Mycology

**\*\* Tickets are $167.03, ($125 + tax, gratuities, and fees), and can be purchased [here](https://www.thelibertytavern.com/event/e-pira-chiara-boschis-wine-dinner/). \*\*** The Piedmont region of Italy is renowned for Barolo, one of my favorite wines. Please join us at Liberty Tavern on Tuesday, June 16, at 6:00 PM for a five-course Barolo wine dinner featuring the wines of celebrated winemaker Chiara Boschis. **MENU** **1st Course** **Risotto ai Fungi -** porcini, castelmagno, white truffle *Pairing: E Pira Chiara Boschis Dolcetto d' Alba 2024* **2nd Course** **Agnolotti -** candied walnut, spring pea, sage, besciamella *Pairing: E Pira Chiara Boschis Barbera d' Alba Superiore 2025* **3rd Course** **Brasato al Barolo -** polenta concia, caramelized heirloom carrots *Pairing: E Pira Chiara Boschis Barolo "Via Nuova" 2021* **4th Course** **Hazelnut Crusted Venison Loin -** chestnut puree, braised radicchio, crispy sunchoke *Pairing: E Pira Chiara Boschis Barolo "Mosconi" 2022* **5th Course** **Coconut Cream Maritozzo -** pineapple, basil, brioche Pairing: *La Spinetta Moscato d'Asti "Bricco Quaglia" 2024*

Come watch [Norway vs. Iraq on ](https://www.volosports.com/d/bbb2c1fd-6927-4beb-8a05-9c64975cae5b)**[Tuesday, June 16th at 3pm at Wunder Garten](https://www.volosports.com/d/bbb2c1fd-6927-4beb-8a05-9c64975cae5b).** **What you can expect:** Great soccer and vibes 🍺 **2 Free Anheuser-Busch products** i.e. Michelob Ultra, NUTRL, Bud Light, Budweiser **Limited edition World Cup merchandise for giveaway and raffle** 🔥 Exclusive, soccer themed Volo Pass swag (Members Only, [sign up here](https://www.volosports.com/volo-pass)) Bring your friends, wear your Norway or Iraq gear, and come ready to celebrate, cheer, and enjoy the game together! Note: General admission and entry to Wunder Garten is free, but the immersive Volo experience and perks are available only this registration.

**++++++++++++++++++++** **The Ride: Summary** **(Must Read)** **++++++++++++++++++++** * RIDE NAME: The Koffee Klatch Ride - Constellation (Crystal City) * START LOC: Bluemont South Parking, 325 N Manchester, Arlington, VA * START GPS: [https://goo.gl/maps/2sMA3jhGSgdS4fJj9](https://goo.gl/maps/2sMA3jhGSgdS4fJj9) * START PARKING: Bluemont South Parking lot * ARRIVAL: 10:00 am * SPEECH: 10:10am ***\*\*you must be present for the speech or no ride for you!\*\**** * ROLLING: 10:15am * LEVEL: Medium * PACE: 11-13 mph (a "social" pace) * DISTANCE: 16.5 miles * TERRAIN: Trail / Street / Cyclepath * RIDEWITHGPS ROUTE: **CBG_KOFFEEK_CONS_2026** * [https://ridewithgps.com/routes/55529797](https://ridewithgps.com/routes/55529797) **++++++++++++++++++++++** **The Ride: Detail** **++++++++++++++++++++** **Notes:** * **Constellation** is at the site of the former **Freshman** and may be more of a sit-down coffee shop/cafe. * This ride is organized "lean" and may not have a sweep. * Pump your tires on the morning of the ride, please. * It is strongly suggested that you become a NoVA CBG RidewithGPS club member and download the route posted for each "Klatch". * Loading the route onto your Garmin (or other Nav device) is also acceptable. * **NoVA CBG has a turn by turn RideWithGPS club account that's free. [https://www.meetup.com/novacbg/events/271742916/](https://www.meetup.com/novacbg/events/271742916/)** **The stop will be at:** [Constellation](https://www.constellation-va.com/) (former Freshman site) 2011 Crystal Dr Arlington, VA 22202 They are located on Crystal Drive in Crystal City after mile 9.2. The ride is a 16.5 mile medium level ridden at a social pace (11-13 mph). We will ride the Loop clockwise starting from the Bluemont South Parking on Manchester. We will ride up the Bluemont Junction Trail to the Custis and continue around to the Long Bridge connector trail from the MVT past the Pentagon and the Long Bridge Aquatic Center on the way to Constellation. After coffee we will cross back at the Water Park to the MVT and regular Arlington Loop. **+++++++++++++++++++++** **The Ride After The Ride:** **+++++++++++++++++++++** This week's coffee shop is the Ride WITHIN The Ride! **+++++++++++++++++++++** **Ride Level Chart** **+++++++++++++++++++++** NoVA CBG tries to accommodate all levels of cyclists by offering different types/levels of rides. We just ask that you come to the ride that suits your current riding ability the best. * Introductory Level: If you haven't ridden a bike in a number of years (or are uncertain of your abilities on a bicycle). * Beginner Level: You can ride for 10+ miles at a pace of 10+ to 12+ mph with potentially minor hills involved. * Medium Level: You can ride for 20+ miles at a pace of 13+ to 15+ mph with potentially moderate hills involved. * Advanced Level: You can ride for 20++ miles at a pace of 15+ mph with potentially major hills involved. Both Medium and Advanced Levels might require handling various challenges such as reading cue sheets, using a Garmin or navigation app, night riding, out of town travel, or any other odd cycling situations. **+++++++++++++++++++++** **The Fine Print:** **+++++++++++++++++++++** An RSVP of 'YES' is your digital signature and means you have read and understood MEETUP.com's: * "Terms of Service : Section 6. Release" found at https://www.meetup.com/terms/ * NOVA-CBG's "Assumption of Risk Agreement" found @ https://www.meetup.com/novacbg/pages/1942951/NOVA-CBG_Waiver/ * NoVA CBG's "COVID Policy" found @ http://bit.ly/2021_NoVACBG_COVID19_POLICY Helmets are required to participate in all NOVA-CBG rides. All riders ride at their own risk and with the understanding that cycling is an inherently dangerous activity. When coming to the meetup you do so voluntarily and are ready and able to participate in the ride as described under the conditions of the day. Be on time for the "pre-ride" preparation. If you do not attend the pre-ride preparation you will not be allowed to participate on the ride. There are NO exceptions to the above.

Come watch [France, the #1 team in the world, take on Senegal on ](https://www.volosports.com/d/fabefbfd-e79b-41d9-886a-5dfe3e8c327f)**[Tuesday, June 16th at 3pm at Wunder Garten](https://www.volosports.com/d/fabefbfd-e79b-41d9-886a-5dfe3e8c327f).** **What you can expect:** Great soccer and vibes 🍺 **2 Free Anheuser-Busch products** i.e. Michelob Ultra, NUTRL, Bud Light, Budweiser **Limited edition World Cup merchandise for giveaway and raffle** 🔥 Exclusive, soccer themed Volo Pass swag (Members Only, [sign up here](https://www.volosports.com/volo-pass)) Bring your friends, wear your France or Senegal gear, and come ready to celebrate, cheer, and enjoy the game together! Note: General admission and entry to Wunder Garten is free, but the immersive Volo experience and perks are available only this registration.

Join us for modern island-inspired dishes at **Isla DC**! If it's good enough to attract the Obama's, I think we should give it a try too (they visited within weeks of its opening). **NOTE: This restaurant will NOT split the tab so please come prepared to cover your portion with Paypal, Venmo or Zelle. Thank you in advance for your understanding.** ***Washington Post:*** Beyond the shimmer, Isla is an ambitious Caribbean destination with a lot to say. Dinner at Isla does not end in the dining room. Chic customers filter back into the moodily lit entryway in twos and fours, where they put their to-go bags and fur coats to the side. They find their best light in a dramatic archway framed with mirrors. They strut a little strip of red carpet. As I duck inside, I always seem to land smack in the middle of Washington’s most fabulous photo shoot. Sorry! Isla opened in the shimmering Midtown Center in late October, and it already feels like a destination. A place to celebrate birthdays, to get engaged, to spend an inordinate amount of money on a company credit card, to see and be seen (and, maybe, to see the Obamas on date night). Past the entryway is the even grander dining room roaring with life, illuminated by a chandelier shaped like a beehive and dripping light off hundreds of delicate glass petals. Through and through, this is a power restaurant, the kind of place people go as much for form — the glam of it all — as function. (You know, the food.) A plate of lamb tartare was my first clue that Isla isn’t all window dressing. It arrives as a neat column, painted with a ticklingly spicy sweet potato and habanero cream and covered with a fine layer of chopped chives. Mixed almost imperceptibly in with the dark red cubes are bits of pickled shrimp, their slight chew giving way to waves of salinity. Instead of attempting to wrestle the gamy meat into submission, chef Lonie Murdock accentuates its undeniable intensity, breathing new life into a dish that tends to be more or less interchangeable from one glitzy restaurant to the next. Murdock is new to D.C., but Canadian expats and visitors might know her from Miss Likklemore's, the restaurant she and husband Darren Hinds opened in Toronto in 2022. There, Murdock says, she felt more beholden to tradition, honoring the substantial Caribbean population that calls Toronto home by serving faithful renditions of classics such as slow-cooked oxtails and the handheld chickpea wrap called doubles. At Isla, she wanted to step “outside of that comfort zone.” She brings her vision for a sprawling, globally inspired restaurant to Washington at an exciting moment for Caribbean cooking in the United States. In New York, chef Paul Carmichael opened Kabawa in early 2025, a sleek tasting counter where he exalts plantains with shaved salt cod and caviar, treating the sticky sweet fruit as a luxury ingredient. At Kann in Portland, Oregon, chef Gregory Gourdet rubs whole cauliflowers in jerk seasoning and brings them to life in his restaurant’s open hearth, his cooking a glorious collision of Haitian technique and Pacific Northwest produce. D.C. has played its part, too. Chef Kwame Onwuachi's Dogon is a destination restaurant built around coco bread and brown stew snapper. At St. James on 14th Street NW, paratha is served as a centerpiece dish, surrounded by an ornate spread of meat and vegetable curries. Where does Isla fit in? The restaurant’s most interesting dishes emerge when Murdock treats “Caribbean” less as a prescription than a loose framework. “For me, it was more important just to kind of highlight the beauty and the bounty of Caribbean ingredients, and not necessarily focus on a traditional dish hitting the plate,” she says. Take flaky patties. There are familiar fillings, like supple oxtail that melts into each bite of buttery pastry, but more thrilling are ones densely packed with crab cooked in a fragrant panang curry. Murdock, whose mother is Jamaican, is a quick study in the American palate: A particularly decadent patty features processed cheese and ground beef. Small plates and creative side dishes tend to outshine the bigger, spendier ones, but you can piece together a meat-and-starch dinner if that’s your thing. The showiest entrée on the menu (under a section called “feast & fire”) is a snapper whose meat has been separated from its bones and turned into fried nuggets. These morsels are then reunited with the fried skeleton, which wraps around the plate as if standing guard. For all the fun of the presentation, I found the fish disappointingly mild and craved a creamy sauce to dip into. For something substantial, I prefer the pork chop, lovingly charred and served in a deep, dark, puckering reduction made with pork bones and the Trinidadian green mango condiment kuchella. A pat of crab butter slowly melts into the chop and amplifies its meaty richness, and a few spears of grilled mango radiate like glimmers of sunlight. Whatever feast and fire you choose, pair it with a grilled plantain. “It is such a beautiful ingredient,” Murdock says. “I just didn’t want to see it hit the plate in any kind of way that I’d ever seen it before.” She roasts a sweet plantain until its skin is charred and the insides are beginning to soften, then slices it open and finishes it with butter infused with more bracing kuchella. The starchy fruit has all the heft of a baked potato, but so much more depth and curiosity. I like to double up with a side of mac pie. Murdock bridges the traditional Caribbean dish — a dense casserole — and ooey-gooey American mac and cheese. Her version is a brick of pasta almost caramelized around the edges, cheese lightly coating each noodle, all drenched in a devilishly rich Mornay. I’ve yet to leave Isla short of stuffed, but someday I’ll build a light dinner around bara, the springy Trinidadian flatbread used to make doubles. Here, the dish is deconstructed, the bread served on a glass pedestal, the fillings served separately for swiping and layering. I like a version featuring tender oxtails blanketed dramatically in a creamy butter bean foam, but my favorite of these dishes nods to tradition. A bowl of well-spiced chickpeas, surrounded by labneh and dotted with a sweet-sour tamarind achar, is comfort food dressed up with a bow tie. The leather booths are deep and cozy, and the cocktails, which favor rum and lean light and tropical, are lots of fun. A daiquiri stained blue with butterfly pea flowers is a refreshing start to the night, and Isla’s rendition of an espresso martini, coined the Style and Grace, balances jittery cold brew with sweet, milky peanut punch. Here, the classic cocktail becomes something rich and grown-up, almost devoid of its typical oversaturation. ***Check out the menu [here](https://isladc.com/menu/)*** We ask that ALL folks honor their RSVP. If you are unable to attend after sending in a YES, please update your status so that others may join. In the event our group incurs a fee for no-shows / late cancellations, your ability to RSVP for future events will be restricted. Thank you in advance for your understanding. **WAITLIST:** Meetup does not allow a waitlist for paid events. If this event fills and you are interested in adding your name to the waitlist, please send host a message through the app. In the future, we will vary the days of the week and the types of restaurants so that we can attract many different types of diners. Feel free to make suggestions for future meet locations. All diners will pay their own tab. before departing the event. If you are unable to join us in June we hope you'll stay interested and join us for a meal in the future. Looking forward to catching up with you for a fantastic dinner at Isla DC!

We will be playing **Agricola** with up to 8 players. All experience levels welcome. Expect the game teach to start promptly within the first 10 minutes. Agricola is a worker placement game in which you're a farmer living in a wooden shack with your spouse and little else. At first, on a turn, your family gets to take only two actions, one for you and one for your spouse: plowing fields, collecting materials, building fences, etc. Each round a new action card is flipped over, offering one more possible action. You can expand your house to make room for more family members. Find [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWuUuxbMDB0&pp=ygUUaG93IHRvIHBsYXkgYWdyaWNvbGE%3D) a how to play video on youtube. Find [here](https://www.lookout-spiele.de/upload/en_agricolare.html_Rules_Agricola-RE_EN.pdf) the rulebook. Note: Please remember to update your RSVP if you can not attend the event. **The earlier you update your RSVP the better** so that players on the waitlist can attend. No-shows may make it harder to attend future meetups. Also, all library rules apply to this meetup event. Mainly that no food is allowed in the library. Covered drinks are allowed.

Title: What Is Progress? Knowledge Aggregation, Living Textbooks, and the Automation of Scientific Discovery Date: June 20 2026 Noon - 14:00 EDT Summary: Our collective knowledge infrastructure — the textbooks, professional training resources, and literature syntheses that define what professionals across disciplines believe to be true — is quietly accruing a structural liability. Compounded confirmation bias, stacked citation-by-citation into the foundations of formal knowledge, means that breakthroughs can take decades to reach the classrooms, clinical workflows, and decision-making frameworks where they matter most. Meanwhile, the deepest friction is rarely acknowledged: before any field can build meaningful consensus on "why" or "how" a phenomenon occurs, it must first establish honest, consolidated agreement on "what" has actually been observed. That prior step is routinely skipped, assumed, or fragmented across siloed literatures that never cross-pollinate. This talk introduces a framework called "Knowledge Aggregation" — with two distinct but complementary ambitions. The first is descriptive transparency: algorithmically mapping what has been said, measured, and documented across a problem space, without imposing causal interpretation or narrative. The second traces the boundary between empirical observation and explanatory claim, building systems that can separate the "what" from the "why/how" — because consensus on mechanism cannot be meaningfully constructed until consensus on phenomenon is first established. Both ambitions are now within reach. By composing tools already at our disposal — large language models, classical NLP pipelines, public data repositories, and engineering-grade automation frameworks — it becomes possible to model knowledge itself, rather than merely imitate individual experts. One concrete expression of this is automating the writing of living textbooks: compressing the lag from bleeding-edge discovery, through replicated evidence, all the way to professional training resources. But the deeper aspiration reaches further — toward automating the discovery of scientific insights that have never previously been conceived, by systematically surfacing hypothesis combinations that no single siloed researcher would have had the cross-disciplinary vantage point to even ask. Drawing on ongoing systems biology and computational research — with ME/CFS research demoed as a use case for what siloed, fragmented knowledge infrastructure costs in practice — this talk maps the conceptual architecture, the real-world friction, and the data science toolkit for building it. Speaker: As a systems biologist at heart, Sam specializes his biomedical research on interactions and connections in biology - rather than just one domain of expertise. He wears many hats and collects skill sets across disciplines, with degree studies and industry experience acquired across Chemical Engineering (BSc), Bioinformatics (MSc), Systems and Synthetic Biology (M2), Biomedical Sciences (MSc), and beyond. Even more important to him than niches or fields of work, comes down to the synergistic approaches that allow us to move beyond reductionism. The notion that a question can only allow for one answer, is inherently reductionist. By resisting many norms in science and engineering which can get overly reductive, his current role as Principal Investigator of Research for DMV Petri Dish (501(c)(3) non-profit local to the DMV region) embraces computational frameworks that aide scale-up and automation - not only around the processes which already exist with established workflows, but also taking a keen interest in attempting and accomplishing ambitions which have never been perceived to be possible previously. Sam carries a passion for the synergy of computational biology - fused with wet lab validation. This way, one can build a beautiful knowledge base in the theoretical sense, and then test to see if said computational prediction might actually be able to stand in the real world with wet lab validation. Translational modeling starts to become possible once biological experiment design can be iteratively looped alongside computational model design, optimization, and analysis - empowering the design of a better wet lab experiment, followed by a better computational model, back and forth until science is done!

***Colvin Run's 3rd Saturday Ballroom Dance*** ***June 20*** **7:30-8:30 pm Foxtrot Lesson by Michael Sims** **8:30 -10:30 pm DJ Music by Michael Sims of** **[Lite on Your Feet Dance Studio](https://us.list-manage.com/UkhtmeO0KaV?e=dc73d9bfad&c2id=665bd03e2dbdf2e1e79a42bce944e2d0)** **Unstoppable Beats: Michael has prepared a playlist that's going to get your feet moving and your heart racing. From classic hits to the latest chart-toppers, we've got the beats that'll make you move!** **!!!!! New to Colvin Run Ballroom Dances:** **$$$$ We are now accepting Venmo as well as cash or check.** ***Celebrating a birthday in June?*** ***Then we'd love to honor you with our delicious chocolate cake!***  **$15 (cash, check or Venmo) for lesson & dance,** **Scrumptious snacks, cold water & an evening of** **Fun, Fun, Fun at Colvin Run!** **No reservations, experience, or partner needed.** **Singles are welcome!** **We rotate partners during the lesson and offer several mixers.** **Plenty of free, safe parking at Colvin Run** **Dress is "ballroom casual." Dress to impress!** **Michael's Playlist will include Foxtrot,Tango, Merengue, Cha Cha, Mambo, Bachata, Rumba, Samba, Waltz, East & West Coast Swing, Viennese Waltz, Samba Line Dance, Hustle, Polka, Quickstep, Country 2 Step, El Paso, and a few mixers!** \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* *The 100-year old dance hall is operated by the Colvin Run Citizens Association, a non-profit 501(c)(3) public charity.* *100% of the proceeds from this dance will go to the operation and preservation of the historic dance hall. * Find Colvin Run at [http://www.colvinrun.org](https://us.list-manage.com/xL8zod2I6OD?e=b1c73adaf2&c2id=7c845a995731eafff2e4e746b687f15d) or visit http://www.meetup.com/colvinrun-org/ or contact Kathy.milks@colvinrun.org

# Old Town Ace Hardware Group Grow Event No backyard? No problem. Join us at Old Town Ace Hardware for a beginner-friendly indoor gardening event where you’ll learn how to grow fresh herbs, greens, and vegetables indoors year-round using simple hydroponic and soil systems. Whether you live in an apartment, condo, townhouse, or just want fresher food closer to home, this event will show you practical ways to grow indoors using modern grow lights, compact systems, and easy starter methods. ## What You’ll Experience ✅ Live indoor gardening demos ✅ Beginner-friendly hydroponic systems ✅ LED grow light education ✅ Seedling starter bundles ✅ Harvesting & maintenance tips ✅ Soil vs hydroponic growing explained ✅ Community Q&A with local growers Modern indoor systems make it possible to grow herbs and greens year-round in compact spaces using LED lighting and vertical growing methods. *** ## Featured Indoor Growing Systems You’ll see: * LetPot countertop growing systems * Elfsys vertical hydroponic systems * Beginner seedling bundles * Indoor LED grow light setups Indoor Garden Market currently offers seedling bundles and year-round growing systems designed for small-space indoor food production. *** ## Perfect For • Apartment & condo residents • Beginner gardeners • Families & kids • Wellness-minded locals • Sustainability enthusiasts • Anyone curious about hydroponics *** ## What You’ll Learn -How much light indoor plants really need -Beginner-friendly crops to start with -How seedling bundles speed up success -How to harvest continuously indoors -Soil vs hydroponic growing basics Leafy greens typically need 40–50 watts of grow lighting per square foot, while vertical hydroponic systems help maximize production in small indoor spaces. *** ## Why Indoor Food Growing? Small indoor systems can help households grow fresh herbs and greens year-round while reducing dependence on outdoor space and seasonal weather. Even compact spaces can support productive indoor gardens using LED lighting and efficient systems. *** ## Community-Focused & Beginner Friendly This event is designed to help local residents: ✅ Learn together ✅ Ask beginner questions ✅ Explore systems hands-on ✅ Connect with the indoor growing community The goal is simple: Help more people learn how to grow food indoors successfully. *** RSVP today and join the Group Grow movement. Visit **[indoorgardenmarket.com](https://iwantagreenthumb.com)** to learn more, and RSVP now for a fun afternoon of herbs, learning, and indoor gardening! Thank you, Clift --- Chief Community Grower at indoorgardenmarket.com

JOIN US FOR AN EVENING OF CELEBRATION, COMMUNITY & CREATIVITY Following our Audience Award-winning 48 Hour Film Project, Phil is hosting the DC Creative Collective cast, crew, supporters, and friends to enjoy breathtaking Washington, DC skyline views. ⸻ **DIRECTIONS** The entrance to the building is on Mass Ave (the building attached to the Hampton Inn). The front desk attendant will buzz you in. Tell them you're here to meet Phillip on the roof and they'll fob you up to the 14th floor. Walk in the direction of apt 1411 and enter the stairwell across from apt 1411. Take the staircase directly to rooftop. **FOOD** Beverages and light snacks available, but please bring additional food and drinks to share. This event is bring your own everything. A Safeway grocery and 2 liquor stores are within 2 blocks of the building. **EVENT HIGHLIGHTS** 🎥 Exclusive Director’s Cut Screening Experience the enhanced version of The Seasoning King. 🥂 Rooftop Networking Reception Connect with fellow filmmakers, actors, writers, and creatives. 🏆 48 Hour Film Project Celebration Recognizing the cast, crew, and supporters who made the project possible. ✍️ THE WRITER’S BOX Have an idea for our next film? Drop your: • Story Concepts • Character Ideas • Loglines • Themes • Genres • Creative Challenges Selected ideas may inspire the next DC Creative Collective production.

[Profs and Pints DC](https://www.profsandpints.com/washingtondc) presents: **“Owl Wisdom,”** an introduction to the biology, habits, and conservation of various owl species in our region and beyond, with Steve Sheffield, professor of biology at Bowie State University, curator of mammals and birds for the Natural History Society of Maryland, and president of the Maryland Ornithological Society. [Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at [https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-owl-wisdom](https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-owl-wisdom) .] Who wants to learn about owls? If you are fascinated by these hunters of the night, you’ll love spending an evening with Steve Sheffield, a biologist who extensively studies owls and works to conserve them. He’ll start by covering the different types of owls in our region and elsewhere, and the ways in which their bodies and their sizes represent physical adaptations to their environment. He’ll especially focus on the owl species of the United States and Canada, describing their biology, ranges, preferred habitat and prey, behavior, and vocalizations. You’ll learn how and why field biologists study owls and how owl researchers from around the world assemble periodically to discuss their work. We’ll consider owls' value to ecosystems and, especially, humans and human-dominated landscapes where they serve as especially efficient killers of rodents and other crop-harming pests. Dr. Sheffield will talk about the many years he has spent researching owls, with much of his work focused on their exposure to environmental contaminants and how they’re affected. Being top predators, owls serve as sensitive bioindicators of contamination throughout the food chain. Much like canaries in coal mines, they function as an early warning system alerting us to potentially dangerous levels of toxicity. We don’t just study them for their own good, but ours as well. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.) Image: Burrowing owls in Florida (Photo by travelingwayoflife / Creative Commons).

**MoCo Psychedelic Society — Monthly Gathering** 📅 Date/Time May 23rd \| 1:00 – 3:00 PM 📍 Connie Morella Bethesda Public Library \~ Medium Room Come join us for our monthly gathering — a space for fellowship, learning, advocacy, and community connection. Whether you're a familiar face or joining us for the first time, you are welcome here. *** **✨ This Month: Understanding Psychedelics: The Journey Continues — Part Two** Are you new to psychedelics, or simply curious to learn more? This is the meeting for you. This session goes deeper. Building on Part One, we'll explore what actually happens in a psychedelic experience — from personal healing and ego death to mystical states and entity contact — and then get practical: safety protocols, contraindications, substance testing, and how to choose or vet a sitter or retreat. We'll also cover microdosing protocols, the ethics of touch and consent in ceremonial settings, how to find and grow your own medicines, and what integration really requires after the journey ends. Whether you're newly curious or already walking this path, this is an evidence-informed, judgment-free conversation for adults who want to navigate this territory wisely. No prior knowledge is required — just curiosity and an open mind. \*\*\* **A Few Important Notes** The MoCo Psychedelic Society is a community space for education, connection, and advocacy — not a venue for sourcing or sales. All information shared at this event is for **educational purposes only** and does not constitute medical advice or encourage the use of any illegal substance. A note on legality: Most psychedelic substances are currently classified as **Schedule I** controlled substances by the DEA. Their use outside of clinical trial settings or states where they are becoming legal remains illegal in the United States. **Ketamine** is an exception — it is legal when administered by a licensed medical professional. \*\*\* We hope to see you there. Come as you are. 🌱

NFT's are here to stay folks! This is a group for like minded people interested in understanding, leveraging, using, creating for, profiting from, trading too i suppose, NFT's.. everything around them, complexity, fear and exploits, best practices and more. **PLUS** This group will talk AI ART tools, techniques, artists, video, audio, prototypes and more in the AI assisted production space- ART specifically, but we can get into any aspect of some of the cooler things happening in AI in general.

Let’s meet and wander the galleries! General admission on Sundays is free.

5:45-7:45 in Conference Room B, Library lower level. Bring your yarn projects, meet new friends. If you plan to attend, please RSVP yes. If you can’t attend, please change your RSVP to no. This helps anyone who is waitlisted and it allows me to have an accurate count of attendees as our space is quite limited. Plenty of parking in the lot, in the overflow lot across the street, and on the street. See you there!

Columbus Code & Coffee is an inclusive, informal co-working session. People of all skill levels attend, and we love it that way. Many people (optionally) bring projects to work on, and many other people (optionally) socialize the entire time. It's entirely up to you! **What to Expect at the Intro Circle** \~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~ Near the beginning of the event (1:30 pm), we do a standup: * Organizer announcements, updates, and logistics Round 1 - (7 secs max): * Your name * What you're working on * What you can help others with Round 2: * Community events you wanna plug. If none, that's cool too. Round 3: * Job opportunities you're hiring for OR announce that you are looking for one. If none, that's cool. After the introduction circle, everything is self-organized! Feel free to work alone, pair up, attend one of our workshops/presentations, or mingle!

Private Group. Closed to the Public Knowing ourselves and understanding our abilities is the first step toward wielding our gifts with control and accuracy. In subsequent classes we will verify and hone our talents with activities and discussion. These are hands-on workshops and participation is expected. The goal of our series will be to develop expertise in areas of particular interest such as mediumship, channeling, divination, healing and, etc.. Our ultimate directions will be determined by class members as we evolve. I look forward to sharing and discovering with you. - Cynthia

We are excited to host Guided Meditations on Sundays at 6 pm in our Ashram/Gallery/Home! !! !! Everyone wants to know what kind of God we worship and what kind of meditation we do. We worship the GOD that LOVES US! We understand that god is an energy and it lives in us as us. Our meditations guide others to actually experience that energy! xoxo We don't just talk about peace, love and affection, we experience it :) Also we are a home not a business, so we enjoy building community one friend at a time. We always build in time for people to mingle & develop friendships! xoxo Much Love, Frank Tennyson Namaste, Frank Tennyson http://photos3.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/a/f/9/9/600_447824953.jpeg

Sleep in on Sundays. When you've had your fill of pajama-time, roll out and have some tasty brunch with your fellow Humanists!