WRWA River News - Happy New Year

Westport River Watershed Alliance

January 2022

Dear Members and Friends:

As we begin a new year, we at WRWA would like to thank all our donors for making our Annual Fund Drive a success. We look forward to carrying our work onward into 2022, encouraged and inspired by your support.

We anticipate that in 2022 we will be able to continue resuming our regular activities and programs, beginning with our interesting line up of speakers in our winter series. You can read more about them in this newsletter. Our first lecture on January 13 will be online only, due to the recent increase in Covid cases.

We still have some 2022 calendars, featuring the winners from our annual photo contest, so make sure to get one soon before we run out! And later on this winter, we will be returning to the Dedee Shattuck Gallery for our annual Winter Art Show. We will have more details in our next issue of River News.

Thanks again for your confidence in WRWA and for helping us continue our important work. Happy New Year!

Sincerely,

Deborah

WRWA Receives Bequest from Longtime Member

In December of 2021, WRWA received notification of an unanticipated bequest from Peter MacDougall, a longtime member who died in Oct 2021. Peter was a retired partner at Ropes & Gray law firm, having graduated from Harvard Law and Harvard College, and was a summer resident of the Harbor. We thank Peter for having the inspiration and generosity to support us with this major gift.

Don't forget to pick up your WRWA 2022 Calendar

The new WRWA Photo Calendar with local tide charts is available online and at the River Center and Partners Village Store. It features the winning photographs from our annual photo contest.

The calendar is a great gift for anyone who loves Westport's unique beauty and scenery! And the daily tide graphs are a useful added bonus for anyone who watches the tides in the Westport River. Pick up your copies soon.

Winter Speaker Series planned for

Jan.13, Feb. 10, March 3, and March 31

WRWA will again be presenting a series of informative presentations by expert speakers this winter. The talks will be a hybrid of in-person and Zoom events, allowing those interested to view online or at the River Center. This will also depend on the Covid situation this winter. Programs will be on Thursday evenings at 5 p.m.

The line up is as follows:

January 13 - Dr. Heather Goldstone, Director of Communications for the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Woods Hole, MA (formerly the Woods Hole Climate Research Center). Her talk will focus on the latest climate research. Online ONLY.

February 10 - Jamie Jacquart, Assistant Director of Campus Sustainability at UMASS Dartmouth. He will be talking about sustainability in Dartmouth/Westport.

March 3 - Renee Montanaro is a Doctoral student from UMASS Dartmouth and will speak about her field of study, Asian Shore Crabs.

March 31 - Dr. Robert Gegear is a Professor at UMASS Dartmouth who will be speaking about his specialty - Native Pollinators and why they are important.

Contact WRWA at outreach@wrwa.com to sign up or for more information.

Winter Art Show will return to Dedee Shattuck Gallery

We are happy to announce that our 9th annual art show will be returning to the Dedee Shattuck Gallery February 23 through March 5, 2022. This year's theme will be "Above and Below" - perspectives on the Westport River through a bird's eye and a fish eye. Of course, the view will be through the creative eye of the artists!

We still have room for just a few more artists. Email us at outreach@wrwa.com if you can contribute something.

The show will run for two weeks; in early 2020 (just before the pandemic) we had hundreds of visitors. We anticipate that the 2022 show will attract a similar audience.

We appreciate the extraordinary talents of our regional artists and enjoy the opportunity to share great art with the general public each winter.