middle school; some will help a neighbor understand their complicated utility bill.
And some will help you learn to maintain your heat pump or heat-pump hot-water heater.
We live in exciting, turbulent, possible times. Thanks for giving forward this November.
Local Happenings You May Have Missed
Your Home As An Energy System—listen to our neighbor Brian Robinson’s succinct and insightful talk at CPL about the ways we can be more energy savvy. Connie Evans rounded out the evening with a discussion of the role Window Dressers can play to make your home more comfortable.
ME Department of Energy has a 2025 – 2026 home heating guide that provides links to updated fuel/energy prices, emergency information, etc. Check it out.
Your Pumpkins Can Have a Next Life—there’s a dumpster waiting for your seasonal pumpkin at the transfer station. Just toss it in to save it from the landfill. The free service is provided by Scrap Dogs. Follow the link to read their latest blog. And signup for their composting service if that works for you.
Maine Green Schools Festivals—local educators and their students attended this inaugural event. We’re excited to see how much is going on in these collaborations, this one from the Dept. of Education, the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future (GOPIF), and our local schools. We live in a terrific, climate-changed-focused state.
Portland’s First EBoat Charging Station—it won’t be long before we see one in Camden.
Congresswoman Pingree’s Climate Agenda—the Portland climate team offers a Friday morning Coffee and Climate series. This one explains what our Congresswoman is working on—everything from sustainable farms to fast fashion. Have a listen.
A Plea for Anti-Idling Enforcement in Camden—a big shoutout to neighbor Sarah who stood up at the last Camden Select Board meeting (it’s in the first minutes of the recording) to encourage our town staff and leaders to enforce the state’s anti-idling laws. We’d also like to ask our Public Works workers to resist idling their trucks—for the good of the planet.
Upcoming Events for a Climate-Changed World
11/20/2025, Thursday, 5:30-7:00 p.m, Parker Room of the Rockport Opera House (6 Central Street). Scott Libby, the founder and owner of Royal River Heat Pumps and a HVAC specialist for more than three decades, will talk about why heat pumps are popular for heating, cooling and water heating, what to ask contractors, and what to consider with older homes. Whether you already have heat pumps or are considering them, you’ll learn about how they work and how best to operate them. There will be time for questions from the audience, and the session will be recorded. (Look for them, following the events, on the “Home Energy Action” page of the CamdenCAN website.)
11/21/2025, Friday, 12 pm, online. Maine Conservation Voters, virtual Lunch and Learn: Power in Crisis | Building a Fair Energy Future for Maine. Join Lucy Hochschartner, energy activist, former Deputy Campaign Director for Pine Tree Power, and former Climate & Clean Energy Director at Maine Conservation Voters, and Rebecca Schultz, Senior Advocate for Climate & Clean Energy at the Natural Resources Council, for a conversation on how we got here and what it will take to build a fair, affordable, and sustainable energy system for all Mainers. They will share practical steps we can take now—from supporting key legislation to holding utilities accountable—to move from outrage to action and create the energy future Maine deserves. Register here.
11/21/2025, Friday, 12 pm, online. Join Our Power and communications expert Dave Welz with Rural Climate Partners, for a practical conversation about messaging that works to build durable support for climate solutions in rural communities. As with all Power Lunches, feel free to grab lunch or wash your dishes as you watch and listen. You’ll have the chance to comment or ask questions of Dave starting around 12:30, after his presentation. To attend, pre-register here.
12/9/25, Tuesday, 4-5:00 pm, Camden Public Library, CamdenCAN’s Resilient Reading Group. Facilitated conversation circle exploring living in a climate-changed world. We’re nearing the end of Kate Marvel’s Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet. Our next book is Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart/Brian D. McLaren. See more about it here. You don’t need to attend all gatherings—drop-ins are welcome. Future dates will be 12/23, 1/13/26, 1/27/26. Listen to this great interview with Kate Marvel here.
12/11/25, Thursday, 6:30- 7:50 pm, Camden Public Library, Camden Talks Climate, Climate Disasters Can Happen Fast: Are You Ready? Climate disruptions are generating multiplying disasters—from extreme floods and wildfires to super-charged hurricanes. Even areas once considered “climate havens” are facing major events. Learn more about how your family can prepare in a presentation by Sophie Piconi, Executive Director for the American Red Cross Northern New England Region/Midcoast and Central Maine. The first people to respond to disaster are often neighbors helping neighbors. Skye Ljungberg, an intern with Maine Climate Science Information Exchange, will share ideas from model programs where neighborhood pods prepare in advance to checkin on each other and share resources. Handouts will be available, and the session will be recorded. This Camden Public Library presentation is co-sponsored by CamdenCAN and supported by a state Community Resilience Partnership grant to the towns of Camden and Rockport.
Upcoming Newsletter Schedule
We’ll be on a hiatus until our next newsletter, Monday December 8.
Concluding Thoughts
We’re living in a time of hyperobjects—those interconnected, befuddling systems, like the climate and all that its instability impacts. It’s hard to comprehend the breadth of it.
So we need to come back around and down to the soil at our feet, the air we breath when we step into the morning. To the music of the day, the poetry of the evening, the brittle sparseness of the pencil-thin branches and twigs of November.
Dropping down from the lofty, wide-angle assessment of our changed climate, down to the immediate, tactile, allows a certain ease of focus.
One thing, one action. It will be connected to an impact—that’s the world we’re living in. Intertwined.
Your giving forward matters.
Thanks for being with us.