Gordon Clay here. A new highly successful free film series that started in February will continue on the First Friday of every month at the Chetco Community Public Library in Brookings. A discussion will follow each film.

The first film in the series, Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”, brought over 25 people to the library earlier this month, most of whom stayed for the lively follow-up discussion.

Tomorrow's film, “Gasland”, was the winner of the Documentary Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. In 2009 the director, Josh Fox, learned that his home in the Delaware River Basin was on top of the Marcellus Shale, a massive rock formation containing natural gas that stretches across a wide section of the Northeast. Fox was offered $100,000 to lease his land to Halliburton, the world’s largest oil field services company, as part of a 34-state drilling campaign. The film chronicles Fox’s cross-country travels as he set out to discover whether the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing - colloquially termed ‘fracking’ - is actually safe. Through interviews with people who live on or around current fracking sites, Fox uncovers problems from illness to hair loss to flammable water, which explains the subtitle of the film - “Can you light your water on fire?”.

Mark your calendar for the First Friday Salon which will continue every month through 2012 at the wheelchair accessible Chetco Library, showing documentaries that, most likely, would never show in this area and are certain to generate spirited discussion. For more information visit www.TheCitizensWhoCare.org/fridays.html