magazine - Blog - SCOCO Network2024-03-28T08:38:12Zhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/magazineMy Quick Permie Chat with Geoff Lawton, Permaculture Educator and Businessman by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/my-quick-permie-chat-with-geoff-lawton-permaculture-educator-and2015-03-09T02:51:05.000Z2015-03-09T02:51:05.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-label"></div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><span class="font-size-3"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_164.png" alt="" title="" class="imagecache imagecache-standard align-center" /></span></div></div></div><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong><span class="font-size-3">My Quick Permie Chat with <a href="http://www.geofflawton.com/sq/15449-geoff-lawton">Geoff Lawton</a>, Permaculture Educator and Businessman by Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2250">Planetshifter.com Magazine</a></span></strong></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3">Geoff is Managing Director of <a href="http://permaculturenews.org/">The Permaculture Research Institute</a>, <a href="http://www.permacultureconsultants.com/">Permaculture Sustainability Consulting</a>, and <a href="http://www.geofflawton.com/sq/15449-geoff-lawton">GeoffLawton.com</a></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">* * * * * * *</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>I recently sent Mr. Lawton some questions via LinkedIn. Here is the Q & A. -</strong></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>WP:</strong> The classic landfill on the outskirt of town. Rising higher and higher. Leaching chemicals. How can permaculture values revitalize this mess?</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>GL:</strong> We can harvest some gas from these site and we can lock them up into forest planting.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>WP:</strong> What do you mean: “lock them up into forest planting?“</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>GL:</strong> Yes just that.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>WP:</strong> What is your experience with fracking? Have you repaired toxic aquifers?</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>GL:</strong> We have helped protest fracking. If we installed enough water harvesting aquifer re-charge earthworks at the surface we can add continuous downward pressure on the aquifers.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>WP:</strong> Cool. Please give us a URL to a fracking protest that you participated in.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>GL:</strong> You look it up on <a href="http://permaculturenews.org/PCnews.org">permaculturenews.org</a></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>WP:</strong> One of my interests is new community rituals that re-connect community with the sacred. Two such rituals are sharing expos and fall harvests. How do you see old and new rituals?</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>GL:</strong> We work with traditional tribal people on permaculture aid work projects where processes and protocol give people the ability to manage the inevitable dramas of life in a unified and predictable way.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>WP:</strong> OK. So, in general, you believe that traditional tribal people do not practice rituals?</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>GL:</strong> I said what I said - please read it.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>WP:</strong> After the “swales and cob benches” are done, driven by low-tech design principles, permaculture comes down to love to me. How do you express love for the land and your clients?</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>GL:</strong> Appreciation of natural abundance in beautiful form.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>WP:</strong> Is there any news on permaculture-driven alternative medicines that you know of?</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>GL:</strong> Yes we have a large plant data base on alternative medicines through our long-term working partnership with the late <a href="http://herbs-to-use.com/herbs-to-use.html">Isabel Shipard</a>.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>WP:</strong> Since my PDC, I find myself integrating other ideas and values with permaculture, like mythology and alchemy. Do you incorporate other things into your practice that are outside of permaculture? If so, why?</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>GL:</strong> We stick to proven science and not included meta-physics.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>WP:</strong> That seems to be the standard permaculture line. But do you see a place for a personal spiritual connection to land design?</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>GL:</strong> Only if you keep it personal and do not teach it.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>WP:</strong> Can permaculturists run and win local governmental offices? What is your political commitment(s) to date?</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>GL:</strong> No and none.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>WP:</strong> That is a short answer, Mr. Lawton! Why can’t permies run and win local governmental offices?</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>GL:</strong> I have no political commitments. Sorry I am very busy with many things and may have read your question too quickly. So yes they can but I believe it is a waste of time to enter into a corrupt system and expect to be able to change it from within.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>WP:</strong> Permaculture doesn’t advocate storing food and weapons in a bomb shelter! But what are the main differences between permaculture and survivalists? Have you taught students from the survivalist camp?</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>GL:</strong> Yes we consult and design for survivalists.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>WP:</strong> Please name a specific project and explain how your consultations differ?</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>GL:</strong> <a href="http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/public-appearances">Jack Spirko</a> is my biggest connection in recent years, I have (worked with the) Y2K crowd …, they are really just precise designs with survival oriented design elements.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>WP:</strong> Can you share any permaculture inspired games, songs, and myths?</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>GL:</strong> We do haste great participation parties at the end of PDC's.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>WP:</strong> California is in a long-term drought. How would your firm go about producing a sustainable solution?</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>GL:</strong> Good permaculture design solutions.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>WP:</strong> Please offer up one specific solution to the CA drought and give us details.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>GL:</strong> N/A</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">* * * * * * *</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Other permaculture interviews by Willi -</strong></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2199">Interview with Koreen Brennan, Co-Organizer: 2014 North American Permaculture Convergence. Harmony Park, Clarks Grove, MN, 8/29 – 31, 2014</a>.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2007">Seeds & Ladders. A Conversation with Permaculture Designer Jenny Pell, Pacific Northwest</a>.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2168">“THE MOTHER WHO PLANTS TREES.” An Indiegogo Agroforestry Project in India by Permaculturist Charlotte Anthony. Plus an Interview with Charlotte</a>.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2138">“Alley Allies Project” : Interview with Katie Hughes, Mill Street Community Planning, Portland,</a></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2138">OR</a>.</span></p></div>Transition Palo Alto’s Spring Share Faire, March 15; Interview with deep nature gardens by Willi Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/transition-palo-alto-s-spring-share-faire-march-15-interview-with2015-03-02T16:07:06.000Z2015-03-02T16:07:06.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2247" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_100.jpg?width=505" width="380" class="align-full" height="285" alt="centerspace_100.jpg?width=505" /></a></div></div></div><p></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Transition Palo Alto’s Spring Share Faire is March 15 at <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lucie+Stern+Community+Center/@37.444324,-122.145471,17z/data=%213m1%214b1%214m2%213m1%211s0x808fbb1756cbf3b3:0x8a71097bc2a8df5d">Lucie Stern Community Center</a>, Fireside Room and Patio, Palo Alto, CA. Sunday, March 15, 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Included here: Interview with Skill Share presenter Nick Turner of <a href="http://deepnaturegardens.com/">deep nature gardens</a> by Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2247">Planetshifter.com Magazine.</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *<br /><strong><a href="http://transitionpaloalto.org/sharing-expos/">It's the Spring Share Faire!</a></strong></p><p><strong>Bring stuff to share</strong> - garden produce, books, clothes, crafts, toys, etc., AND learn new skills. Plus fun activities for kids!</p><p>We're excited to be holding our first Share Faire at Lucie Stern Community Center. The Fireside Room will give us some wonderful indoor space (and a place to hide from the rain, if only!). The Patio will allow us to spread out, holding many skill shares and sharing lots of goods, as usual.</p><p>We've had quite a few teachers approach us, some who've shared skills before and who have new things to offer, others who are first timers. You'll want to spend a little time visiting them all. And there's certainly room for a couple more: if you have a skill to share, let us know and we'll see if we can fit you in. Contact <strong>Peter Ruddock</strong> (PeterRuddock at yahoo.com) if you are interested.</p><p><strong>Confirmed Skill Shares so far -</strong></p><p><strong>Cecile Andrews</strong>, author of Living Room Revolution, will stir up a little Patio Revolution. She will lead a Conversation Circle about Conversation and Community!</p><p><strong>Tom Kabat</strong> will help with bike maintenance, chain oil and adjustment etc. Bring any parts you want to install (e.g. new brake cable, brake pads, inner-tube etc.) Experienced bike fixer / ergonomic adjuster available to work with you.</p><p><strong>Emily Rosen</strong> CMT, will facilitate massage, working with people in pairs. Sooooothe and connect. Partner up with a friend and learn some great techniques for 10 minute seated massage. We could all use some TLC!</p><p><strong>Amanda Kovattana</strong> will demo simple shoe making skills using readily available hand tools and instructions. As a student shoe maker in her second year, she will speak to her successes and failures and show shoe samples of both.</p><p><strong>Nick Turner</strong> of deep nature gardens ( <strong>see interview below</strong>) will offer pre-sprouted "eco-packs" - small pots containing a variety of interesting plants, many of them not available in nurseries, and he will demonstrate how to create them using planting mix, a pot, and the special "eco-mix" seed mixture. People can make up an eco-pack of their own and take it home for sprouting. There will also be eco-mix in small bottles, useful for boosting the diversity of any nature garden, plus more cool stuff as available.</p><p><strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/NeighborsHelpingNeighborsPaloAlto">Neighbors Helping Neighbors</a></strong> (NHN) will be providing some give-a-ways and sharing information about their programs that benefit the community. NHN has a Backyard Program for Gardeners-Beekeepers-Coopsters. Come see their backyard garden program display, receive seeds and more.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *<br /><strong>Interview with Nick by Willi -</strong></p><p><strong>Is ecosystem farming also called urban agriculture and/or permaculture?</strong></p><p>You can call it that if you want to, but I don't.</p><p>Ecosystem farming can be done in an urban environment, but the urban-ness is not important. It is simply the idea of a farm as an ecosystem, meaning that nothing is wasted and everything gets recycled back into the system. This involves good composting, good soil management, proper lighting and microclimate, and a complete nutrient cycle. Nutrients are given to the world in the form of edible or useful products, and they are received from the world in the form of kitchen scraps for compost, along with other input nutrient streams.</p><p>Permaculture principles are applied in an ecosystem farm because they are valuable basic ideas that have great application in any ecosystem farm, but that does not make every ecosystem farm into a permaculture example. All proper permaculture farms are ecosystem farms, but not all ecosystem farms are permaculture farms. Ecosystem farming also applies to enclosed ecosystems such as bio-enclosed greenhouses where permaculture principles are less prominent.</p><p><strong>How do you teach sustainability at the TPA Spring Share Faire?</strong></p><p>I do not explicitly teach sustainability at the Share Faires. What I share are ways to introduce greater beauty, diversity, and abundance into suburban and rural gardens and farms, using the principles of deep nature gardening and ecosystem farming. Sustainability is a natural outgrowth of this teaching of beauty, diversity, and abundance.</p><p><strong>Species extinction is a huge issue at this time in human history. Are you addressing it at deep nature gardens or other communities?</strong></p><p>Deep nature gardening is all about preserving species diversity. In a deep nature garden we are much more interested in unknown sprouts and unidentified species than we are in any kind of "commercial" plants. In a deep nature garden there is no such thing as a "weed." We celebrate unidentified sprouts and nurture them until they can be identified. Many fascinating, unusual species continue to emerge as this wonderful adventure continues, and many of those unusual, sometimes rare plants end up in client gardens. Of course, all these rare plants attract their own kinds of rare insects and other critters, further increasing the diversity of all of the gardens. All of this helps to preserve the species diversity of Gaia here on Planet Earth.</p><p><strong>Are there small or big rituals in your approach to a sacred or deep Nature garden?</strong></p><p>I do not ever use the word "sacred" in connection with gardens or farms, because there are many people who have various emotional associations with highly colored words like that. Whether a garden is "sacred" is a judgment I leave to the garden's owner. As for rituals, I also leave that up to the garden's owner. What I am all about is preserving and enhancing Gaia's wonderful species diversity, beauty, and abundance. To me on a very personal level that work is definitely "sacred," but I do not force that view onto my clients, and there aren't any particular rituals involved, other than the practical working patterns I use to create and evolve these gardens.</p><p><strong>What are the challenges when constructing an enclosed balcony garden?</strong></p><p>The answer to this depends on the specifics of the balcony. Whether it is enclosed or open, there may be big issues around microclimate. Balcony gardens in general tend to have problems with light, humidity, wind, and temperature. But every balcony is different. Balcony and patio gardens, whether they are enclosed or not, require careful attention to these factors. Each situation is unique.</p><p>Having said that, any kind of container garden has some common issues, including rapid drying, nutrient depletion, and much more. Container gardening can be challenging, especially on a balcony or outdoor patio.</p><p><strong>Can a vegetable patch be a Nature garden?</strong></p><p>Of course! But most veggie patches are far from nature gardens. For it to be a nature garden, it must feature a full, complete ecosystem, including critters that eat the plants, and critters that eat those critters. Since most veggie gardeners prefer not to have aphids or caterpillars in their vegetable patches, they are not nature gardens.</p><p><strong>Is a seed bomb like an eco-pack?</strong></p><p>Seed bombs are tossed into vacant lots by "guerrilla gardeners.” A seed bomb is like an eco-pack in the sense that it is a way to introduce new diversity into an area of soil, but it's different in that an eco-pack is a carefully created collection of plants in one container, resulting from a months-long process of thinning and pruning. A seed bomb is a collection of seeds tossed into an area and then (probably!) forgotten, in the hope that some of those seeds might sprout and survive in the area where it is tossed.</p><p>Eco-packs are carefully evolved and specifically planted in owner-authorized places where their selected plant species have a good chance of growing and becoming naturalized. Seed bombs are far more haphazard, often illegal, and far more random.</p><p><strong>You have many shovels in the ground, Nick! What is a “Local Resilience Ecosystem” vs. a deep Nature garden?</strong></p><p>A Local Resilience Ecosystem is a collection of humans who bring various forms of produced abundance to gatherings where they share that abundance with each other without any form of "value accounting." It is a human activity designed to help all of us become more abundantly, sustainably, prosperous by sharing our produced goodness. There is much more <a href="http://www.meetup.com/local-resilience-ecosystem/about/">here</a>.</p><p>A deep nature garden is an area of the surface of our beloved planet Earth where one or more humans act to create, preserve, and enhance the beauty, diversity, and abundance of the local biological ecosystem.</p><p>Thanks for the good work you are doing.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *<br /><strong>Nick Turner's Bio -</strong></p><p>After more than three decades as a computer firmware engineer, Nick Turner returned to his deepest roots as an experimental and practical ecosystem gardener. Now he helps people turn ordinary lawns and shrubberies into beautiful, diverse, abundant nature gardens, and he helps to create productive food farms in suburban spaces. The work is called deep nature gardening and ecosystem farming. Nick's current calling as a garden and farm ecology consultant suits his personality far better than cubicle-based software design!</p><p><strong>Connections -</strong></p><p>Nick Turner / <a href="http://deepnaturegardens.com/">deep nature gardens</a><br />nick at mindheart.org<br />land line: 650-323-7864<br />cell: 650-380-0036</p></div>“Liana’s Sacred Hands” - New Myth #67 by Willi Paul, CommunityAlchemy.comhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/liana-s-sacred-hands-new-myth-67-by-willi-paul-communityalchemy2015-02-25T16:15:45.000Z2015-02-25T16:15:45.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p></p><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd" style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_97.jpg" alt="" title="" class="imagecache imagecache-standard" /></span></div></div></div><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong><span class="font-size-4">“<a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2246">Liana’s Sacred Hands</a>” - New Myth #67 by Willi Paul, CommunityAlchemy.com</span></strong></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><em>A liana is any of various long-stemmed, woody vines that are rooted in the soil at ground level and use trees, as well as other means of vertical support, to climb up to the canopy to get access to well-lit areas of the forest. Lianas are especially characteristic of tropical moist deciduous forests and rainforests, including temperate rainforests. Lianas can form bridges amidst the forest canopy, providing arboreal animals with paths across the forest. These bridges can protect weaker trees from strong winds.</em></span></p><p></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">* * * * * * *</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Dolio is the hero and journey maker for his people who reside 7 miles inland in the rain forest near Tamarindo, Province of Guanacaste, Costa Rica. While most of what he knows about the west is apocalyptical, he is determined to deploy his jungle love to build additional income and a sacred union between the growing tourist trade and his extended family.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">What many call “eco-alchemy” is called something else in his native language; Dolio is practicing important transition strategies to stay healthy and knows his part in the balancing act for a new sacred Earth.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">One key idea for Dolio’s community is to live and work locally, keeping costs down - using abundant resources. A second guide is the caring for the community ethic from permaculture.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Liana is a multi-variety local rain forest woody vine that grows fast and has many uses in his village including lattice structure for the dome roofs, perimeter security and large baskets to carry dirt and food. Villagers wear the bright and colorful flowers when they are in bloom.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Dolio wants to create a sustainable village and sees a way to earn money for his people and share sacred values with the tourists on the beach through basket weaving workshops. But he is shielding westerners from his village at this time for health, legal and economic concerns.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">The village council has adopted a resilience creed that means that they can teach and share goods and stories between the contrasting cultures using symbols, like vine baskets and flowers. The village understands the deeper spiritual power and service of their symbols and wants to bolster their use on the coast. Like on their new workshop banner, simple symbols do not need an interpreter.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Dolio wants to create a sustainable village and sees a way to earn money for his people and share sacred values with the tourists on the beach through basket weaving workshops. But he is shielding westerners from his village at this time for health, legal and economic concerns.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">* * * * * * *</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Please credit the <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2245">Davis Roundtable</a> participants for their ideas.</span></p></div>Willi Paul Brings Mythic Roundtable to Davis Arts Center, 2/19https://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/willi-paul-brings-mythic-roundtable-to-davis-arts-center-2-192015-02-05T16:28:53.000Z2015-02-05T16:28:53.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p></p><p>Bay area mythologist and publisher Willi Paul will present the <b>Davis Mythic Roundtable</b>: “ <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2238">Tools an</a><u>d</u> <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2238"> Inspiration for Creating New Myth</a><u>s</u>” from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. Feb. 19 at the Davis Arts Center, 1919 F Street, Davis, CA, 95616. Willi just completed his <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2241">Santa Barbara Roundtable</a> on January 22, 2015.</p><p> </p><p>Paul will read one his recently published “ <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/56">New Myth</a><u>s</u>” and engineer a live “ <a href="http://openmythsource.com/myth-lab/">Myth La</a><u>b</u>” exercise that will generate a new myth with audience participation. Writers, artists, mythologists, storytellers, teachers and activists are encouraged to attend the roundtable.</p><p> </p><p>Paul is active in the sustainability, permaculture (locally sustainable agriculture), transition, sacred nature, new alchemy and mythology spaces since the launch of <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2115">PlanetShifter.com Magazine</a> on Earth Day 2009. Paul’s personal network now includes four websites: <a href="http://communityalchemy.com/"> CommunityAlchemy.co</a><u>m</u>; <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/"> Planetshifter.com Magazine;</a> <a href="http://newmythologist.com/"> NewMythology.com;</a> <a href="http://openmythsource.com/"> openmythsource.com</a><u>.</u></p><p> </p><p>Two movements propel his vision. <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2195">Permaculture</a> is a new agricultural design system that promotes local and renewable resources. <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2237"> Transition</a> is building resilience in local communities through sharing and reskilling gatherings.</p><p> </p><p>“There is a do-or-die episode coming for humans on this planet, a Chaos and Post-Chaos Era where resources and friendships will be severely tested,” Paul said. “Those among us, who can manifest a new community spirit in which bankers become teachers, and teachers become farmers, may see the dawn of the Post-Chaos Era.”</p><p> </p><p>In August 2012, Paul put on the workshop “<a href="http://openmythsource.com/2012/09/04/mapping-future-myths-for-the-transition/">Mapping Future Myths for the Transitio</a><u>n</u>” the first Study of</p><p>Myth Symposium at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Montecito.</p><p> </p><p>Paul held a <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2186">free eWorkshop:</a> “Building the Future - with New Global Mythology” on June 18, 2014. He also put on “Tools and Inspiration for Creating New Myths,” a free online roundtable on Nov. 18, 2014.</p><p> </p><p>See the <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2229"> event summary and transcript.</a> Paul founded New Global Mythology group at the <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/">Dept</a><u>h</u> <a href="http://www.depthpsychologyalliance.com/"> Psychology Alliance</a> and the <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostRecent=&gid=5080106&trk=my_groups-tile-flipgrp"> LinkedIn group,</a> “New Mythology, Permaculture & Transition.”</p><p> </p><p>He has three Twitter accounts: @planetshifter; @openmythsource; and @PermacultureXch, which have generated over 5,150 followers. On Google +, he is the founder the Permaculture Age group, with 368 members.</p><p> </p><p>Mr. Paul has produced 19 <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2115">eBooks</a> and more than 375 <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1423">interviews</a> with thought leaders in mythology, permaculture and sustainability.</p><p> </p><p><b>CONTACT:</b> Willi Paul @ 415-407-4688 | willipaul1@gmail.com</p></div>“Parking Lot Love” - Interview #2 with Peter Ruddock, Transition Palo Alto by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/parking-lot-love-interview-2-with-peter-ruddock-transition-palo2014-10-18T16:30:00.000Z2014-10-18T16:30:00.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p></p><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-label"></div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2221" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_71.jpg" class="align-center" width="402" height="341" alt="centerspace_71.jpg" /></a></div></div></div><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>“Parking Lot Love” - Interview #2 with Peter Ruddock, <a href="http://transitionpaloalto.org/">Transition Palo Alto</a> by Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2221">Planetshifter.com Magazine</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Enjoy my <strong>first interview</strong> with Peter: <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1999">NorCal Transition Yeast</a>: Interview with Peter Ruddock, Slow Money, Transition Palo Alto & San Mateo County Food System Alliance. (3/12)</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">“What… is <strong><a href="http://transitionus.org/blog/reskilling-mastery-appropriate-technology">reskilling</a>?</strong> The answer to this question is not so obvious. Someone might respond by defining reskilling as the acquisition of those skills that are essential to satisfy basic needs in a localized and carbon-constrained future. That makes sense, and it is hard to dispute, but the issue with the definition is that it is circular reference. It defines reskilling in terms of skills. It also makes it sound like reskilling can stop at some point, that once a community acquires the skills to satisfy many of its basic needs in a localized and carbon-constrained way, then there is no further need to reskill. Perhaps it is better to think about reskilling as an ongoing and never ending process that evolves as conditions and contexts change. It is not a onetime affair any more than it is a fixed end state.”</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">* * * * * * *</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Interview with Peter by Willi -</strong></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>What American values are getting in the way of Transition Movement values?</strong></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">I'm not sure that consumerism is an American value, but it is a value that is common in America and it is something we have to overcome.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Individualism is an American value that has to be tempered. There needs to be a balance between the individual and the community, a healthy tension between getting your own way and doing what is best for the group, for society.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Advertisers equate the individual with consumption: you should own one of these. Better for many things to share it with your neighbors, as in the new Sharing Economy, like ZipCar, or borrowing from the library, or even creating a gift economy, like Transition Palo Alto's Garden Shares and Sharing Expo.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>To me, Transition means freely sharing knowledge, goods and services with each other. Is this a sustainable vision, given the dire straits that we face now? Isn’t <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1312">Goodwill</a> and <a href="http://dailyacts.org/">Daily Acts</a> already doing this work?</strong></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">I am not sure that all knowledge, goods and services need to be shared. There is value in labor that should be rewarded. Value, as expressed by money, has over time become corrupted, with some labor valued more than others. Some labor has not been valued at all, often that which can be reproduced, like writing, music and some kinds of art. Copyrights were invented to address this, but are now corrupt. Timebanks are an interesting method of addressing labor value.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">We need to ensure that everyone has the basic necessities to live: housing, clothing, food, access to health care, community, perhaps more. There is a famous graph that shows that once people have the basics covered an increase in goods does not increase happiness. Once people are assured of the basics, they are free to produce knowledge, goods and services which are free, or which return other knowledge, goods and services in a gift economy. This is sustainable.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>What is the <a href="http://transitionpaloalto.org/">Transition Palo Alto's</a>Action Plan (i.e. goals and objectives) for the next year, 5 years and beyond?</strong></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Transition initiatives have often been accused of being “talk shops.” Some talk is necessary; too much talk is stagnation. Transition Palo Alto has been trying to find the balance between talk and action.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Transition Palo Alto actually does a lot: Garden Shares, Sharing Expos, Re-skilling events, small and large, movies and lectures every Fourth Friday, crafts, some of them public, supporting local institutions, conferences that Re-imagine the Future and more. There is no particular Action Plan behind this. Rather, TPA has set out to enable the people it attracts to create projects under the umbrella of Transition ideas: to create things that address climate change and other ecological degradation through building a resilient community and local economy.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Some of us would like to do more – more projects that is. Perhaps bigger projects: certainly supplementing the Sharing Expo with a Reskilling Expo or a Great Unleashing would be good. And we have been discussing how to do this. We are not sure that an Action Plan, that a lot of central control, is the way to do more though. Bureaucracy can lead to inaction, rather than action. A bad Action Plan can have us working furiously on wrong things. It may be better to improve the infrastructure and let people use it to create their own projects. To use the power of the Transition Crowd to guide them in doing so. Stay tuned. I expect interesting things to develop.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Why do you participate in so many organizations?</strong></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">There are actually two different reasons that I work with such a diversity of groups. First, I think a number of different things have to be done to create the world we want to live in. We need to re-build community and build a more resilient economy. We need to educate people on why this is so ('educate' can be a loaded word, but I'll use it here to mean the dissemination of a Transition point of view). And we need to work within the system to change the policies that inhibit this new society and to create new policies which foster it instead. Transition, even with its broad umbrella, is not addressing all of these issues, while others are. Other organizations focus. I like to be the connection between these organizations, hoping to add value by looking for the commonalities between them and creating synergies by getting them to work together.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Beyond that, I find that at the grass-roots level, I have overwhelmed more than one organization. I have chosen to work full-time on these efforts, at this point whether I get paid for it or not. My colleagues often work in the same grass-roots organizations a few hours per week after their paid job. By having multiple outlets for my activity, I do not work more, or much more, than anyone else in any given organization. This, of course, may change as I find something that I become passionate about focusing on.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Egos, profit and self-interest dominate much of our community psyche. Can you tell us how our “collective genius” might be harnessed for a better way?</strong></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">I'd like to say that we can educate people to see a bigger picture, teaching them that helping their community will help themselves more than acting as an individual will. But I can't say this. Many studies have shown that appealing to people with factual, scientific or other rational arguments doesn't work – more studies showing how much carbon will do what to the atmosphere are actually turning people off from addressing climate change.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Rather, I think we have to do things. Things which begin to address the problems we see, at a local level. Things which have a visible effect on the people who do them. People who attend Sharing events seem to be happier. Not because they got something for free that they would have had to pay for. But because they engaged in community. And often because they gave something away that they didn't need any more, keeping it out of the landfill. They used fewer resources, but didn't really have to think about doing so.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">We need to tell the story of these things we do. And in such a way that the happiness and the community are played up and the resource savings are mentioned as wonderful side-effect. I think this is how we have to engage the majority of people.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Isn’t building resilience both a top down and bottom up strategy? Any examples of this in the food sector?</strong></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">I spend a lot of time working on food. It is an environmental gateway. Everybody eats. Food is tangible. Unlike climate change, which is not visible to most people, or wilderness protection, which may happen far away in places people won't ever visit, food is right in their faces.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Resilience in our food system is created from both ends. From the bottom up, we start with encouraging local consumption, growing your own, sharing with your neighbors, knowing your farmers. Creating demand should have a ripple effect as producers change to meet your demand – voting with your fork. There is much you can do on your own.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">But there are things that are beyond our individual control. For these things we band together and try to affect policy, working down from the top. Changing laws which allow beekeeping, for example, in jurisdictions that do not currently permit it, enables more people to work from the bottom up, without fear of being held to account for breaking a law.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>“The <a href="http://www.transitionus.org/why-transition">Transition Movement</a> believes that is up to us in our local communities to step into a leadership position on this situation. We need to start working now to mitigate the interrelated effects of peak oil, climate change, and the economic crisis, before it is too late.” How do we all know when it’s too late?</strong></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">If you give up, it is too late. Never give up.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Two of my personal interests are localization and security. Many of my <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/56">New Myths</a> describe the inevitable haves and have not’s, both now and in the future. Will some of us benefit from gardens and green tech water systems while others will not?</strong></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">In a sustainable world, there cannot be haves and have-nots. If there are, we create problems. If those who have-not do not have the basics, then they would be justified in protest in order to get them. But even when everyone has the basics, those who have significantly less are justified in asking why. Some will be envious of what they do not have; envy can lead to crime. The size of inequality is one of the greatest indicators of trouble, and unrest, and health!, in any society.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">It is our job as part of Transition to figure out how to include everyone. And to decrease the inequality of our society. This is not something we currently do well, being a rather homogeneous group of mostly well-educated, middle-aged, white people. And it is not something that we seem well able to address. Nevertheless, we have to figure out how to be inclusive – we only win when everybody wins.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Capacity issues loom large in any localization scheme. Are fences around future sustainable encampments likely?</strong></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Fenced encampments are not sustainable. Fences will be breached. If we are fencing off resources and creating haves and have-nots, we will eventually fail. We must rather accept the finite nature of those resources and use fewer of them. Tear down the fence! Share!</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">* * * * * * *</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Peter’s Bio –</strong></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Peter Ruddock is a sustainable food activist and business consultant. He is working toward creating a more sustainable world, by changing the way we interact with our environment and with each other. He concentrates on food systems change, because given that everyone eats everyone should be able to relate to a healthier, more sustainable food system. He believes that there are four areas where he can best work on fostering this change: educating people about sustainability; creating a resilient local economy; creating vibrant local communities; and changing policies to foster such changes. He is active in a number of grass-roots non-profits to help accomplish these goals: Slow Food, Slow Money, Transition Palo Alto, and the San Mateo County Food System Alliance and the California Food Policy Council.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Connections –</strong></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Peter Ruddock</strong></span><br /> <span class="font-size-3">Sustainable Food Activist and Business Consultant</span><br /> <span class="font-size-3">peterruddock at yahoo.com</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Willi Paul</strong></span><br /> <span class="font-size-3">New Mythologist & Transition Entrepreneur</span><br /> <span class="font-size-3">newmythologist.com | PlanetShifter.com Magazine | openmythsource.com</span><br /> <span class="font-size-3">@planetshifter @openmythsource @PermacultureXch</span><br /> <span class="font-size-3">415-407-4688 | pscompub at gmail.com</span></p></div>"Rebellion Coming.” Conversation on Creative Mythology with Willi Paul and Arthur George. From Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/rebellion-coming-conversation-on-creative-mythology-with-willi2014-09-17T20:53:16.000Z2014-09-17T20:53:16.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2214" target="_blank"><img width="496" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8095728082,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" height="343" alt="8095728082?profile=original" /></a></p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-5"><strong>"<a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2214">Rebellion Coming</a>.” Conversation on Creative Mythology with Willi Paul and Arthur George. From Planetshifter.com Magazine </strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p><span class="font-size-4" style="color:#ff0000;"> .... EXCERPT .... ></span></p><p></p><p><strong><span class="font-size-3">Arthur:</span></strong></p><p><strong>What do you consider to be good examples of modern myths qualifying as “creative mythology” that others have created, and why?</strong></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Willi: </strong></span></p><p></p><p>Peter Gabriel’s - <strong>Last Temptation of Christ</strong><br /> U2 – <strong>Joshua Tree</strong><br /> Bruce Cockburn – <strong>Nothing but a Burning Light</strong><br /> REM – <strong>Murmur</strong><br /> Led Zeppelin – <strong>Mothership</strong></p><p></p><p>To various degrees, these musical journeys come from the places where the artists lived and worked as they built themes, symbols and Heroes and brought critical challenges to our consciousness in transitory times.</p><p></p><p></p></div>Fall Sharing Expo by Transition Palo Alto. 9/21 @ Common Ground, Palo Altohttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/fall-sharing-expo-by-transition-palo-alto-9-21-common-ground-palo2014-09-15T17:05:57.000Z2014-09-15T17:05:57.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-label" style="text-align:center;"></div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2213" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_55.jpg" class="align-center" alt="centerspace_55.jpg" /></a></div></div></div><p><strong><a href="http://transitionpaloalto.org/sharing-expos/"><br /><span class="font-size-4">Fall Sharing Expo</span></a></strong></p><p><br /> <span class="font-size-4">Transition Palo Alto</span></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>Sunday, September 21</strong></span><br /> <span class="font-size-4">1:00 to 3:00 PM</span></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong><a href="http://commongroundinpaloalto.org/">Common Ground Organic Garden Supply & Education Center</a></strong></span><br /> <span class="font-size-4">559 College Ave, Palo Alto, CA</span></p><p></p><p>Mark your calendars. The Fall Sharing Expo is taking shape. Besides goods (garden and food, books, clothes and toys), to share, we'll have a number of Skill-Share demonstrations. Given <strong>the drought</strong>, our theme will be Water Saving Tips this time. Confirmed demonstrators include:</p><p></p><p>• William Mutch - Permaculture Cafe, saving water in the drought<br /> • Willi Paul - Water Cycle coloring and discussion for kids<br /> • Herb Moore - Scrapophony<br /> • Rani Jayakumar - Henna decoration<br /> • Rani Jayakumar and Anna Ravenscroft - Grain Grinding<br /> • Wendy Hediger - City of Palo Alto's Zero Waste program<br /> • Palo Alto Library<br /> • Neighbors Helping Neighbors</p><p></p><p>Have a skill that you'd like to share? Especially regarding water saving? Let us know. There might be some room this time, there certainly will be some room at future Sharing Expos!</p><p></p><p>Familiar with <strong>Transition values</strong> and want to help out? We'd like to staff an information table with greeters. Sign new people in. Talk a little about Transition. Tell them how and why we share. Let me know if you'd like to take a shift.</p><p></p><p><strong>Expo Contacts:</strong></p><p>Rani - promiserani at gmail.com<br /> Peter - peterruddock at yahoo.com</p><p></p></div>“The Permaculture Grid.” A Prototype. New Myth #63 by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-permaculture-grid-a-prototype-new-myth-63-by-willi-paul2014-08-16T21:50:12.000Z2014-08-16T21:50:12.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2205" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_98.png?width=500" width="500" class="align-center" alt="centerspace_98.png?width=500" /></a></div></div></div><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong>“The Permaculture Grid.” A Prototype. New Myth #63 by Willi Paul,</strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2205">Planetshifter.com Magazine</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p>“American utility companies are responsible for running approximately 5,800 power plants and about 450,000 high-voltage transmission lines, controlled by various devices which have been put into place over the past decades. Some of the utility companies which oversee the power grid reportedly use “antique computer protocols” which are “probably” safe from cyber hackers,” The New York Times reported.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p>After the final twist, moan and arc weld of the United States electric grid in 2076 due to lightning and thunder storms and poor maintenance, the country faces rich on poor unrest, acute food shortages and evil footed darkness. Most ran to the cities, hoping for a sustainable re-gathering, abandoning their towns for the false security in equally broken state troopers and green technology.</p><p></p><p><strong>The grid will never be repaired. It’s localization or nothing.</strong></p><p></p><p>No electricity means no gas pumps, no truck transport, and no cars. No world wide web. Roads are now traversed on foot and horse and wagon, and go un-repaired.</p><p></p><p>One of the many unforeseen of many consequences in this human-born tragedy is that super rich Asians, Europeans and South Americans left their versions of black holes with their body guards, barter dreams and intestinal fortitude, came to America to re-cave and start a new global crisis chapter. With so many formal languages colliding into the muck of the blackout, a fellow in San Francisco invented a new global symbolic language especially in support of instructional permaculture.</p><p></p><p><strong>Electronic notebooks are still working.</strong> The symbolic language incorporates many communication formats, including a rich sound sample collection, a graphic language called “PermaGram”, photographic and video libraries and a new alphabet.</p><p></p><p><strong>New global stories and myths emerged are emerging!</strong></p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p>Each station in the new permaculture grid has a small scale LAN (local area network) powered by a solar panel and storage battery system with its own specialized product or service to avoid duplication:</p><p></p><p><strong>SALT Compound</strong> (Granite Bay, CA)<br /><strong>FOCUS:</strong><br />1. Solar farm for small-scale electricity production and storage<br />2. Battery recharging<br />3. Mechanical repair<br />4. Medical Clinic<br /><a href="http://www.granitebay.com/History.html">Historical Brief:</a> Before it was Granite Bay, it was called Allen's District. Plum, peach, olives, and pear orchards were the agricultural mainstays.</p><p></p><p><strong>PermaCulture Station 1</strong> (Cool, CA)<br /><strong>FOCUS:</strong><br />1. Water Purification and Transport<br />2. Winery<br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool,_California">Historical Brief:</a> Some locals believe that a beatnik named Todd Hausman coined the name ”Cool” in early 1947 on a cross country road trip, and appended it to the town. However, some local historians claim that the town was named during the days of the Gold Rush after a man named Aaron Cool.</p><p></p><p><strong>PermaCulture Station 2</strong> (Pilot Hill, CA)<br /><strong>FOCUS:</strong><br />1. Food production and distribution<br />2. Horse breeding<br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_Hill,_California">Historical Brief</a>: In 1849, mining commenced at Pilot Hill. Originally, Centerville, Pilot Hill, and Pittsfield were separate nearby mining camps that unified under the name Centerville. Lavender, Olives and Grapes were once farmed here.</p><p></p><p><strong>PermaCulture 3</strong> (Lotus, CA)<br /><strong>FOCUS:</strong><br />1. Clothing<br />2. Permaculture Training Site<br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus,_California">Historical Brief:</a> The settlement was established in 1849 and named for James W. Marshall, discoverer of gold. The name was changed to Lotus with the arrival of the post office in 1881.</p><p></p><p><strong>Camp DNA</strong> (Pine Hill Ecological Reserve)<br /><strong>FOCUS:</strong><br />1. Regional Farmer’s Market<br />2. Agriculture research<br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Hill_Ecological_Reserve">Historical Brief:</a> The Pine Hill Ecological Reserve was one unit of the much larger Pine Hill Preserve system that protected eight rare plants and their gabbro soil habitat. It was jointly managed by several local, state and federal agencies through a Cooperative Management Agreement</p></div>The Permaculture News Hour Commentary by Willi Paul Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-permaculture-news-hour-commentary-by-willi-paul-planetshifter2014-08-01T17:59:07.000Z2014-08-01T17:59:07.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-7"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2201" target="_blank"><img width="503" src="" class="align-center" alt="" /></a></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-7"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2201" target="_blank">The Permaculture News Hour</a></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-7">Commentary by Willi Paul</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-7">Planetshifter.com Magazine</span></p></div>“Building Our Transition Streets!” Interview with Maggie Fleming, Co-Director, Transition US by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/building-our-transition-streets-interview-with-maggie-fleming-co2014-07-12T17:27:22.000Z2014-07-12T17:27:22.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p style="text-align:center;"></p><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image" style="text-align:center;"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><img src="http://planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_47.jpg" alt="" title="" height="474" width="476" /></div></div></div><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong>“Building Our <a href="http://transitionus.org/transitionstreets">Transition Streets!”</a> Interview with Maggie Fleming, Co-Director, Transition US by Willi Paul, <a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2196">Planetshifter.com Magazine</a></strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p>“This fall, neighbors across the country will be meeting in each other’s homes to support each other in reducing their reliance on fossil fuels, building social cohesion, and strengthening their community’s resilience. <strong><a href="http://transitionus.org/transitionstreets">Transition Streets</a></strong> brings together small groups of neighbors and supports them in taking effective, practical, money-saving and carbon reduction actions. A workbook helps each person to build their own action plan that improves household energy efficiency, minimizes water use, reduces waste and consumption, explores local transportation options and promotes local food.” – Maggie</p><p></p><p><strong>PLEASE SUPPORT the Transition Street <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/transition-streets-coming-to-a-neighborhood-near-you">Indiegogo Crowdfunding Campaign</a></strong> to get this project off the ground.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong>Interview with Maggie by Willi</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Please define “neighborhood.” Are their different approaches for different places / populations in the program?</strong></p><p>Transition Streets is designed to be implemented by people living within close proximity of each other. This could look very differently depending on where the participants live. For example, it could be residents of an apartment building, people living on the same block, or people living a few miles from each other. It's up to the groups coordinating the project in their community to define what a neighborhood means to them.</p><p>The Transition Streets curriculum and model is open for adaptation, so some coordinating groups may decide to re-envision who participates in the Transition Streets groups. For example, instead of relying on the proximity of the participants' households, they may want to implement Transition Streets to groups comprised of members of a specific faith group or members of a workplace.</p><p>The curriculum is meant to be applicable for audiences/populations throughout the US. There may need to be additions or modifications to the curriculum to be relevant to specific audiences (for example, renters or people living in rural areas). As Transition groups pilot this project, Transition US will support them in adapting the curriculum to be appropriate to the audiences in their communities.</p><p></p><p><strong>Talk about some of the underlying values in play for the Transition Streets vision? Could these be a source of tension?</strong></p><p>Transition Streets is aligned with the broader values of the Transition movement, which include reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and strengthening community resilience. My assumption is that groups that self-select to participate in the project share these values. In this first year of piloting this project, Transition US will work with local Transition groups to gather feedback on the project. I imagine that any tensions that may arise related to the values of the project would provide important insights for the project evaluation process.</p><p></p><p><strong>“Transition Streets is a project proven to reduce the carbon footprint of entire neighborhoods and save hundreds of dollars on energy bills.” Food, energy, water, housing, and waste issues are often “in friction” with City politics and government rules. Your feedback on this?</strong></p><p>Transition Streets curriculum focuses on individual and household actions that result in direct savings and a reduction in green house gas emissions. The project offers numerous action options, many of which wouldn't be regulated by local policies/laws. For example, in the unit on energy, participants learn to read and monitor their gas and electricity usage, tracking it throughout their participation in the program. They're then given resources and ideas for ways to reduce their households energy usage. If there are specific actions (either suggested in the curriculum or suggested by a member of the group) that are in friction with local policies and government rules, this could be an opportunity for participants to work on supporting policy/legislation changes in their community.</p><p></p><p><strong>“Transition Streets provides an empowering format and an enjoyable process for working together to significantly increase individual and collective impacts, and really make a difference.” This rings like a campaign ad! Pick a difficult meeting topic and explain how a Transition Streets group would tackle it.</strong></p><p>Yes -- it is quite a positive promotion, isn't it. What we're trying to get across with that description is the value of "positive visioning," which is one of Transition's guiding principles. The Transition movement's primary focus is not campaigning against things, but rather on creating positive, empowering possibilities and opportunities.</p><p>Another important part of Transition's approach is that while the work to create more resilient communities can be challenging, it can also be fun. The social connections created by the Transition Streets model is a key part in making the process enjoyable, therefore drawing in more people that want to participate.</p><p>That being said, yes, you are correct that some of the conversations may be difficult for participants. However, what one person considers difficult might not be so for others, so it's challenging for me to say which meeting topics will be difficult. So I'll give one example of a topic that some might find difficult, which is food. Some aspects of this topic that I can think of that participants may have differing opinions on include: whether or not to eat food that's lower on the food chain, organic, produced locally, and/or in season (or what percentage of these foods to eat out of your overall diet); what conveniences are you willing to forgo when it comes to food packaging; we know that growing our own food increases our access to food, but what are the tradeoffs/benefits in time spent vs. money saved for growing your own food.</p><p>So how would Transition Streets groups tackle these potentially difficult topics? The Transition Streets model, which includes group discussions, gives participants a chance to explore other opinions and perspectives that they may not have previously considered. The Transition Streets curriculum provides data and resources to support participants in making their own decisions for all of the questions posted above. The curriculum also supports participants in creating their individual food action plans and offers suggestions for using the group for support and accountability in implementing these plans.</p><p></p><p><strong>Do you envision that Americans will have a different perspective on the process than folks in the UK? Do you have examples?</strong></p><p>Yes, I think Transition Streets when implemented in the U.S. will have an American-flavor, though what exactly that will be is yet to be seen. It will also look differently depending on where it's being implemented. Local groups will be able to adapt the curriculum to make it more relevant for their particular audience. You'll have to check back in with us after the pilot for specific examples on the different perspectives on the process between the U.S. and the U.K.</p><p></p><p><strong>Admittedly I have not seen the “user-friendly workbook” that supports the neighborhood planning process but it sounds rather archaic for folks with two TV’s and four computers at home!? How much of the Transition Streets process is web-based? Is this an “open-source,” transparent process?</strong></p><p>The curriculum will be available to download and view online (or groups may choose to print out hard copies). There's lots of room to make the workbook and additional Transition Streets more interactive in an online and/or mobile format. We'd love suggestions, ideas, and funding to help make that happen.</p><p>Our intention has indeed been to make this process open-source and transparent. The decision for Transition US to do a national rollout of the project actually came from Transition leaders, who asked for this resource and support in our annual survey. Transition US has hosted several calls with Transition leaders across the country over the last year, inviting their input and participation in the project. There are two Transitioners taking the lead on adapting the curriculum, plus a larger group of Transition leaders who will be reviewing it. There is a hosting team of Transition leaders that determined the content and format of our crowdfunding campaign. Transition US has been updating our network about this process through our online communications, with an open-ended invitation for feedback/input/participation.</p><p>Once the curriculum has been adapted, it will be available at no cost. It will be open source in that Transition groups will be adding modules to make it more relevant to their particular audiences. For example, we've already heard interest from Transitioners in the North East that want to add a module on emergency preparedness.</p><p></p><p><strong>Do the ethics and principles from Permaculture play a role in Transition Streets?</strong></p><p>Yes! As a model, Transition explores how to apply permaculture principles at a community level to redesign entire food, energy, and economic systems. Transition Streets embodies the principle of applying small, slow solutions, focusing on Zone 1, the household. There’s also a strong emphasis on catching and storing energy (through energy efficiency improvements) and valuing renewable resources and services (solar, composting, and regenerative agriculture). And of course, participating households obtain a yield in terms of cost savings on their energy bill, relationships with their neighbors, and greater access to high quality food.</p><p></p><p><strong>Planning can be a frustrating, joyless and tedious experience - but we just love actionizing at the end! Can you elaborate on how the program will be evaluated?</strong></p><p>We will be working with local Transition groups to track project results including numbers of participants, average household savings, and self-reported reductions in CO2 emissions. We'll also likely collaborate with Transition groups in doing a survey to measure the impact of the project. A survey done in the UK showed that 85% of Transition Streets participants stated that their personal changes made during the project will be sustained beyond the project. In the same survey, 98% of groups said they'd keep meeting beyond their last 'official' meeting. And they found that beyond the scope of the Transition Streets curriculum, Transition Streets groups went on to initiate a wide range of unanticipated activity such as a community film club, a community orchard and a ‘wheelbarrow market’ in a drive where neighbours swap unwanted stuff. We'd love to partner with a university to develop a more robust evaluation plan to measure the impact of the project -- so feel free to send contacts our way if you have anyone in mind.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p><strong>Maggie’s Bio -</strong></p><p></p><p>Maggie is passionate about community organizing, youth and leadership development, and environmental activism. Her experience in nonprofit leadership includes currently serving as Co-Director of Transition US, the US arm of the worldwide Transition movement. Previous leadership positions include Executive Director of EarthTeam, a regional youth environmental education and leadership organization, and Senior Development Associate at Earthjustice, an environmental public interest law firm. Maggie is a fellow of LeaderSpring and the Leadership Institute for Ecology and the Economy.</p><p></p><p><strong>Connections –</strong></p><p></p><p>Maggie Fleming<br />Co-Director, Transition US<br /><strong><a href="http://www.transitionus.org/">www.transitionus.org</a></strong><br />(707) 824-1554</p></div>The wondrous fruit harvest ritual at the Portland Fruit Tree Project. Interview with Bob Hatton by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-wondrous-fruit-harvest-ritual-at-the-portland-fruit-tree2014-06-29T22:39:21.000Z2014-06-29T22:39:21.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p></p><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_43.jpg" alt="" title="" class="imagecache imagecache-standard align-center" /></div></div></div><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong>The wondrous fruit harvest ritual at the <a href="http://portlandfruit.org/">Portland Fruit Tree Project.</a> Interview with Bob Hatton by Willi Paul, <a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2193">Planetshifter.com Magazine</a></strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p>Portland Fruit Tree Project (PFTP) is an award-winning nonprofit organization that provides a community-based solution to a critical and growing need: Access to healthful food. Through our four unique programs, PFTP provides direct services that improve quality of life for people in Portland. Since its inception, PFTP has significantly expanded the number of harvesting events, amount of fruit harvested, and number of people served each year.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p><strong>Please enjoy my interview with Bob Hatton, PFTP Program Coordinator -</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Is there a spirituality benefit in harvesting fruit for your organization and community?</strong></p><p></p><p>Yes, I believe there can be a spirituality benefit in harvesting fruit with Portland Fruit Tree Project and for the community.<br />It feels good to do something that benefits the greater community, and specifically those less fortunate than oneself. Food is necessary for human life so it's a great connector and motivator. Spirituality did play a role in my personal journey to discover what kind of career I wanted to embark on.</p><p></p><p><strong>How has the program shaped your journey as an adult? What are the key high / low lights?</strong></p><p>The program has greatly shaped my journey as an adult. I've been working with Portland Fruit Tree Project (PFTP) for almost 5 years now and it feels like I have really found my niche. I had previously been on a somewhat meandering journey to discover what it was I could do to make a difference in this world - to work towards a more sustainable future. The LECL (Leadership in Ecology, Culture, and Learning) program at PSU (now the LSE program) provided a great starting point for that. Through that program I was afforded the opportunity to do use CBL (Community Based Learning) hours to engage with several non-profit and community groups in the Portland area.</p><p>While in the program, the focus of my studies was on Organic Gardening & Garden-Based Education. I knew of PFTP, having met Katy Kolker (our Execuutive Director) through one of my friends from college who was in AmeriCorps with her. Upon graduating the LECL program in 2009, there was an AmeriCorps position available with PFTP. It seemed to be the perfect fit for my passions, skills, and interests and that has proven to be the case!</p><p>Since starting with PFTP in 2009, there have been many highlights. We've increased the number of harvesting events each year, we created our Tree Care Teams program in 2010 and that program has since expanded modestly, we've expanded the Tree Care Workshop series to a year-round series and have created workshops on new topics each year. We've also created new volunteer positions to better engage the community: Orchard Stewards and Fruit Monitors.</p><p>We've started a neighborhood-based harvest coordination model and have successfully organized bike-powered harvesting events with our pilot group. All of these accomplishments are affirming for me in my journey as an adult because we've been able to continue to make innovations in our programs as we strive to always be improving our programs. This keeps the work interesting and exciting even as the major responsibilities of the position remain more or less the same.</p><p>I can't say that there are many low-lights, per se. Of course, when coordinating hundreds of volunteers each year, there are always challenges that arise. There are challenges that arise when partnering with other non-profits and government agencies as the goals of our organizations do not always perfectly align. Personally, I would say the biggest challenge I've been feeling lately is how much my job has become sitting at a desk at my computer. When I first started with PFTP I was out in the field much more. I was co-leading harvesting events, facilitating workshops, conducting site visits, etc.</p><p>I still do some of that but it is now necessary for me to train others to do these things so that I can do the work of coordinating all of the details "behind the scenes." Many hours a week spent at the computer is not the healthiest thing for one's body - and I've been feeling that lately.</p><p></p><p><strong>Discuss how training and initiation play a part for your staff and volunteers?</strong></p><p>Training is a huge part of our programs. We have developed efficient and thorough processes for many aspects of our work. Thus, we train new staff, interns, and volunteers on these processes (specific to their role.) For many of our lead volunteer positions, I think that the training received and the skills/knowledge received as part of the training and as part of the volunteer experience are a big reason why many of our lead volunteers choose a particular position.</p><p>I wouldn't say that there is a formal initiation for any of our staff and lead volunteers although when someone leads or co-leads their first event in the field, that could be considered an initiation of sorts.</p><p></p><p><strong>Do you integrate PFTP with food forest projects with permaculture folks?</strong></p><p>Our work at PFTP is certainly informed and inspired by permaculture principles. Both Katy and I have taken PDCs here in Portland. At our Sabin Community Orchard, the coordination team decided to engage in a community design charrette with local permaculturist Connie Van Dyke. Much of the design of that orchard is inspired by the food forest concept. We have also partnered with Angela Goldsmith at the Fargo Forest Garden site to help care for the fruit trees there.</p><p>There are many local permaculturists or folks inspired by permaculture that volunteer with us. Before we had to move our office, there were some local permaculture folks involved with our on-site Killingsworth Community Food Forest. Finally, the design of our Fruits of Diversity Community Orchard has also been heavily influenced by permaculture ideas. We worked with local Permaculture teacher Joe Leitch helped with the community design process and local landscape architect/permaculture enthusiast Scott Sutton transformed the community's ideas into the design on paper.</p><p></p><p><strong>Does the Home Orchard Society promote organic fruit production?</strong></p><p>While it is not explicit in the mission of Home Orchard Society (HOS) to only promote "organic" fruit production, the intention of most folks involved is to promote organic methods or no-spray and low-spray methods of growing fruit. The demonstration arboretum at Clackamas Community College is run using organic growing methods. This site is open to the public on Tuesdays and Saturdays, 9am - 3pm. HOS holds two big events each year - the All About Fruit show in October and the Fruit Propagation Fair in March. At both events, information is provided about which varieties are disease resistant and experts are available for consultation to help folks grow fruit that doesn't require investing in non-organic growing methods.</p><p></p><p><strong>“Spring Pest & Disease Management” sounds pretty chemical laden?!</strong></p><p>Ha! That's interesting that you infer from the title that chemicals are involved. At PFTP we always encourage folks to grow fruit organically. All of the work that we perform at our sites is no-spray or low-spray. If we are spraying anything it is compost tea, organic neem oil solution, or organic kaolin clay. We teach a holistic year-round tree care plan. This includes proper pruning, weeding & mulching, integrating plants that attract beneficials or repel pests, proper watering, fruit thinning, and orchard sanitation (cleaning up fallen fruit and leaves so as not to provide habitat for the pests and diseases that live on those things). The title "Spring Pest & Disease Management" was chosen as an alternative the Pest & Disease Control because you can't control the pests & diseases that could affect your tree.</p><p>Many of the pests & diseases are always around to small degrees so it is matter of trying to manage your orchard/backyard habitat so that the conditions do not arise for those pests and diseases to reach the level of infestation. Many of our tree owners have trees that are in some state of neglect. They see something that is affecting their fruit tree and they don't know what it is. We find that the language in the title "Pest & Disease Management" attracts folks who want to find out what pest or disease is affecting their tree and what to do about it.</p><p></p><p><strong>“Harvest Leader” and “Tree Scout” sound like Boy Scout names? What youth groups do you pattern yourself after?</strong></p><p>Although I was in the Boy Scouts when I was younger, both the Harvest Leader and Tree Scout positions were created by Katy Kolker, our Executive Director. My experiences in the Boy Scouts did strengthen my leadership skills but I wouldn't say that we pattern our programs after it.</p><p></p><p><strong>Has not paying interns proven to be a sustainable practice?</strong></p><p>We have been hosting interns at PFTP since June 2009. Some of these interns are paid through a college work study program. We have also had a couple that were hosted through the AmeriCorps LINKS program and received a stipend. Some interns are not paid but do receive school credit through their college program. There are also some folks who are not doing work study and are not doing the internships for credit. In short, yes, it has been a sustainable practice. We would certainly love to continue expanding the number of paid staff positions that we have but adding new staff positions also requires a large increase on the income side of the budget.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p><br /><strong>Bob Hatton Bio –</strong></p><p>Bob is the Program Coordinator with Portland Fruit Tree Project (PFTP.) He has been the lead coordinator for all of PFTP's Community Harvest & Fruit Tree Stewardship programs since Fall 2009. He thoroughly enjoys the opportunities his position provides to harvest fruit that would otherwise go to waste, work with lots of passionate volunteers, to continually learn about fruit tree care from all of our workshop instructors and Tree Care Team Leaders, and to share his knowledge with others.</p><p>Bob is also currently a member of the Board of Directors for the Home Orchard Society. Prior to this, Bob worked at the Learning Gardens Laboratory and earned his Master's degree through the LECL (Leadership in Ecology, Culture, and Learning) program at Portland State University. While in the LECL program, Bob completed the OSU Organic Gardening Certificate Program and the Permaculture Design Certificate with Toby Hemenway.</p><p></p><p><strong>Connections –</strong></p><p>Bob Hatton, Program Coordinator<br /><a href="http://portlandfruit.org/">Portland Fruit Tree Project</a><br />bob at portlandfruit.org</p></div>Kickstarter Campaign for Animation Pilot: “The Adventures of Permaculture Willi (“P-Willi”): The Glowing Labyrinth.” Launch Day Interview with Willi Paul by Susan Silberhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/kickstarter-campaign-for-animation-pilot-the-adventures-of2014-06-16T13:36:36.000Z2014-06-16T13:36:36.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p></p><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_58.png" alt="" title="" class="imagecache imagecache-standard align-center" width="384" height="538" /></div></div></div><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong><a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2188">Planetshifter.com</a></strong> launches a <strong><a href="http://tinyurl.com/oduknnd">Kickstarter Campaign</a></strong> to fund an Animation Pilot for “<strong><a href="http://communityalchemy.com/PWilli/PermacultureWilli.pdf">The Adventures of Permaculture Willi (“P-Willi”): The Glowing Labyrinth.</a></strong>” Enjoy the Launch Day <strong><a href="http://susansilber07.wix.com/susansilber11#%21Willi-Paul-/c17jj/1">Interview</a></strong> with Willi Paul by Susan Silber.</span></p><p></p><p><strong>The purpose of this <a href="http://tinyurl.com/oduknnd">Kickstarter Campaign</a></strong> is to animate a permaculture story by <strong><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1422">Willi Paul</a></strong> and create a pilot to take to market as a half hour television, cable or Internet-based children’s show.</p><p></p><p><strong>Background</strong>: please enjoy the script for the Kickstarter campaign and pilot: “<strong><a href="http://communityalchemy.com/PWilli/PermacultureWilli.pdf">The Adventures of Permaculture Willi (“P-Willi”): The Glowing Labyrinth.</a></strong> to understand the wondrous dynamics of a teenager who hangs out in her wired yurt surrounded by her permaculture garden in Berkeley, CA.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong>Kickstarter Campaign Launch Day</strong> Interview with Willi by <a href="http://susansilber07.wix.com/susansilber11#%21Willi-Paul-/c17jj/1">Susan Silber</a></p><p></p><p><strong>What inspired you to make an animated video about permaculture? How would you define success for this project?</strong></p><p>Two reasons: permaculture needs more media to get the word out. Since children are watching edu-animated programs across all device formats, Permaculture Willi can now better use the principles and ethics for a deeper experience.</p><p></p><p>Success will be meeting the funding goal so I can build the “P-Willi” pilot as I help to educate new folks to the planet-changing world of permaculture.</p><p></p><p><strong>What is P-Willi up to in subsequent plots?</strong></p><p>She has her hands full in Berkeley at her yurt and the labyrinth renovation – but she has mucho virtual tasks ahead of her as a “ <strong>wired global localist!</strong> ”</p><p></p><p><strong>Who is the target audience for this project?</strong></p><p>I will gear my answer for the business community. Key market sectors for sponsorships, vendors and actors include:</p><p>• Children’s Media (TV, cable, online and books)<br />• Permaculture (green, sustainability, foodies)<br />• Education (all levels)<br />• Animation</p><p></p><p><strong>Ideally speaking, what role do you see children in the <a href="http://www.joannamacy.net/thegreatturning.html">Great Turning</a>, as Joanna Macy calls it?</strong></p><p>Children, parents and teachers need to seek-out our global stories and risk more now by educating themselves outside of our present “Wal-Mart quagmire” as they are the key to building the New World. Kids are the transformational triggers in my emotional and creative investment in “P-Willi.”</p><p></p><p><strong>How else can the permaculture movement integrate the youngest generation into the work that we do, other than this video?</strong></p><p>We need to shift from the constant “sell sell” in the crowded PDC (Permaculture Design Certificate) market and create a national / global permaculture curriculum for the schools.</p><p></p><p><strong>Do see any spin-offs coming out of the P-Willi animation?</strong></p><p>Web sites; app; curriculum; books; clothes, tools?</p><p></p><p><strong>How do you think that permies will see themselves in this venture?</strong></p><p>I hope that we see our own kids in the journey of “P-Willi.”</p><p></p><p><strong>As in your <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/56">New Myths</a>, you blend permaculture with other forces for lesson making. What are these other forces in your view and why did you include them in original piece?</strong></p><p>Permaculture for me is much more than a new-agriculture movement and has always blended many things: a spiritual connection; new alchemy; transition values; Nature; <strong><a href="http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php?categoryid=11">Joseph Campbell’s</a></strong> journey, hero, and initiation.</p><p></p><p><strong>Your Kickstarter Campaign promo video is a little rough!?</strong></p><p>I agree. I shot it in one take - by myself. I hope that “P-Willi” and her promise will carry the day!</p></div>"Four Zone Food Security System for a Permaculture Village." "Design for Resilience" by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/four-zone-food-security-system-for-a-permaculture-village-design2014-06-11T00:33:08.000Z2014-06-11T00:33:08.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p></p><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_55.png" alt="" title="" class="imagecache imagecache-standard align-center" /></div></div></div><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong>"Four Zone Food Security System for a Permaculture Village." <a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2187">"Design for Resilience"</a> by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazine</strong></span></p><p></p><p>“A <strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moat">moat</a></strong> is a deep, broad ditch, either dry or filled with water that surrounds a castle, other building or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defense. In some places moats evolved into more extensive water defenses, including natural or artificial lakes, dams and sluices...”</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * * *</p><p></p><p>The simplified permaculture-based security system proposed in this piece must surely raise this <strong>question</strong>:</p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong><span class="font-size-3">“Who or what is the security threat in 2017? 2062?”</span></strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Answer:</strong> People who are not in the Village who are seeking food, shelter and community. This village vision is connected to my <strong><a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/56">Post-Chaos Era New Myths series</a></strong> that describes life in NorCal after the collapse of the current global system.</p><p></p><p>Due to a lack of infrastructure, the plan is an attempt to provide an orderly and secure life for the Tribe while regulating both visitors and adversaries.</p><p></p><p><strong>Many <a href="http://www.patternliteracy.com/resources/ethics-and-principles">Permaculture Principles</a> are found in this “Design with Nature” plan:</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>4.</strong> Each element performs multiple functions – as in the integrated zones</p><p></p><p><strong>7.</strong> Use small scale, intensive systems – the stream feed the moats</p><p></p><p><strong>8.</strong> Optimize edges – i.e. - multiple perimeters</p><p></p><p>This is not “championing survivalism” but more like “proactive solutionism,” per the <strong>permaculture way</strong>. The proposed Village is a call for living and loving in sustainability and preparedness.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * * *</p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong><span style="color:#ff6600;" class="font-size-3">Four Zone Food Security System for a Permaculture Village (see plan):</span></strong></p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>Zone 1 = Domicile</strong><br />+ Homes (“huts”) are made of adobe which is cooling and fire-resistant</p><p></p><p><strong>Zone 2 = Community of Four Homes</strong><br />+ Shared Cooking Space<br />+ Extended Family Support</p><p></p><p><strong>Zone 3 = Neighborhood (20-24 domiciles)</strong> <br />+ Basic Village Security Unit<br />+ Permaculture Gardening Teams<br />+ Moat system = Aquaculture; Water Source for Crops; Security Perimeter<br />+ Shared Tools</p><p></p><p><strong>Zone 4 = Village</strong><br />+ Food Forest is Food Source and Security Buffer for Village<br />+ Stream is a Perimeter and Transportation Corridor</p></div>"Transporting Crude Oil on California Rails?" Interview with Diane Bailey, Senior Scientist, Natural Resources Defense Council, SF by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/transporting-crude-oil-on-california-rails-interview-with-diane2014-05-24T16:40:16.000Z2014-05-24T16:40:16.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p></p><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_52.png" alt="" title="" class="imagecache imagecache-standard align-center" width="443" height="308" /></div></div></div><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>"Transporting Crude Oil on California Rails?" Interview with Diane Bailey, Senior Scientist, <a href="http://www.nrdc.org/">Natural Resources Defense Council</a>, SF by Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2185">Planetshifter.com Magazine</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p><strong>Introduction -</strong></p><p></p><p>On March 28, 2014, <strong>Earthjustice</strong> filed a complaint and injunction request on behalf of Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in the San Francisco Superior Court against Kinder Morgan and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) to halt the shipment of highly explosive and toxic crude oil into the City of Richmond, a community already burdened by intense pollution caused by the fossil fuel industry. Please see their <strong><a href="http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2014/groups-challenge-crude-by-rail-shipments-to-bay-area-city">press release</a></strong>.</p><p></p><p>Transportation of crude oil issues are complex, charged politically and pit rail road and petroleum interests against fears of oil spills, train fires and community destruction in cities and towns along the "right of way." In this case, an historic and never ending series of environmental justices in Richmond, CA.</p><p></p><p><strong>Background -</strong></p><p></p><p>“<strong><a href="http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2014/groups-challenge-crude-by-rail-shipments-to-bay-area-city">Richmond residents</a></strong> are already over-burdened when it comes to pollution in our community and toxins in our bodies,” said Sandy Saeteurn, an APEN Richmond Organizer. “The idea of trains carrying explosive Bakken crude oil in and out of our neighborhoods is outrageous. It's like BAAQMD just pulled the pin off of a bomb, allowing it to roll all around town, knowing it's only a matter of time before it stops ticking, and explodes on all of us.”</p><p></p><p>The Air District (<strong><a href="http://www.baaqmd.gov/Search.aspx?q=crude+oil">BAAQMD</a></strong>) issued Kinder Morgan a permit to operate its crude-by-rail project in early February, without any notice to the public or environmental and health review. The case asks the court to halt operations immediately while the project undergoes a full and transparent review under the California Environmental Quality Act (<strong>CEQA</strong>).</p><p></p><p>Yes, there are those who will say that an accident is a 226 year event. That's nonsense. Recent train accidents across the country were caused by human failure; and there is no way to mitigate human failure; and the downside of such a cataclysmic event just a mile from a population area is to horrific to imagine.<br /><strong><a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slocounty.ca.gov%2FAssets%2FPL%2FSanta%2BMaria%2BRefinery%2BRail%2BProject%2FComments%2Bon%2Bthe%2BDraft%2BEIR%2FGeneral%2BPublic%2FShinderman%2BLaurance.pdf&ei=ugllU5cN2OigBNCwgvgH&usg=AFQjCNFQqsbfKTmzbcRXQWjQguusnP4-9g&sig2=f8rmDoxXh7SOVZAJPDQbPg&bvm=bv.65788261,d.cGU">Email:</a></strong> Laurance Shinderman, Santa Maria Refinery Rail Development Plan, 1/13/14</p><p></p><p>I don't know of any anti-oil train groups that suggest the Oregon highway expansion plan should be stopped, or are doing large scale practical food relocalization to reduce the use of oil in agriculture and food distribution. Email, Mark Robinowitz, <strong><a href="http://www.oilempire.us/">oilempire.us</a></strong>, Eugene</p><p></p><p>(Phillips 66) said it has “one of the most modern crude rail fleets in the industry, consisting of railcars that exceed current regulatory safety requirements and it began modernizing its crude fleet in 2012 “as a proactive precautionary measure to safely capture the opportunities of the rapidly changing energy landscape.” “<strong><a href="http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/03/26/berkeley-city-council-votes-to-oppose-crude-by-rail-plan/">Berkeley City Council Votes to Oppose Crude By Rail Plan</a></strong>”</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong>Interview with Diane by Willi</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>How did Kinder Morgan get passed the CEQA process in the first place? Status of the Kinder Morgan permit to operate its crude-by-rail project?</strong></p><p>KM already was operating the rail terminal for ethanol tanker trains. The air district (illegally in our opinion) issued what they called a ministerial permit, claiming that the “change of use” didn’t cause enough of a significant emissions increase to trigger CEQA (we disagree with the air district). The air district issued a final permit to operate in February, 2014; the KM terminal has been accepting crude oil trains since last Fall.</p><p></p><p><strong>Do Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) advocate for direct action? Will you block the trains if necessary?</strong></p><p>Some of the groups may consider it.</p><p></p><p><strong>Do City Councils have power to redirect or stop crude oil on rail lines on their land?</strong></p><p>Yes, in some cases, especially where a rail terminal is within city boundaries, they can deny the land use permit, change the zoning of that property or otherwise take legal action to prevent a new rail terminal from being built.</p><p></p><p><strong>In general, is a short train safer train vs a mile long train? What are the locomotive and track engineering factors in this equation?</strong></p><p>A short train may be safer than a mile long train as there are fewer cars that could be involved in an accident. However, more effective measures to improve oil train safety include more robust tanker cars, lower speeds, improved track conditions, routing away from populated areas and several other operational factors. Majority of the tanker cars are of a design that is highly susceptible to rupturing during an accident and has raised serious concerns across North America. In fact, Canada is forcing their replacement due to dangerous design flaws and the U.S. is expected to take similar action, but this will take years to phase in. In the meantime, whether the crude oil trains are a mile long or shorter, they are hurtling through densely populated neighborhoods and communities putting hundreds of thousands of people in harm’s way.</p><p></p><p><strong>Are you concerned about where the refined crude oil will be sold? The supply chain of the oil business?</strong></p><p>Yes, we are concerned that already overburdened refinery communities could become pass through zones where dirty crude oil is directly exported, or refined and then exported saddling those communities with additional impacts. Our greatest concern, however, is that greater quantities of dirtier, more dangerous crude oil could come to refineries, increasing pollution and safety hazards in those areas, regardless of where the products are destined to.</p><p></p><p><strong>Does the petroleum industry and first responders have provisions in place to address a worst-case scenario involving a train carrying crude oil?</strong></p><p>Not that we know of.</p><p><strong>Please define environmental justice and help us understand the Kinder Morgan PR spin?</strong></p><p>Communities of color, which are often poor, are routinely targeted to host facilities that have negative environmental impacts. Environmental justice is an important part of the struggle to improve and maintain a clean and healthful environment, especially for those who have traditionally lived, worked and played closest to the sources of pollution. The KM facility is a total environmental injustice.</p><p></p><p><strong>California’s railroad bridges as described as a significant rail safety risk. Why?</strong></p><p>We have heard repeatedly from our community partners that many railroad bridges are old and in poor condition and that they fear for the safety of heavy rail use of those bridges. However, we are unable to verify this and wonder how the bridges could have fallen into such a state of reported disrepair.</p><p></p><p><strong>Who does Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) work for officially; unofficially?</strong></p><p>BAAQMD is a government agency with a mission to protect air quality and public health in the nine county area. They are governed by a board of elected officials from the region and staffed by employees who are public servants – they work for us. In practice we have found many BAAQMD actions and activities to appear more in service to the industries they regulate than the general public and in direct conflict with their mission (e.g. issuing the Kinder Morgan crude by rail permit without a CEQA or public process).</p><p></p><p><strong>What groups, governments and/or companies want crude oil on rails to continue unabated? Are their lawyers, bloggers and consultants who we should know about who support this dangerous industry?</strong></p><p>We know of no groups, elected officials, individuals or companies who want crude oil rail transport to continue unabated, except for the oil and rail industries.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong>Diane Bailey’s Bio -</strong></p><p></p><p>Diane is a senior scientist in the health and environment program, has been working at NRDC for the last nine years promoting the reduction of diesel exhaust, air toxics, and global warming pollution. Her work has focused on hotspots of air pollution created by goods movement facilities and other major sources. She came from Citizens for a Better Environment, where she was assessing the hazards of air toxics for a children’s health project. She has worked on projects including emission control strategies for state implementation plans, air toxics analysis on the petrochemical industry, soil contamination mapping, sustainable business, brownfield rehabilitation, water treatment, and environmental auditing and inventories. Diane has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Washington University and an MS in Environmental Engineering from Rice University.</p><p></p><p><strong>Connections –</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Diane Bailey, Senior Scientist</strong><br /><a href="http://www.nrdc.org/">Natural Resources Defense Council</a><br />San Francisco, CA<br />dbailey at nrdc.org</p><p></p><p><strong><a href="http://img.rt.com/files/news/20/e6/50/00/ndakota-failed-public-oil-spills.si.jpgarget=%E2%80%9Dblank%E2%80%9D">Image credit</a></strong></p><p></p></div>Carbon Fighters “Cool the Earth” at Coleman Elementary. Interview with students Cayman Stein and Sam Testa by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/carbon-fighters-cool-the-earth-at-coleman-elementary-interview2014-05-21T15:00:00.000Z2014-05-21T15:00:00.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p></p><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2184" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_49.png?width=490" width="490" class="align-center" alt="centerspace_49.png?width=490" /></a></div></div></div><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Carbon Fighters “Cool the Earth” at Coleman Elementary. Interview with students Cayman Stein and Sam Testa </strong></span><strong style="font-size:12pt;">by Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2184">Planetshifter.com Magazine</a></strong></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong> </strong></span></p><p><strong><a href="http://co.srcs.ca.schoolloop.com/">Coleman Elementary</a></strong> in San Rafael, CA recently launched its fifth year running <strong>Cool the Earth¹s Climate Action Program</strong> last month as part of its Earth Day program. For four years running Coleman students have taken over 4800 actions, saving approximately 3,500,000 lbs. of carbon. That is the equivalent of taking almost 300 cars off the road! This year a total of 15 Marin County schools are running the Cool the Earth program.</p><p></p><p>Visit the <strong><a href="http://www.cooltheearth.org/our-program/">Cool the Earth</a></strong> web site or at <strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/cooltheearth.org">Facebook</a></strong>, and <strong>Twitter</strong>: @CooltheEarth.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Planetshifter.com Magazine interview with Cayman Stein, 2nd grade and Sam Testa, 3rd Grade @Coleman Elementary</span></p><p></p><p><strong>Tell us about a few of your favorite stories at the Story Time Library Corner? Are there common themes?</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Cayman:</strong> I remember stories about kids working through conflict.</p><p></p><p><strong>Sam:</strong> <strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Night-I-Followed-Dog/dp/0811806472">The Night I followed my Dog</a></strong>!</p><p></p><p><strong>Is there a garden at Coleman or at home? Ask me or your teacher about <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DwVhGRbPH0">Permaculture</a> and how many of us are now working with Nature to grow local food and strengthen community.</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Sam:</strong> Yes we have a few gardens at Coleman.</p><p></p><p><strong>Has it been easy to get other activities and organizations involved in the Cool the Planet program? Any examples?</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Cayman:</strong> We do Walk 'N Roll on Wednesdays to get to school. During lunchtime we put our stuff away in the bins. Plastic and paper go in the recycling bins. Food goes in the compost bin.</p><p></p><p><strong>Sam:</strong> Yes it has been easy ... Everyone wants to help to be green. We have walk / bike to school every Wednesday and you get to stamp your green thumb on a poster.... Everyone brings recycling every Friday and our school gets $... Everyone loves the <strong>cool the earth coupons</strong> to turn in every week.</p><p></p><p><strong>There are a lot activities and responsibilities competing for your time? How important is being green every day and sharing values with others?</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Cayman:</strong> It's really important because the Earth is getting hot due to global warming. We need to stop it because it's important and I love the Earth.</p><p></p><p><strong>Sam:</strong> Everyone can do their part no matter how busy you are... Simple things like running instead of driving... turning off lights instead of leaving them on and using glasses to water plants instead of just dumping water.</p><p></p><p><strong>I just released an edu-video for kids called “<a href="http://youtu.be/6p4XcMgBFW8">Life in the Edge</a>” about the boundaries between Nature and humans. I included questions and I would appreciate your feedback.</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Cayman:</strong> My school is so close to Highway 101. We also live close to Highway 101 as well as the mountains (Nike Missile Site open space).</p><p></p><p>Examples of edges around my home and school:</p><p></p><p>• The freeway wall separates the freeway from the homes in my neighborhood.<br /> • Our backyard fence separates the wild animals from coming onto our property.<br /> • The fences and sidewalks separate my school from the street.<br /> • The backyard fences separate my home from the open space.<br /> • The freeway wall separates Highway 101 from my neighborhood.<br /> • I built a <strong><a href="http://www.pinterest.com/melissapeterson/fabulous-fairy-gardens/">fairy garden</a></strong> last summer! The plastic container it sat in separated this space from the "real" world.</p><p></p><p><strong>Are the 5th graders helping the kindergartners learn to “Cool the Earth?” Any lessons to share as leaders?</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Cayman:</strong> During lunchtime I help the younger grade kids sort their trash. I walk around picking up waste with the trash grabber. The younger kids ask, "Where do we put these?" I help them organize their stuff in the right bins.</p><p></p><p><strong>Do you guys watch PBS Kids programs? What other media sources are good?</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Cayman:</strong> Yes, my brother and I watch cartoons on PBS! My mom and dad rarely let us play video games. But when they do we like playing <strong>Leap Frog.</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Sam:</strong> No, do not watch PBS.</p><p></p><p><strong>What are some graphic symbols of climate change and “Cool the Earth?” Why is a polar bear in the logo?</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Cayman:</strong> Because the polar bears live in the snow and the arctic is one place where it's getting warmer.</p><p></p><p><strong>Sam:</strong> Not sure about the Polar Bear.</p><p></p><p><strong>Who are your heroes?</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Cayman:</strong></p><p></p><p>(1). Martin Luther King because he stood up for African American people. Back then people were mean to black people and they didn't let them go to the same bathroom, drink from the same water fountain and go to the same schools.</p><p></p><p>(2). My mom because she teaches me what to do.</p><p></p><p><strong>Sam:</strong> My mom!</p><p></p><p><strong>What are your top three cool actions to share with kids?</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Cayman:</strong></p><p></p><p>(1) Bike to school.<br /> (2) Carpool to softball practice.<br /> (3) I save water when I shower - soaping I stop the water.</p><p></p><p><strong>Are you promoting saving water? How?</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Cayman:</strong> Yes! We stop the faucet when we're not using water.</p><p></p><p><strong>Sam:</strong> Yes we are promoting saving water.... Shorter showers, water from glass to plants.... Water late at night.</p></div>Permaculture Propaganda Lab @ old seed bomb factory (2019). New Myth # 54 by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/permaculture-propaganda-lab-old-seed-bomb-factory-2019-new-myth2014-05-17T20:47:38.000Z2014-05-17T20:47:38.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p></p><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2183" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_45.png" class="align-center" alt="centerspace_45.png" /></a></div><div class="field-item odd"></div></div></div><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>Permaculture Propaganda Lab @ old seed bomb factory (2019). New Myth # 54 by Willi Paul, <a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2183">Planetshifter.com Magazine</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p>"Last month we took up to much too message, an undoable scale."</p><p></p><p>"Ya right. The <strong>“Food Forests on Mars”</strong> campaign!"</p><p></p><p>Sponsored by North Bay City Lands Conversion Group was underwritten by <strong><a href="http://www.patternliteracy.com/resources/ethics-and-principles">Permaculture Principle #6</a></strong>.</p><p></p><p>"Not sure that "Make the least change for the greatest effect" was the result?"</p><p></p><p>"Maybe sometimes we should just make the case instead of propagating silly slogans?!"</p><p></p><p><strong>"Down."</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p>Two months ago, the crew did the <strong>“seed library on wheels”</strong> campaign. The truck was robbed twice.</p><p></p><p>Permaculture Propaganda Lab's ( <strong>PPL</strong>) strategy for their case strapped clients is often simple: pick one principle or ethic from permaculture and design a campaign for the client.</p><p></p><p>Weaving Nature lore, sustainability and human subjects in the NorCal biosphere, PPL works a new campaign per month for food, concert tickets or fresh fish - to name of few things bartered.</p><p></p><p>The seed bomb factory on the first floor was closed down by the feeds late last year after an all-night Psilocybin-drenched rave and an early morning product demonstration got out of hand.</p><p></p><p>In 2019, multiple NorCal tipping points are fracking the permie scene as the rich consolidate power, make higher fences and force the poor to fight for their injustice.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong>The Perma Store</strong> has brought their visions, wares and woes to PPL for an outreach transfusion after buying up the <strong>Dollar Store</strong> franchise in 2017 and seeing sales of permaculture tools go down by 24%.</p><p></p><p>"Let's lease the 14 NorCal bill boards from <strong>Zippy’s Sign Mafia</strong> and go with:"</p><p></p><p><strong>"Grow It - Eat It - Compost it @ The Perma Store."</strong></p><p></p><p>"Thankfully some sign locations are in urban settings. Few can afford the train or auto travel charges at this point.</p><p></p><p>"Sounds like <strong>Principle #7</strong> fits ok here: "Start with the smallest systems and build on your successes, with variations."</p><p></p><p>"What comes after the billboard?"</p><p></p><p><strong>”One dollar Perma Store Hella tattoos!”</strong></p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p></div>Gathering of the Tribes Radio presents a conversation with Willi Paul Writer / Publisher of Planetshifter.com Magazine and NewMythologist.comhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gathering-of-the-tribes-radio-presents-a-conversation-with-willi2014-05-12T16:19:54.000Z2014-05-12T16:19:54.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p style="text-align:center;"></p><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image" style="text-align:center;"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2182" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_43.png?width=503" width="503" alt="centerspace_43.png?width=503" /></a></div></div></div><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Gathering of the Tribes Radio presents a conversation with Willi Paul</strong></span><br /><span class="font-size-3">Writer / Publisher of <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2182">Planetshifter.com Magazine</a> and <a href="http://newmythologist.com/">NewMythologist.com</a></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p><strong>Topic</strong>: “Mythmaking and Creating a Sustainable Culture with Permaculture”</p><p></p><p><strong>Show Host</strong>: Doctor G</p><p></p><p><strong>Time</strong>: Thursday, May 15th, at 5:15pm (PST)</p><p></p><p><strong>Where</strong>: Tunein broadcast <a href="http://tunein.com/radio/Ozcat-Radio-895-s130679/">live & online</a> and on 89.5 FM in the northeast San Pablo Bay Area, courtesy of <a href="http://www.ozcatradio.com/">OzCat Radio</a></p><p></p><p>Willi’s <strong><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1422">Bio</a></strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Selected Media by Willi Paul:</strong></p><p></p><p>* <strong><a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2179">Life in the Edge</a></strong> - an edu-video on Permaculture Principle 8</p><p></p><p>* <strong><a href="http://wp.me/s14SHM-2584">JOURNEY TO CASCADIA</a></strong> - Building a New Global Mythology. For the 2012 Study of Myth Symposium</p><p></p><p>* <strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOrtMowCGEY&index=25&list=PL0FAEA97D12725FB0">Sacred Alchemy & Symbols for the Permaculture Transition</a></strong></p><p></p><p></p></div>“Permaculture - Bring Back Gaia!” Commentary by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/permaculture-bring-back-gaia-commentary-by-willi-paul2014-05-08T01:30:00.000Z2014-05-08T01:30:00.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p></p><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2181" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_41.png" class="align-center" alt="centerspace_41.png" /></a></div></div></div><p></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>“Permaculture - Bring Back Gaia!” Commentary by Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2181">Planetshifter.com Magazine</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p>I asked one of my recent interviewees if the Earth could be keystone specie? Consider the following “WIKI home office journey” that connects keystone specie with ecosystem, our solar system and the Milky Way Galaxy and finally to permaculture and Gaia.</p><p></p><p><strong>Four images are provided –“Permaculture in Gaia.”</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong>Is the Earth a specie?</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>A <strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species">species</a></strong> is often defined as the largest group of organisms capable of inter-breeding and producing fertile offspring.</p><p></p><p>• Sounds like the Earth, right?</p><p></p><p><strong>Is the Earth a keystone specie?</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>A <strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_species">keystone species</a></strong> is a species that has a disproportionately large effect on its environment relative to its abundance.</p><p></p><p>• Yes the Earth plays a critical role in maintaining the structure of an ecological community.</p><p></p><p>• The Earth affects many other organisms in an ecosystem and helping to determine the types and numbers of various other species in the community.</p><p></p><p>• Yes, the Earth is the # 1 keystone species.</p><p></p><p><strong>Is the Earth an ecosystem?</strong></p><p></p><p>As <strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem">ecosystems</a></strong> are defined by the network of interactions among organisms, and between organisms and their environment, they can be of any size but usually encompass specific, limited spaces (although some scientists say that the entire planet is an ecosystem)</p><p></p><p>• The Earth helps to determine the types and numbers of various other species in the community.</p><p></p><p>• Yes, the Earth plays a critical role in maintaining the structure of a global ecosystem.</p><p></p><p>• Does the Earth affect many other organisms in a global ecosystem?</p><p></p><p><strong>Is Gaia (Earth spirit) is a keystone specie of our solar system?</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p><strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_%28mythology%29">Gaia</a></strong> was revived in 1979 by James Lovelock, in Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. The Gaia hypothesis proposes that living organisms and inorganic material are part of a dynamic system that shapes the Earth's biosphere, and maintains the Earth as a fit environment for life. In some Gaia theory approaches, the Earth itself is viewed as an organism with self-regulatory functions.</p><p></p><p>• The Earth is part of our solar system and the Milky Way Galaxy ecosystem.</p><p></p><p>• Gaia is helping to generate a new mythology as the keystone ecosystem for all life.</p><p></p><p><strong>Can </strong><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2157">Permaculture</a> integrate Nature-lore, alchemy, Transition, new ritual, the sacred and new mythology to foster greater healing?</p><p></p><p></p><p>• Humans are no longer a keystone species on Earth but a threatened species.</p><p></p><p>• To many, the Earth is a thing. To some, Gaia is our global Mother.</p><p></p><p>• Permaculture is a new Nature and community-based food technology connected to Gaia.</p><p></p><p>• Permaculture is capable of inclusivity and can assist in reversing global warming as a spiritual source for Gaia.</p></div>Interview with New Mythologist Willi Paul by Jeremy Watts, foodforestdesignworks.comhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/interview-with-new-mythologist-willi-paul-by-jeremy-watts2014-04-05T15:27:04.000Z2014-04-05T15:27:04.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p></p><p></p><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-label"></div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_40.jpg" alt="" title="" class="imagecache imagecache-standard align-center" width="437" height="534" /></div></div></div><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Interview with <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2174">New Mythologist Willi Paul</a> by Jeremy Watts, <a href="http://www.foodforestdesignworks.com/blog.html">foodforestdesignworks.com</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p>This week I had the pleasure of interviewing a local hero, Willi Paul, a Permaculture/Sustainability enthusiast who is pioneering the new mythological landscape as we transition into a new era!</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong>JW: The image of a forest that provides for us resonates deeply with me as an ancient (personal) symbol of health, abundance, and stability. Whether you look to the past and see Paleolithic hunter-gatherers or the Garden of Eden, it is an idea that spells sanctuary, home, comfort, in a familiar yet distant and alien way. I feel like we live with a barely-conscious feeling just beneath the surface, that everything our world is made of is so fragile and could very easily fall into disarray. In what ways are the Permaculture and Transition movements replacing that feeling with the hope of a future with more stable footing? Or do you see us as still being in the phase of raising consciousness of the problem itself?</strong></p><p>WP: Permaculture needs to move on ALREADY! from its official ban on things spiritual in the PDC. We have too many permaculturists “practicing spirituality in the tool shed.” Integrating the arts and food sciences is already championed by other sectors. Planting crops along with a love for the forest must go hand in hand. With this synergy, respect for Nature can bolster hope. Please understand: permaculture and technology will never “save” us from ourselves.</p><p>In my view, raising our collective consciousness is a rich challenge that requires a new set of songs, stories and prayers – a new mythology on Earth. I am unclear what you mean by "… the Garden of Eden, it is an idea that spells sanctuary, home, comfort, in a familiar yet distant and alien way.”</p><p>Why can’t we be the <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2157">new Garden</a>?</p><p></p><p><strong>JW: I was referring to our distant past with the Garden of Eden reference vs. Paleolithic proto-human images. In both stories, we see humans dwelling within the bosom of an all-nurturing food forest. But we CAN be the new garden! Let's bring this myth back! In fact we may have no choice but to return to it in the long run. And not just for our own sake. All forests are food forests; that is - food for someone! A single tree can provide a home and a meal for squirrels, vines, lichens, mosses, lizards, ferns, fungi, birds, insects, humans. Talking about food forestry has to include shifting from an anthropocentric perspective to a holistic, ecological one.</strong></p><p>WP: Very well said. It is important to save virgin forests and to build new food forests now more than ever. Humans play a dominant role in both endeavors. Can permaculturists feed us and create homes for plants and animals? We will see.</p><p></p><p><strong>JW: How do you see new stories emerging and becoming integrated into our cultural paradigm?</strong></p><p>WP: From experiencing Nature primarily. With elders passing old songs down and participating in the collaborative construction of New Myths in schools, at dinner tables and travelling. New Myths will be written by humans for humans with the aid of Joseph Campbell.</p><p>Technology can only supply communication channels and protocols to bring the new stories to all in seconds. But social media and web sites cannot “listen and refine” the poems coming now. Will you data mine your heart?</p><p></p><p><strong>JW: Word. The re-education of our species really has to begin with educating our children. Have you made any attempt to work with schools to bring nature-based narratives into the classroom?</strong></p><p>WP: I have <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2173">interviewed teachers</a> and developed several formal study plans but my work is more focused on presenting subjects that teachers can incorporate into their process, like my work with new symbols sound alchemy in permaculture and transition.</p><p></p><p><strong>JW: There are so many cartoons, games, et cetera that inundate children constantly. How can we compete with this and what efforts are have you seen or made to work with children's media producers to tell stories that point the way forward out of our mess, or at least tell a more complete and honest story? Or have you seen any good ones that are offering these things? I guess a few stories come to mind: Captain Planet, Avatar, Pacific Rim, Waterworld.</strong></p><p>WP: Kids are my main focus and many of <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2115">my eBooks</a> are dedicated to them. Some mythologists think that the old super heroes are unique- that they are new mythological “heroes” but this only the supports the false value of many movie messages these days. This is a perfect example of how the classical myths are of diminished utility – as the planet crumbles and boils from radiation and killer weather. And Iron Man.</p><p></p><p><strong>JW: I like your appropriation of urban iconography, aka graffiti. I can see how artifacts, such as the <a href="http://openmythsource.com/2013/06/20/mythic-visions-rituals-a-free-collaborative-event-goal-write-a-new-nature-myth-based-on-the-tree-of-life-mural-chicano-park-san-diego-ca-willi-paul-newmythologist-com/">Tree of Life mural</a> in San Diego could be powerful tools in recalibrating the common narrative. How did you come up with this story?</strong></p><p>WP: Let’s get rid of the common narrative, eh? Where has it gotten us?</p><p>Using the Tree of Life Mural to produce a New Myth came flashed in an instant, like many of my ideas and visions. I suppose the image and the resulting process is rife with archetypes and supported by alchemy (a mixture of spirit and science?).</p><p></p><p><strong>JW: Hopefully the nature-based narrative will soon replace the common one. Buckminster Fuller said "You cannot change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old one obsolete." I don't think we can get rid of it, but we can replace it by working within it. As the old Permaculture principle goes: "the problem is the solution."</strong></p><p>WP: I find it interesting that the nature-based narrative was the one we had in ancient days, only to be replaced by the short-term resource depletion model by Nature destroying Capitalists! Certainty the “problem is the solution” is a clique in the permaculture world but many permies seem to want to start at the solutions now, assuming that we all understand the problems. Are we “fear or problem adverse?”</p><p>Ironically, I see solutions for the multitude of problems coming in from a globally (“top”) to locally (“bottom”). Meta models and data can be created and then customized for each community. Any “new model” will be need to be a local hybrid model to fix water shortages, climate change and species depletion, to name a few!</p><p>Is permaculture a ”<a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1976">new model for consciousness</a>?” Not until a greater mass of humans signs on. The Transition Movement to far too undefined and under-represented as well to be an actionable model right now.</p><p></p><p><strong>JW: Have you thought of (or accomplished) collecting these story/artifacts and publishing a book of them?</strong></p><p>WP: I have 15 eBooks to date. The digital book is the best information delivery system I have for these condensations. I don’t see a coffee table version anytime soon!</p><p></p><p><strong>JW: What are your new myths about and are they catching on?</strong></p><p>WP: “Selling Like Hot Cakes, Man!” No really, I haven’t had time to check the read counts on them. I do refer to this work in new discussions and posts. Many could benefit from being turned into a video. That would help. Bottom-line: there is so much self-serving data on the web now that much of the good stuff gets marginalized. My <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/56">New Myths</a> and other content are tweeted each time with 3 accounts to over ~4000 followers. But, alas, I can never share my work to enough folks.</p><p></p><p><strong>JW: What do you mean by sound alchemy?</strong></p><p>WP: Sound Alchemy is an active mixing of media and messages that combines the voices of our spirits with digital channels. Sound Alchemy is an important “wax and crucible” for the <a href="http://youtu.be/hfPS5EJxocM">New Mythology</a>:</p><p>1. Localization – back to sustainability and community; self-sufficiency<br />2. Nature- Centric<br />3. Spiritual<br />4. Future-based<br />5. Universal themes(s) and message<br />6. Para-Normal in conflict or characters<br />7. Initiation, Journey and Hero<br />8. Permaculture & Transition: values and principles</p><p><br />* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qig27p0gIwI">Initiation Prayer for Permaculture – Sound Alchemy</a></strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Great Spirit</strong></p><p>How can I practice permaculture each day?<br />How can I find work in the ethics and principles?</p><p><strong>Great Spirit</strong></p><p>How can we generate more discussion?<br />How we build community?</p><p><strong>Great Spirit</strong></p><p>How can permaculture play an active role in alt.politics?<br />How this force be more spiritual and ease the lies from Father’s alter?</p><p><strong>Great Spirit</strong></p><p>Where is permaculture?</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1422">Willi Paul's Bio -</a></strong></p><p></p><p>Active in the sustainability, permaculture, transition, sacred Nature, new alchemy and mythology space since the launch of PlanetShifter.com Magazine on EarthDay 2009, Willi’s network now includes four web sites, a LinkedIn group, 3 tweeter accounts, a G+ site, multiple blog sites, and multiple list serves.</p><p>In 1996 Mr. Paul was instrumental in the design of the emerging online community space in his Master’s Thesis: “The Electronic Charrette..” He was active in many small town design visits with the Minnesota Design Team.</p><p>Mr. Paul has released 12 eBooks, 2140 + posts on PlanetShifter.com Magazine, and over 500 interviews with global leaders (site 1 & site 2). He has created 48 New Myths to date and has been interviewed over 25 times in blogs and journals.</p><p>Willi earned his permaculture design certification in August 2011 at the Urban Permaculture Institute, SF.</p><p>Please see his cutting-edge article at the Joseph Campbell Foundation and his pioneering videos on YouTube. His current focus is Myth Lab - a project that Willi presented at his third Northwest Permaculture Convergence in Portland, OR.</p><p>As a Senior Manager, Mr. Paul has worked for several Northern California sustainability, civil and software engineering firms. He now works part-time as a design / relocation consultant in the Bay Area.</p><p>Willi’s consulting work is at NewMythologist.com.</p><p></p><p><strong>Contact -</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>PlanetShifter.com Magazine<br />openmythsource.com<br />communityalchemy.com</p><p>415-407-4688<br />newmythologist at gmail.com</p><p>@planetshifter @openmythsource<br />@newmythologist @Permaculturexch</p></div>"textsongs - sound scapes for kids" - eBook #15 by willi paul, newmythologist.comhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/textsongs-sound-scapes-for-kids-ebook-15-by-willi-paul2014-03-26T23:21:08.000Z2014-03-26T23:21:08.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p></p><p><strong><a href="http://communityalchemy.com/textsongs/textsongs.pdf" target="_blank"><img src="" width="423" class="align-center" height="625" alt="" /></a><span class="font-size-4">textsongs</span></strong> <br /><span class="font-size-4"><strong>sound scapes for kids</strong></span><br /><span class="font-size-4"><strong>eBook #15</strong></span><br /><span class="font-size-4"><strong>willi paul</strong></span><br /><span class="font-size-4"><strong>newmythologist.com</strong></span></p><p></p><p><strong><span class="font-size-4"><a href="http://communityalchemy.com/textsongs/textsongs.pdf">Download eBook #5</a></span></strong></p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>b o o k</strong></span> <br /><span class="font-size-3"><strong>i n t r o</strong></span></p><p>passports to the TV bored<br />text love-savvy</p><p>world fone generation<br />headphones blazing, encoded not</p><p>make it send it get one back<br />kid’s secret story screens</p><p>alchemic fingers<br />dice control</p><p>camouflaging memes as meaning<br />hail Mary initiation devices</p><p>killing old moons<br />spawning fresh ones</p><p>60 sec. dial ups<br />myth in clowns</p><p>digital pools<br />samples pictures tab text</p><p>signals vibes in the Transition<br />the 6th estate on fire</p></div>“THE MOTHER WHO PLANTS TREES.” An Indiegogo Restorative Agroforestry Project in India by Permaculturist Charlotte Anthony. Plus an Interview with Charlotte by Willi Paul Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-mother-who-plants-trees-an-indiegogo-agroforestry-project-in2014-03-05T22:00:00.000Z2014-03-05T22:00:00.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><div class="xg_headline xg_headline-img xg_headline-2l"><div class="tb"></div></div><div class="xg_module_body"><div class="postbody"><div class="xg_user_generated"><p><a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2168" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}8095727298,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="471" class="align-center" height="1200" alt="8095727298?profile=original" /></a></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong> </strong></span></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>“THE MOTHER WHO PLANTS TREES.” An Indiegogo Restorative Agroforestry Project in India by Permaculturist Charlotte Anthony. Plus an Interview with Charlotte by Willi Paul <a href="http://planetshifter.com/">Planetshifter.com Magazine</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p><strong>Project Overview</strong></p><p></p><p><strong><a href="http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-mother-who-plants-trees/x/6482952">An Indiegogo Agroforestry Project in India</a></strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Charlotte</strong>: As I was traveling in India I met many farmers who could only continue farming by digging new bore wells every 2 years or switching over to dry land farming. Some had switched to dry land farming and were not getting enough rain for their crops. New bore wells cost thousands of dollars and so not doable by subsistence farmers. This problem extends across many states in India.</p><p>The problem stems from several things (among many others I am sure):</p><p><strong>1)</strong> cutting down the trees for thousands of years to cook their food,</p><p><strong>2)</strong> dams that were built that divert the ground water,</p><p><strong>3)</strong> the green revolution where thousands and thousands of acres of agroforestry were taken out to make way for monoculture, hybrid plants fed by chemicals which take 3 – 4 times the amount of water used for open pollinated, diversicultured organically grown plants.</p><p></p><p>Permaculture water solutions combined with restorative agroforestry was the perfect solution. I had seen in a U tube about Don Tipping's farm in Williams, Oregon, that when he built his ponds, the wells of his neighbors filled up. And the question then became how to get the farmers to adopt what worked. The answer seemed simple. It is to make it financially worthwhile for them to plant the trees and replenish the water.</p><p>The farmers like our ideas, interplanting the existing trees with medicinal herbs, vegetables, and fruits, planting diversified new trees on key lines along with open water sources etc. They want a demonstration. The chemical establishment still holds sway telling them that any auxiliary crops will take away from the main crop and moreover will steal their expensive chemical fertilizer from their crops.</p><p></p><p>We are cataloging the many demonstrations already available here in India in Tamil Nadu and Kerala and making posters of them for our presentations. There is a long history here of diversified tree plantings mixed with herbs, spices, vegetables and fruits. Unfortunately these magnificent food forests that remain are being undermined by the chemical industries need to find markets for their products. This long term will kill the soil, the goose that lays the golden egg.</p><p></p><p>How do we find the villagers who want to work with us. We based our model on Navdanya (Vandanna Shiva’s organization): We are doing presentations in the surrounding villages looking especially for subsistence farmers who are willing to convert to permaculture and natural farming practices combined with agroforestry. We are also contacting government offices, NGO’s and local networks for contacts with subsistence farmers.</p><p></p><p>We will provide information and consultations about their crop and water needs and we will and buy their produce from them as incentive. This is a great opportunity to do restorative agroforestry. For these Indian farmers the rubber is meeting the road. They are not in the theoretical phase where if they do nothing, they will continue to have food.</p><p></p><p>To see more about our project please go to our <strong><a href="http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-mother-who-plants-trees/x/6482952">crowd funding site</a></strong>.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong>Interview with Charlotte by Willi</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Tell us about your history of interplanting crops with trees?</strong></p><p>In permaculture we routinely use polyculture. For example, we might take one plant, say kale in a 20 x 20 area, planting kale at the typical 24 inch spacing for kale and then filling in between the kale with lettuce, onions, beets, peas (examples, the specifics vary with what we need at the time). We like to mix nitrogen fixing plants, roots with green leafy plants. Rather than taking away from the kale the diverse plants actually nurture each other. Different plant roots feed from different root zones. Most plants bring up some minerals and the plants can circulate the minerals as needed, especially if there are mycorhizzals in the soil. In a viable ecosystem there will always be mycorhizzals in the soil. In Eugene we imported mycorhizzals from Paul Stamets, Fungi Perfecti. Here we will just make mulch piles which will attract the mycorhizzals, just as laying out compost in Eugene attracted red worms. A soil rich in microbes creates the NPK which allows the plants to grow.</p><p>The NPK story is a story of our culture. Scientists look at beautiful vegetables and think they can analyze the soil ingredients and then proclaim that it was the NPK that made the beautiful plants, when in fact it was all the microbes that made the NPK which made the beautiful plants. Of course this is the innocent version. We know that there were chemicals left over after World War II and rather than destroying them someone came up with the idea to use them for food.</p><p>In my food forest plantings we put in trees and then put in herbs, clovers, annual fruit and vegetables to feed the soil which feeds the trees. The food forest concept as taught in permaculture comes from food forests around the world especially in tropical and subtropical climates. Organic matter in the soils in these climates are used up quickly by the soil life. Trees put down leaves which continually feed the soil life. The interplants bring up minerals. In permaculture we would also plant nitrogen fixing trees, in the northwest maybe autumn olive, or alder to use as chop and drop, meaning to make sure that we can keep a mulch on the ground without the hassle of collecting it from outside the food forest. This mulch promotes the soil life which again nurtures the trees.</p><p>Bashkir Save is India's Gandhi of agriculture. Fukuoka visited his farm and said it was better than his own. A Vision of Natural Farming was written about him. I recommend this book highly. Mr. Save says that the soil is the goose that lays the golden egg. Except for sun and a little water, everything the plants needs come from the soil. When you use tilling, chemical fertilizers, too much water and mono cropping, you deplete the minerals those plants need. When you use no till or very light tilling, organic materials, little water, and polycultures you do not kill the goose that lays the golden egg. He also believes that well established trees do not need feeding, just like your adult children do not need feeding.</p><p></p><p><strong>How does your Northwest USA Permaculture influence your work with Indian farmers?</strong></p><p>In the PNW there is a long tradition of dry land farming especially in the eastern section of the Oregon and Washington. If you can get crops such as beans, tomatoes, potatoes, established before the rains stop in April or May, they will produce. In India there are two monsoon seasons, and so you can grow 2 crops a year with dry land farming. Using minimum water, as with minimums of everything else is an ongoing interest of mine. I worked as a chiropractor before this farming stent and working with people, I found minimums worked best for healing. We respect the living ecosystem by interfering as little as possible.</p><p>When you look at a forest, driving along the road in Eastern Washington, you see lots of young trees, growing from seed where there are 10-15 inches of rainfall a year and no rain in the summer. There is a lot of water hydrology to explain how these trees get their water, (covered in The Vision of Natural Farming), but the one I like best is that the mycorhizzals that interconnect throughout the forest distribute the water to the baby trees.</p><p></p><p><strong>Is a food forest a new concept in India?</strong></p><p>India has a 10,000 year history of sustainable agriculture. Food forests or agroforestry was their primary way to farm until the British colonization came along followed by the green revolution. Farmers were told that if they cut down their trees and planted field crops in monoculture with chemical fertilizers they would make more money. They were told the NPK story line which is that NPK and not the soil fed the plants. The corporations got to off load their chemicals, many of which were being banned due to toxicity in the U.S. and Europe. Mostly they did not make the expected money. Many had borrowed money from the banks in order to buy the new hybrid plants, the chemicals, the machinery and they lost their land. Most of you know about the hundreds of thousands of farmer suicides that this caused.</p><p>There is a 1000 year old food forest on tribal lands in Kerala. I am excited to be visiting this. In the rest of Kerala, though there are very old food forests everywhere, mainly they are now using chemicals all through them. The reason these food forests still exist in Kerala are that the land is too steep to do traditional mono cropping and also a lot of the herbs and spices that they grow need to have a shade. Like own Native Americans the old ways have been mainly lost here in India just in the last 60 years or so.</p><p></p><p><strong>Your Indiegogo site touts the benefits of reservoirs to restore ground water and rainfall? Please explain this?</strong></p><p>Long before I came to India, I looked at <a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/1880">Andrew Millison's</a> YouTube video of the water conservation work of Tom Ward and Don Tipping in Southern Oregon. The thing that struck me the most was that Don Tipping's neighbors reported their well levels rising after Don had put in his ponds. Simply put, having some water and organic material in the air, actually is needed for rain to coalesce. In my conversations with farmers here who have the ponds, it looks like a small reservoir (40 ft. x 40 ft.) works for a 20 acre area. 2 farmers have told me that they have seen the edges of the rain at the outside of the 20 acre areas. The interrelationship between rain, groundwater and reservoirs is complicated. There are simple explanations of how this works in The Vision of Natural Farming.</p><p></p><p><strong>I understand that your outreach program is based on demonstration or pilots to overcome the farmer’s fear of something they do not understand. How is this proceeding?</strong></p><p>It is very difficult in India to find farmers to let us use their land, mainly because leases are limited to less than 5 years. The chemical consultants have drummed into them that this much fertilizer must be used to get this much crop. So they believe that interplants will steal the food from their trees, rather than as we know interplants or any kind of diversity, actually increase the yield of the trees. Also there is a law in India that says if you lease a property for 5 years it is essentially yours (after legal maneuverings). No one will let us have a 5 year or more lease. Everyone assures me that folks are greedy here, so even the best of them if they see we are making good money on the land for the first 5 years, will want to not renew the lease and keep our profits from the perennial plantings for themselves.</p><p>Navdanya, (Vandanna Shiva's group) has found many hundreds of farmers to convert to organic by giving them seeds which they then pay it forward when they harvest their crops, a lot of advice and hand holding. We are now following this model, looking especially for folks who do not have enough water to continue with chemicals. We want them to convert to organic to save water, to plant trees and do what they call here water conservation strategies, ponds, swales, etc. Our goal is to have 100 of these farmers before the monsoon starts in June. We have only one farmer so far. He owns 6 acres of land and has water for only 2 acres. He is excited to try our approach. We are looking to partner with other organizations, such as BAIF who I found today has many of our similar goals and practices. They are working in other states and hopefully they will help us find the water starved farmers who want to work with us.</p><p>Joshua my overall coordinator needs to make an income and today we came up with the idea that he would be our marketing agent, buying the organic crops and selling them for a little more so he can pay for his living expenses.</p><p></p><p><strong>What is the role of women in your vision?</strong></p><p>In India women and men are fairly separate. we would like to have separate farm workshops for women. One of my teammates is a woman who wants to teach other women to farm. When I ask the mainly men farmers what will happen to their land if the water keeps going down, a man who said he is now earning a great income, almost 8,000 an acre, said that he would sell his land and do something else. I said wow this land has been in your family for hundreds of years and you would just sell it. He said yes if he could not make money from it. Many of the men are saying this to me.</p><p>I expect that women with children would better understand the need to grow food and do what has to be done to bring in the water, rather than moving on.</p><p></p><p><strong>Tell us about the status of organic farms and foods in the region that you are working in?</strong></p><p>There was a man here, Nammalvar, who has brought a lot of awareness about organic farming to the area. He has left the body, but still many people are following his vision. Several organic shops have sprung up here. There are a group of organic farmers who meet to talk about how to get better results, by that I mean especially how to make the same amount of money that the chemical people are making. Organic farming per se is very new here. Very few people have heard of permaculture or natural farming. They do not know about hedgerows to allow havens for the insect predators and consequently have a lot of insects coming in from their neighbor's chemical fields. Again like in Pennsylvania, there are hedgerows all over India, but the knowledge seems to have been lost about their purpose.</p><p>When I say organic farming is new here, I mean folks who would know about these particular words and the particular practices we associate with it, like worm castings. Many people who cannot afford the chemicals are still farming organically. And again, there is a 10,000 year history of sustainable agriculture. By setting up a marketing arm, we hope to give these folks a better price for their produce. We will also be establishing a food processing plant so that we can make some organic powders for which there is a demand in some of the cities. (And old people like me who have moved to India need to take to keep healthy).</p><p>I do have to warm people about organic food in India. There are organic certifications and these are very hard to get, taking months of paperwork and lots of money. The people that get them according to my sources have a lot of political pull. the practice usually is that they have an acre or two or solid organic plantation and then get that certified and then sell from their other nonorganic thousand acres as though it is organic.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong>Bio -</strong></p><p>Charlotte Anthony started out as a biodynamic farmer more than 45 years ago. Currently she is spearheading The Mother Who Plants Trees in Tamil Nadu India. Charlotte's philosophy is that most of us long for connection. "I live with the earth, the plants, the trees, the animals the people around me. They tell me what they need and, by providing it as I can, I receive a sense of belonging." In 1974, she planted a biodynamic fruit orchard at a farm in New Hampshire which is now in prime production 40 years later. Soon after working with Charlotte on her organic orchard, her mentor, a commercial apple grower who learned from his trees, became one of the first commercial apple growers to use integrated pest management, with good returns. She was asked to present on organic apple growing at several events of the New England Apple Growers Association and the New Hampshire Extension Service.</p><p>In 1975 she was called to diversify her skills by attending chiropractic school and learning to work with human ecosystems. In 1980 just before she started practice as a chiropractor, she did a landmark project at a farm in New Hampshire for her spiritual community where she fed 5000 people with most of their food in July after starting that spring. Having all this food ready in July which was unheard of in New England where common wisdom says no gardening until June. Charlotte started her chiropractic practice in 1980 in Oregon. She had great success rates in chiropractic, receiving referrals from medical doctors and helping people with end stage cancer. She had a strong sense that patients would do better if they learned to listen to their intuition and not yield authority to a doctor.</p><p>Charlotte did a large CSA in Paonia, Collorado. In 2004 she went to New Orleans to serve after Hurricane Katrina. In addition to working on a bioremediation project, she became the on-site coordinator for the permaculture gardens which had been severely damaged after Katrina, working with as many as 80 volunteers a day. Charlotte began the Victory Gardens for All project in Eugene, Oregon in 2008. It was a volunteer based group based on a pay it forward system, the people who received gardens planted the next ones. A no till gardening system was used. Compost, all the plant starts and seeds needed to be eating out of the garden within 3 weeks were brought in and 4-6 hours later the garden was finished. Through November of 2011, 650 gardens in the Eugene area were completed as well as 7 food forests in Oregon. Charlotte has written two books: <strong>Surviving Health Care in America</strong> and <strong>101 Ways to Supercharge Your Energy</strong>.</p><p><strong>The Mother Who Plants Trees</strong></p><p>Just before my 69th birthday I awakened in the night hearing a message which said I was to be in India by November 22, 2013. I had less than a month to get ready. One miracle following another I got on the plane for India on November 25,2013. Once here, I was led on an odyssey crisscrossing India many times leading me to farmers who were running out of water to farm. I realized that my whole life had led me to this point where I had what they needed. They could stop using chemicals, use permaculture and natural farming, plant trees, and practice what is called water conservation here (swales, key lines, ponds, etc.) This is called restorative agroforestry. I joined up with a local Tamil Nadu person, Joshua who is an amazing being, with English translator skills, marketing skills and a passion for the mission of helping India grow healthy food. Together we have created an organization, the Mother Who Plants Trees…</p><p></p><p><strong>Contact -</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Charlotte Anthony</strong><br /> victorygardensforall at gmail.com<br /> <a href="http://www.handsonpermaculture1.org/" title="www.handsonpermaculture1.org">www.handsonpermaculture1.org</a><br /> +91 7639468062 (India)</p></div></div></div></div>"STOP FRACKING CALIFORNIA NOW!" Interview with Susan Kuehn, March 15 San Francisco Local Organizer, Food & Water Watch by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/stop-fracking-california-now-interview-with-susan-kuehn-march-152014-03-02T17:30:00.000Z2014-03-02T17:30:00.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><div class="tb"></div><div class="xg_module_body"><div class="postbody"><div class="xg_user_generated"><p><a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2167" target="_blank"><img src="" width="408" class="align-center" height="306" alt="" /></a></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>"STOP FRACKING CALIFORNIA NOW!" Interview with Susan Kuehn, March 15 San Francisco Local Organizer, <a href="http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/">Food & Water Watch</a> by Willi Paul, <a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2167" target="_blank">Planetshifter.com Magazine</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p>Join <a href="http://www.californiansagainstfracking.org/">Californians Against Fracking</a>, along with a whole host of concerned and worried Californians: urban and rural farmers and ranchers and fisherpersons; community groups rising up against fracking along with affected residents who have witnessed fracking operations polluting their communities; scientists and chefs, physicians and nurses, and entire religious congregations coming in from all over the state for the largest anti-fracking mobilization in California history!</p><p></p><p><strong>WE NEED YOU WITH US to make sure Governor Brown hears our message loud and clear to STOP FRACKING CALIFORNIA NOW!</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>What</strong>: <a href="http://dontfrackcalifornia.org/therally/march-15th-faq/">Don't Frack California!</a></p><p><strong>When</strong>: Saturday, March 15, 1 PM</p><p><strong>Where</strong>: California State Capitol, 1315 10th St., Sacramento, CA 95814</p><p></p><p>“One more very important ask-- Please work up announcement of this mobilization in no uncertain terms, urging sign-ups (we are seriously shooting for 3,000-5,000 commitment to being there and we have ~2,000 so far.) So the numbers simply need to increase exponentially during the next two weeks for us to reach this goal! Please remember to <a href="http://dontfrackcalifornia.org/therally/">incorporate our sign-up link</a>.” – Susan</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong>Interview with Susan by Willi</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Are <a href="http://ecowatch.com/2014/02/18/texas-town-seeks-fracking-ban/">communities fighting</a> to ban potential and existing fracking operations?</strong> <br /> Yes. Major cities and counties across the state, including San Francisco and Los Angeles; Marin County, Santa Cruz County, San Benito County, and Butte County have either passed or are working with our Coalition to get moratoriums, bans or ballot initiatives qualified for the 2014 elections in order to halt the practice of hydraulic fracking in their communities.</p><p></p><p><strong><a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/raising-health-air-quality-concerns-texas-fracking-frontier/">Fracking and Air Pollution</a>, in addition to water pollution?</strong></p><p>With respect to air pollution, fracking emits large amounts of the potent greenhouse gases including <a href="http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/climate_law_institute/global_warming_what_how_why/methane/index.html">methane</a>, which is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide and other air pollutants. It undermines urgent efforts to head off catastrophic <a href="http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/climate_law_institute/climate_change_is_here_now/index.html">climate change</a>. More specifically, fracking can <a href="http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/fracking/10_questions.html#4">release</a> dangerous petroleum hydrocarbons, including benzene and xylene into the atmosphere. It also increases ground-level ozone levels, raising people’s risk of asthma and other respiratory illnesses.</p><p></p><p><strong>Who is benefiting from the resources gained from fracking?</strong></p><p>To be sure, oil and gas companies with stakes in US Shale Gas and Tight Oil Plays are benefiting; and, here in California its Chevron, Occidental Petroleum and Venoco, to name a few. And the various countries they are slated to export our resources to will benefit.</p><p></p><p><strong>How are you using media in conjunction with the protest? Will there be a live feed from Sac?</strong></p><p>There will be a live feed from Sacramento although the links are not available yet. Additionally, many will be live tweeting and posting across social media but again, specific hashtags have not been figured out. The rally has a twitter you can follow us at @DontFrackCA. Press advisories and releases will be sent to media outlets as well. Individuals are encouraged to write to their local newspapers and submit letters to the editors beforehand to help raise visibility and encourage community members to join us at the rally or get on a bus!</p><p></p><p><strong>Are you seeking more <a href="http://dontfrackcalifornia.org/partners/">communities as partners</a>, in addition to mostly eco orgs, to support the protest?</strong></p><p>We are growing our coalition base continually. Californians Against Fracking currently has more than 100 partners, all of whom want fracking stopped completely. Member organizations include environmental, business, health, agriculture, labor, political, faith groups, citizen and non-citizen groups, and environmental justice organizations. We've launched two highly successful satellite campaigns: "Chefs Against Fracking" and "Farmers Against Fracking" enjoining California chefs, wineries, farmers and ranchers who are ready to work with us to achieve our common goal of an immediate halt to fracking throughout California.</p><p></p><p><strong>What is your sustainable path? What is your energy / community vision in 10 years for the State?</strong></p><p>We urgently need to make a massive commitment to shift California (and the world) away from fossil fuels and achieve 100% renewable energy -- turning to wind, water and solar energy --- by 2030; and even that date may be too late. The technologies being promoted by Mark Z. Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and University of California-Davis researcher Mark Delucchi, are very promising.</p><p></p><p><strong>Connect local and State politics in the CA drought and fracking for us?</strong></p><p>We need our governor to demonstrate some real courage and prohibit fracking and other extreme extraction techniques and drop his plan to build the massive twin tunnels to divert the Sacramento River. This current drought will define the governor’s legacy as a bold leader or a myopic politician. And it is his actions not his words that will reverberate far into California’s future.</p><p></p><p><strong>Contact -</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Susan Kuehn</strong><br /> Volunteer Organizer/Coordinator<br /> Farmers Against Fracking Campaign<br /> <a href="mailto:smkuehn@earthlink.net">smkuehn at earthlink.net</a><br /> <a href="http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/">Food & Water Watch</a><br /> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FoodWaterWatchCalifornia">Facebook</a></p><p></p></div></div></div></div>“Understanding Redundancy” – A Brief Lesson for Children by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/understanding-redundancy-a-brief-lesson-for-children-by-willi2014-01-13T00:29:57.000Z2014-01-13T00:29:57.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><div class="entry-content clear-fix"><div><div><div><div><div style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><img title="" alt="" src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/safe_1.png" /></span></div></div></div><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>“Understanding Redundancy” – A Brief Lesson for Children by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazine</strong></span></p><p>It is important to connect the concepts of resilience and redundancy to grow and share our growing Transition. For this lesson, understand resilience as the ability of a community to become healthy and successful after something bad happens.</p><p></p><p>From Permaculture (<a href="http://www.patternliteracy.com/resources/ethics-and-principles">Primary Principles for Functional Design – #5</a>), redundancy design requires that each part of the any critical social, food or energy system is supported by multiple back-ups. Redundancy protects us when one or more traditional processes or components fail.</p><p></p><p>Redundancy is also about the recovery phase after an emergency as we work together to return our lives to a safe operational place.</p><p></p><p>*******</p><p></p><p><strong>Here are some examples of redundancy:</strong></p><p></p><p>- Back-up life support equipment and staffing plans at relief clinics</p><p>- Building your house on stilts for protection against high water and predators</p><p>- Squirrels saving nuts in multiple locations</p><p>- A Seed Library – preserving different genetic strains to guard against altered / toxic invader seeds</p><p>- Community Food Forest – multiple crops that all supply vitamin, protein or other nutritional needs</p><p>- Solar batteries that support home heating and cooling when traditional power sources fail</p><p>- Teaching multiple tribe members how to lead and teach important skills, including local land design methods, participatory governance and other Post-Chaos Era community needs</p><p></p><p>*******</p><p></p><p><strong>Note</strong>: This lesson is itself is an example of redundancy as the Internet multiplies the available number of sites that kids that can read this work and implement its wisdom.</p></div></div></div></div>“Collapsed Time Stress Disorder & Mythic Time” by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/collapsed-time-stress-disorder-mythic-time-by-willi-paul2013-12-04T17:39:54.000Z2013-12-04T17:39:54.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p style="text-align:center;"><br /><img title="" alt="" src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_34.PNG" /></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>“<a title="“Collapsed Time Stress Disorder & Mythic Time” by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazine" href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2154" target="_blank">Collapsed Time Stress Disorder & Mythic Time</a>” by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazine</strong></span></p><p></p><p><strong>“Time is a dimension in which events can be ordered from the past through the present into the future, and also the measure of durations of events and the intervals between them.” WIKI</strong></p><p></p><p>But most of us have had some unusual experiences in between, in combination of, and/or beyond past, present and future time. If we can choose the right time for the purpose at hand, we may be more effective readers, writers and collaborators and have a more effective long-term life experience. What about Mythic Time?</p><p></p><p><span><strong>Four Categories of Time</strong></span></p><p></p><p><strong>[A] Past Time –</strong></p><p>Full of memories, past time is represented to a large degree by photos, diplomas and special events. As with Future Time, Past Time fades in our consciousness as we age to nothingness or “no time”.</p><p></p><p><strong>[B] Current Time –</strong></p><p>Current Time, aka Project Time, is a short-term, linear, “plan - go - stop - evaluate - repeat” experience. Current Time is dominated by 24/7, 7:00 AM, the calendar date, “everythingness” all at once.</p><p></p><p><strong>[B.1] Searching (Internet) Time</strong></p><p>The computer and Internet is a combination of Current Time, Past and Future Time. While suspension of a linear experience is possible, Searching Time can include the first two stages of *Mythic Time: we usually have some overt need to satisfy and some initiation to undergo during the search.</p><p></p><p><strong>[C] Future Time –</strong></p><p>Future Time is Fictional, filled with our hopes, dreams, desires; expectations and plans. Future time integrates the other time categories but eventually fades to nothingness or “no time” like Past Time.</p><p></p><p><strong>[D] *Mythic Time –</strong></p><p>Mythic Time owes a debt to <a href="http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php?categoryid=83&p9999_action=details&p9999_wid=272">Joseph Campbell’s</a> Hero’s vision; a non-linear or looping experience that incorporates stages that can often blend or support (benefit or distort) Past Time, Current Time, & Future Time. An artistic, spiritual and / or community practice can result from Mythic Time that transcends the profit and loss; a timeless multi-culture hero figure is a potential result.</p><p></p><p><span><strong>Categories of Mythic Time</strong></span></p><p></p><p>• Need: We first need to understand what we need and our goal(s)</p><p>• Initiation: Alchemy and trust play a large role in our transformational journey in Mythic Time</p><p>• Trek: Walk up the hills and in the swamps; it’s a “marathon for wisdom”</p><p>• Overcoming: Tackling and conquering obstacles is critical; patience rules the way</p><p>o Learning: Keep notes in your tablet; study the journey; teach others with your wisdom</p><p>• Feedback: Back home, whether a blog or a community event, Mythic Time requires your evaluation and outreach</p><p></p><p><span><strong>Points to Consider</strong></span></p><p></p><p>Experiencing Past, Current and Future Time at same time is <strong>Collapsed Time Stress Disorder</strong> (TCSD). A confused voided time space (think day dreaming or being high on marijuana). In this state we are easily manipulated consumers, unproductive and uncommunicative.</p><p></p><p>Isn’t life experience a synthesis or continuum of all of the types? Remember that “those destined to repeating history…” mantra?</p><p></p><p>Don’t we need some amount of Past Time to fuel the other two? Are we not a product of our short-term and long-term memories?</p><p></p><p>Mythic Time returns us to a vision-drenched, open-ended path that prioritizes and harmonizes our way in contrast to many corporate jobs and their single minded, trickle-down politics and limited, pigeon-hole experiences.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong>Willi Paul</strong><br />New Mythologist & Transition Entrepreneur<br />newmythologist.com | PlanetShifter.com Magazine | openmythsource.com<br />@planetshifter @openmythsource @newmythologist<br />415-407-4688 | pscompub at gmail.com</p></div>"Sedona Spells: Kid's Nature Cartoon." Video Short by Willi Paul, NewMythologist.comhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/sedona-spells-kid-s-nature-cartoon-video-short-by-willi-paul2013-11-19T16:35:11.000Z2013-11-19T16:35:11.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://youtu.be/sVq1Ah46vXo"><img alt="centerspace" src="http://openmythsource.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/centerspace1.png" width="317" height="408" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong> <a title=""Sedona Spells: Kid's Nature Cartoon." Video Short by Willi Paul, NewMythologist.com" href="http://youtu.be/sVq1Ah46vXo" target="_blank">http://youtu.be/sVq1Ah46vXo</a></strong></p><h1 style="text-align:center;"></h1><h1 style="text-align:center;">The Spell</h1><h1 style="text-align:center;"></h1><h2 style="text-align:center;">sedona spells</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">v o r t e x h a z e</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">1 2 4</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">c a c t u s p o t i o n s</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">p r i c k</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">s t r e a m b a n k s</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">r e d s a i n t s</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;"></h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">ha!</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">you!</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">u p s i d e d o w n t r e e</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">b e a n e s t n o w!</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;"></h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">s u n 's</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">s o u l f u l</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">a r c h</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;"></h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">u p t o o u r k n e e s</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">f l o a t i n g f o r e s t k e y s!</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;"></h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">u l t r a t e r r a s p a w n</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;"></h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">r o o t s</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">o l d w i n g s</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">t o w e r s k i e s</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">t u n n e l b o y s</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;"></h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">c i r c l e c l o c k s</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">r e l e a s e u s</h2><h2 style="text-align:center;"></h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">t w i n e</h2></div>“Permaculture Teachers & Transition Schools.” Interview with Matt Bibeau, Mother Earth School (Portland), by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/permaculture-teachers-transition-schools-interview-with-matt2013-11-16T18:30:00.000Z2013-11-16T18:30:00.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-label"><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-label"> </div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_4.png" alt="" title="" class="imagecache imagecache-standard align-center" width="287" height="341" /></div></div></div><p></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>“Permaculture Teachers & Transition Schools.” Interview with Matt Bibeau, <a href="http://www.motherearthschool.org/">Mother Earth School</a> (Portland), by Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/">Planetshifter.com Magazine</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p>“Young children are deeply aware and impressionable. It wouldn't be fitting to try to teach permaculture to them in the same way we think of teaching adults. It has to be embodied. It has to be built right in to the experience. The very design, approach and learning environment should communicate the principles of permaculture at work, and demonstrate nature's efficiency, functionality and beauty.” (MES)</p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p><strong><a href="http://www.meetup.com/Portland-Permaculture-Meetup/events/147182492/">Intro to Permaculture for Youth & Child Educators</a></strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Course Topics:</strong></p><p>* Applying PC Principles to Teachers & Teaching<br />* Therapeutic Effects of Nature-Based Activities<br />* Permaculture Classroom Management<br />* Bringing gardens to schools & schools to gardens<br />* Plus a hands-on activity and more if there's time!</p><p>TaborSpace<br />5441 Southeast Belmont Street, Portland, OR<br />Thursday, December 12, 2013<br />6:30 PM to 9:00 PM<br />Registration: $25.00/per person</p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p><strong>Interview with Matt by Willi</strong></p><p><strong>Define permaculture vs. sustainability in this post-occupied world?</strong></p><p>In order to give my perspective on this, I would like to look back a bit farther to the emergence of modern environmentalism. I can remember in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, as an environmental science major, when the term “sustainability” began to come into widespread use. It was a refreshing departure from all terms that started with “environmental” because of the polarization that existed most prominently since Rachel Carson’s publishing of Silent Spring and the initial divergence of economic and environmental interests at a national political scale. Environmental defense strategies and socio-political interests clashed often since, and the era of David Brower-style environmentalism found some success at the expense of a widening of the gap between perceived eco-minded and econo-minded. We have to keep in mind the role of the media in perpetuating and exacerbating this divide, but it existed nonetheless. The stone of David in his battle with Goliath was the endangered species act, and it was leveraged for all it was worth. And without knowing much about birds and forests, plenty of folks loved or hated the spotted owl. The battles between essential habitat and logging interests are one of many such battles.</p><p>Sustainability has multiple embedded meanings. Its success as a meme can be attributed to two main realms: that it evoked a call for balance—a carrying capacity—as a strategy for social and environmental change, and it included economics back into the fold in a way that was palatable enough for policy-makers at varying levels of commitment and integrity across the globe. Its offspring were many. Google search sustainable or sustainability to see what I mean. What I observed during my years in grad school in the mid to late 2000’s was that academics rushed to brand their intellectual incarnation of it, some with more of a longing to be published on the topic than to have any helpful role in collaboration with wider efforts. In my experience, the city/university institutes and collaborations in Portland, OR happen to be the shining example of a seizing of intellectual ownership of sustainability while failing to address some of the most very basic and home-hitting phenomenon that might give the movement credibility among the disenfranchised Americans, and with those anywhere else in the world, most especially in countries whose poverty levels and access to essential goods and services are far worse than even the most underprivileged in the USA.</p><p>In my experience, the Occupy movement represented a national and international news media event that drew its fame from its most basic message that the majority of Americans—and the majority of global citizens as well—have such a minute amount of the overall wealth that our effectiveness in most corporate and political challenges—and therefore our very rights--are undermined by this inequity alone, and that a shift HERE would empower the lower 99% to actually even afford to compete legally, politically and otherwise. Even for the Americans who didn’t camp out or take to the streets, he famed slogan of “We are the 99%” offered a clear, newsbite-worthy glimpse into the gross misappropriation and inequitable distribution of wealth in our country and around the world. A recent study of 5000 random Americans conducted by a Harvard professor and economist revealed that not only does the general public desire more equitable distribution from where we think it is currently, but that the actual distribution is immensely far from where those who were polled think it is (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM" title="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM</a>) (<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/inequality-is-worse-than-you-think-2013-3" title="http://www.businessinsider.com/inequality-is-worse-than-you-think-2013-3">http://www.businessinsider.com/inequality-is-worse-than-you-think-2013-3</a>).</p><p>While I certainly would not argue that proponents of the sustainability movement ignore this disparity, I do believe that in compromising the harder realities of the situation and changing our diets to "consumption LITE", the sustainability movement has rendered itself largely ineffective in influencing change at a scale that might address the most severe issues before irreversible damage is done. And there are a growing number of professionals who are now maintaining that we may have already passed the point of no return where significant warming, ice melting and massive disruption and displacement of human populations is inevitable (and indeed is already happening at a smaller scale).</p><p>If one thing is clear to me from the perspective of the “post-occupied world” (while also acknowledging that much of the world continues to be under occupation of colonizing cultures), it is that people are suffering. They are grieving. The American dream has become a nightmare and the solutions are mostly weaker versions of the problem. And whether it’s the academics, government agencies or corporate policymakers that are taking a turn at defining it, the lot is so often tangled in the political cobweb that the edges of the movement (the radical stuff) have become faux pas topics and receive little or no attention.</p><p>As sustainability transitioned into another way to talk about development and to recruit students to remodeled college degree programs, a whole huge group of people were left with a whole lot fewer folks in positions of stature, tenure and the like working daily to make their lives immediately better. There are undoubtedly some fantastic organizations and efforts out there, and many worthy efforts whose scope is focused wider than the local scale, but for every one rooting for the folks who live day-to-day, paycheck to paycheck, there are probably 100 or 1000 that have nothing to do with it. Amid all the fanfare of conferences, summits, and countless eco-promises and sustainability statements, there’s too little action reaching too few people, and a lot of reasons why people are understandably struggling or in distress. And an increasing number are desperate to varying degrees, and therefore willing to take desperate measures, which some of us witness in our homes and communities and others see nightly on the evening news.</p><p>I think that the most tragic error of the sustainability movement has been its infatuation with working with the strongest and most socially and politically comfortable links and leaving far too much on the wayside. Occupy brought attention to the edges but also branded itself as edgy, and while it experienced relative success in drawing unlikely supporters into the streets in numbers for a common cause not seen since the Vietnam era, it also lost the majority of its base with the dissolution of the camps. And while many new groups spun off from that first tidal wave of action and attention, they seem to be having a more difficult time keeping supporters engaged and maintaining common cause among the causes.</p><p>What permaculture has to offer, in my opinion, is a design to find and strengthen the common cause, and open up opportunities for action that can be initiated right at home, in the yard and around the neighborhood. Permaculture is immediately relevant to those who bear the burden of the current imbalances, injustices and a shortage of access points to correcting them. As a design approach, it focuses on the weak links first and offers guiding principles for how to strengthen them locally and responsibly. As a movement, permaculture has the potential to draw together the households, neighborhoods communities and so forth in a way that takes most advantage of matching needs and resources, as opposed to all having the same needs and relying on the same outside entities to supply them to us. We’re not going to drop natural gas tomorrow, that’s understood, but even the skill sets of improving the energy efficiency of homes would be a service in the community, and the local barter and trade economy would be like a neighborhood version of Craig’s List.</p><p>Permaculture as a movement has yet to see its most glorious days. The work ahead of us is to demonstrate to our friends, neighbors and communities that we in fact CAN meet more of our needs locally, be they culturally or agriculturally, and in so doing, we can discover new ways to leverage our collective power and inspire others into action. A necessary ingredient to this success will be the acceptance of wherever people are in their journeys of learning their impacts and changing their patterns, and focusing more on the direction that we need to be going in terms of reducing certain things and increasing others, and arranging ourselves and our surroundings to the greatest benefit based on the nature of the intended design and function.</p><p>I believe that the overwhelming sense of grief, urgency and desperation that many are facing will be well served with the kind of action that puts more of our own lives in our own control, while also improving the condition of our surroundings (at first) and others, if the excess of local resources enables us to broaden our work to wider horizons. I believe that the fruits of our labor can speak louder than any talking head of any department or movement ever could, and be more effective in implementing long-lasting change for the widest possible audience than any demonstration ever could. As world history has shown us, interrupting business as usual--or even overthrowing the government—is possible, and has been done, and the value of mass demonstration has been proven many times, but the trouble has ALWAYS been in creating a lasting change. It has happened, but is rare. The pattern has all too often been that the new system falls into the same patterns as the one that came before because we never strengthened our roots and built up appropriate communities of support. Permaculture’s likelihood of establishing new patterns that meet the needs of the people in a way that is life-positive and politically neutral seem to be very promising, and worth ample discussion on how it can be implemented with this very goal in mind.</p><p></p><p><strong>Many in the permaculture often focus on food production and related politics (i.e. land rights, toxics and sharing). Are you teaching teachers, parents and children to build resilience and take to the streets if needed?</strong></p><p>In my own permaculture teaching, I start off with clarifying for people the wide reach of permaculture, paying homage to its roots as an agricultural design and offering numerous cultural examples, including but not limited to education, finances, business, and policy. From my time working with the non-profit, <a href="http://cityrepair.org/">The City Repair Project</a>, I learned—and now teach—a form of taking action that is based on designing at the scale of homes, neighborhoods, schools and communities, and inviting the broader community to participate in the reclamation and recreation of our own places; places of living, of learning, of converging. And so in this tradition, taking to the streets is either to meet neighbors and invite them to a potluck, to ask for chicken manure and offer apple pie, or to assess what services are wanted and provided locally to share locally.</p><p>This community-based work also aims to inform and empower local groups of people to envision what they want to change locally, providing some of the training and resources to help them make it happen. The Village Building Convergence is an urban permaculture strategy that has seen relative success and is known internationally. Its design always has room for improvement, and with any system that is finding fertile ground socially, the incorporation of the feedback is one of the most essential parts of the process.</p><p></p><p><strong>How do you suggest we organize and fund folks, many without soil to grow a yield, or things to share, to seed local permaculture projects?</strong></p><p>I believe that everyone has something to share. Some are just in more immediate need than others and are unable to contribute in their current set of circumstances. Some people have sunny yards, some have fruit trees. Others can’t grow much at all in the soil, but can learn ways to take advantage of potted gardens or systems of barter and trade that share. The organization is most effective in small enclaves at first, and as a universal design principle for building an inclusive movement, we have to design for the audience we’re hoping to inspire into more collaboration and action. If we’re hoping that folks are going to be interested enough to inquire and practice some of these strategies and techniques, they have to be able to recognize enough of what’s happening first.</p><p>My teachers have instilled upon me that the question with the most relevance in permaculture is, “What are you designing for?” Trying to maximize the food grown on your lot while creating new habitat and other ecological services is a worthy goal. Doing it in a way that inspires several other homes on your block to sheet mulch their own lawns and have a go at it is even better. Figuring out whom on your block knows how to help you frame your greenhouse and trading some veggies that they don’t have or can’t grow takes it to the next zone of effectiveness and empowerment. And on it goes…</p><p></p><p><strong>What core training and experiences make for a successful permaculture teacher?</strong></p><p>Having a relationship with nature since childhood got me off to a pretty good start. As much of a privilege as it is, being able to spend significant amounts of time in nature for much of my youth developed my keen interest in the natural world and supported me in deciding to pursue a profession that included youth and nature. Since permaculture draws so heavily from the patterns and processes found in and cycled through nature, exposure to these patterns and processes is the most efficient way to learn to see, apply, and then teach the application of them to our human-built world.</p><p>While many people are effectively practicing sound permaculture design in what they do, the permaculture design course marks the beginning of the awareness of this unique field of design, so that we can become more intentional and skilled at it. The PDC summed up much of my undergraduate and grad school learning in about 72 hours, and left me hungry for learning more. As an educator by profession, I was naturally drawn to a permaculture teacher training, which helped me to grasp the sheer magnitude of the application of permaculture, beyond what was offered in the introductory PDC. This also inspired a lot of the work of creating a teacher training for youth & child educators, because not everyone is going to take on teaching adults through the design course curriculum as a day job.</p><p>Aside from the value of fitting your permaculture glasses, so to speak, which I believe happens in the first weekend of a PDC or in a shorter introduction course, the rest of the work is in taking as many opportunities as you can to practice. Failures make for good stories too. And for those who don’t have access to classes, having access to projects and initiatives that demonstrate good permaculture design can help inspire one’s own practice of trying things out and seeing what works. Some of the most well-known permaculture teachers had no formal training in permaculture. They were usually very connected to nature, successful at implementing some of nature’s secrets in their farming, and were discovered and celebrated by the international permaculture community. Remember, WWND?</p><p></p><p><strong>Please offer some insight into your call that permaculture teaching and design “demonstrate nature's efficiency, functionality and beauty?”</strong></p><p>Nature has no waste, and thus offers us the greatest challenge to design systems that approach this level of efficiency. Where do we see room for improvement in the efficient and effective use of resources in how we plant and maintain our garden? Build or retrofit our house? In how our children receive an education?</p><p>The rich learning accessible to us through observing and interpreting nature goes well beyond the recognition that it has no waste. It’s that this great recycling of energy and matter—if left up to its own devices—will support diverse species and function as habitat for multiple species. It is intrinsically highly functional. That doesn’t necessarily mean maximum number of species, but it does mean maximum number of interactions and connections. Sometimes a mature ecosystem has less tree species diversity than its earlier stages of succession, but those trees that stand are literally growing up in the soils of past forests and, if undisturbed, are connected by a network of soil life so complex that we cannot recreate it. We can learn from it though, and bring aspects of what nature does so well into our design, and hopefully, get positive results. And if not, we try a different method or technique; try to understand a little bit more about how nature does it so well, and keep on trying. What are we overlooking? It can be great fun unlocking these secrets of the natural world and putting them to good work in support of a very simple set of ethics.</p><p>From classroom design and behavior management to community-based learning and everything in-between, finding the balance between designing for efficiency (creating more work to expand the learning edge can be a good thing), beauty (we want to be naturally drawn to what we’re creating, not deterred by it) and functionality (the better it works, the less you have to!) are all key. Whether it’s the garden we grow or the style in which we teach, permaculture design can demonstrate the wisdom found in nature and be utilized to improve the learning environment.</p><p></p><p><strong>What did Marisha Auerbach pass on to you that you would like to offer to students in this course?</strong></p><p>The offering that comes to mind was asked as a question to her in a class that we were teaching together. “How did you get into permaculture and gardening?” “I started eating flowers”, she replied. So in every course, at one of the potlucks, we always have a salad with many edible flowers in it. Many folks are so surprised and amazed that they are not only edible, but delectable and nutritious! I hope to help spread the permie/green thumb bug as well as she has, and I don’t leave out the flower salad. Learning how much of what is around us can be beneficial to us and learning how to use it is the skill of the ages, whether you’re making a salad or trying to figure out how a closet of boring classroom supplies or a patch of yard outside the classroom can be used to experiment and inspire.</p><p></p><p><strong>Is permaculture a component of the Transition Movement?</strong></p><p>It absolutely is. I recently had the privilege of hearing Rob Hopkins speak at an event that was organized as a “Permaculture & Transition Convergence”. Rob is credited as being the founder of the Transition movement. He shared that transition was born out of “viewing peak oil through permaculture glasses”. I often use the ‘glasses or ‘lens’ metaphor in my own teaching because it gives a more accurate sense of how permaculture is utilized to help us ‘see’ a better way to meet our needs.</p><p>Permaculture is also part of the sustainability movement, and the Occupy movement, and other movements as well. Permaculture has the unique ability to be a design approach as well as a movement. We can look back in history and see how Greek architecture was both design and movement, and permaculture shares this trait with architecture in that it’s not so much a thing, but a way to approach doing a thing. Transition has celebrated great success with its model of regional, national and international organization to effectively shift the conversation around the impacts of and alternatives to fossil fuel use over a very large area. There’s an opportunity for a feedback loop here, where the permaculture movement can learn from one of its offspring movements.</p><p></p><p><strong>Tell us about your Heros and villains in the sustainability movement and please share a story about this from your community work.</strong></p><p>I’ve been a bit critical of the sustainability movement in this piece, but that’s mostly because I want to challenge it to pay more attention to the edges, and to the people who are most in need. The truth as I see it is that sustainability has been an essential a stepping stone—a tipping point—on the journey towards being able to have our impact be a regenerative one. Many fine folks have dedicated their work and their lives to bridging the vast gaps between polarized interests, and this has been no easy work. All of these movements ride on the shoulders of the sustainability movement to some degree.</p><p>My heroes are those who risked their own egos and senses of self to break down internal barriers that cause harm to our friends, families and colleagues, and together, constitute the fibers of the blanket of oppressive culture that remains heavy upon most gender identities, most non-European cultures, and those who are politically or economically disallowed from the same opportunities that their more fortunate counterparts inappropriately leverage to maintain this inequity. It is this personal barrier-breaking work that will support the healthier functioning and the effective collaborations inside and between the many organizations that have an important role to play in what is sometimes referred to as the “Movement of Movements”; the school of fish that chase away the shark or the flock of chimney swifts that scare away the hawk. We’ve got to change the direction of some pretty big systems with pretty well-designed mechanisms for remaining in place and in power.</p><p>As far as villains go, it’s anyone who works inside of the cause that perpetuates the same kind of BS that we’re working so hard to change, mostly in regards to communication and the dominating opinion/put-you-down-to-lift-me-up phenomenon. That said, the opposite is also true (remember that principle?)...Inauthentic communication, as gentle as it might be crafted, is also detrimental to the cause because when real human emotions are happening, ‘cool, calm and collected’ can be very offensive and in some ways, passive aggressive, and when human emotions are not given a space to be expressed, they harden and cause dis-ease.</p><p>In almost every organization I’ve worked in, I’ve witnessed and been a part of both of these extremes. What seems to be in most need is for a greater willingness to be vulnerable, wrong, and sorry. I'm sorry it took me over 30 years to begin to figure some of this stuff out, and for all of the BS I've perpetuated in the struggle to have my own ideas heard and my ego protected. It's a life's work, this journey of self-transformation. A healthy community is one that creates the conditions for these transformations to occur.</p><p></p><p><strong>Do you agree with all of permaculture’s ethics and principles?</strong></p><p>I think that the simplicity of the ethics is its greatest strength. I’ve seen different lists of principles and whether the list is 10 or 40 principles long, they all have value and create edges for inquiry, exploration and (self) reflection. As principles, however, they are simplified and sometimes worded to rhyme and to be remembered, as a literary device. The real work is to find ways that the principle could be true, because it is the exercise of applying them—first in concept and then in practice—that will develop your skill set as a designer. Thinking of ways that they might NOT be true would be a fun exercise too. I’ll have to try that sometime.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p><strong>Bios –</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Matthew Bibeau</strong> is the Executive Director of Mother Earth School. MES is an outdoor preschool through 3rd grade located in Portland, OR. The school also offers adult education programs, where Matt teaches <a href="http://www.motherearthschool.com/permaculture.shtml">Permaculture for Youth & Child Educators</a> with Kelly Hogan. Matt is an active permaculture teacher, youth mentor and community organizer. He hold a B.S. in Environmental Science from the University of New England and an M.S. in Leadership for Sustainability Education at Portland State University, where he studied under renowned permaculture author and teacher, Toby Hemenway and specialized in the development of garden-based education programs within the city. Matt has worked extensively with the City Repair Project's annual <a href="http://vbc.cityrepair.org/">Village Building Convergence</a> and currently serves on the boards of the Learning Gardens Institute and the Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Land Trust.</p><p></p><p><strong>Kelly Hogan</strong> is a co-founder and lead teacher at Mother Earth School, as well as a mother of 2 middle school-aged children. She received her Waldorf teacher training from the Micha-el Institute in 2006 and her PDC in 2009, and has been weaving together the teachings of Rudolf Steiner and Bill Mollison ever since! Kelly and Matt also pursue training in nature crafts and homesteading skills and enjoy passing what they learn on to the children in their school and summer camp programs, as well as to the adults in their courses such as the upcoming permaculture teacher training for educators scheduled for July 20-26 in Portland, OR and June 15-21 in Taos, NM.</p><p></p><p><strong>Connections –</strong></p><p><strong>Matt Bibeau</strong><br /><a href="http://www.motherearthschool.org/">Mother Earth School</a><br /><a href="https://www.facebook.com/MotherEarthSchool">MES on Facebook</a></p><p></p></div></div></div>Caldera - eBook 13 - Best PlanetShifter.com Magazine Interviews 2012 - 13 by Willi Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/caldera-ebook-13-best-planetshifter-com-magazine-interviews-20122013-11-06T17:23:24.000Z2013-11-06T17:23:24.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p><b> <a href="http://communityalchemy.com/caldera/caldera.pdf" target="_blank"><img src="" width="370" class="align-center" height="459" alt="" /></a></b></p><p><span class="font-size-5"><b>intro</b></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-5"><b>Why are myths and stories so important to you?</b></span></p><p> </p><p>Ironically, myths and stories are important because we have so few that have any value or integrity for today’s issues. I say that classic myths are burnt-out and Hollywood’s “big screens” are hopelessly redundant in themes and soap operatic in message. Game Boys and shoot-’em-ups are all the rage at home, but there are no valuable myths in the depiction of white soldiers shooting up Arabs or undergrads doing beer bongs! What spurs me to write my own new myths are the ethics and principles of permaculture. But this so-called new “soil design science” is down on the idea of a spiritual / culture kit, and desperately needs visionary and sustainable partners to widen and realize a “community-garden future” without electricity, gasoline and nation-sponsored war.</p><p><b>AN INTERVIEW WITH ‘NEW MYTHOLOGIST’ WILLI PAUL </b> <a href="http://openmythsource.com/2013/02/06/an-interview-with-new-mythologist-willi-paul-by-sharon-blackie-editor-earthlinesreview-org/">by Sharon Blackie, Editor, earthlinesreview.org</a></p><p> </p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-5"><strong>Interview Index</strong></span></p><p></p><p>Seeds & Ladders. A Conversation with Permaculture Designer <a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2007">Jenny Pell,</a> Pacific Northwest.</p><p></p><p>Justice Begins with Seeds Conference - Interview #2 with GMO Educator & Presenter <a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2015">Pamm Larry</a>, labelgmos.org. Presented by the biosafetyalliance.org. May 18 – 19, SF</p><p></p><p>AppleSeed Permaculture’s New Land Managers Program. Interview with <a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2025">Dyami Nason-Regan and Ethan Roland</a></p><p></p><p>Justice Begins with Seeds Conference - Interview with Presenter <a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2014">Katherine Zavala</a>, IDEX. Presented by the biosafetyalliance.org. May 18 -19, 2012, SF.</p><p></p><p>A Regenerative Ag Incubator for Veterans – Interview with <a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2028">Deston Denniston</a>, Vets Cafe Program (Pac NW).</p><p></p><p>Transition Man. Interview with <a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2030">John Steere</a>, Environmental Alchemist / Planner.</p><p></p><p>Crowdfunding for Permaculture Now! Article / Interview with <a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2035">Christian Shearer</a> of WeTheTrees.com.</p><p></p><p>“Shapeshift Threshold Reverie”. Interview with <a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2040">Maila T. Davenport PhD</a>, AltarPlaces.org, Portland.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://wp.me/p14SHM-K1">The Mythology of Lemmings.</a> Interview by Willi - Article on New Mythology by Kari McGregor, Editor, Spirit of the Times.</p><p></p><p>“Pushing Away from Capitalism.” Interview with <a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2076">Kim Krichbaum</a> of Eugene Gift Circles.</p><p></p><p>“AN INTERVIEW WITH ‘NEW MYTHOLOGIST’ <a href="http://wp.me/p14SHM-MG">WILLI PAUL“</a>, by Sharon Blackie, Editor, earthlinesreview.org.</p><p></p><p>“A Million Seeds” – Interview with Permaculturist / Author <a href="http://wp.me/p2JLqK-cz">Christopher Shein</a>.</p><p></p><p>“Urban Land Scouts Interview with Founder <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2116">Katie Ries”</a>.</p><p></p><p>The Gratitude Code. Interview with Kindista.org Founders <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2119">Nicholas Eamon Walker & Benjamin Crandall</a></p><p></p><p>“The Invisible Pedestrian.” Interview with <a href="http://planetshifter.com/node/2122">Natalie Burdick,</a>Walk SF.</p><p></p><p>“Oil and Water” : Interview with <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2127">Pat Moran</a> - Music Director, Writer, San Francisco Mime Troupe.</p><p></p><p>“Spiraling into Permaculture & New Mythology”- Interview with <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2131">Shari Tarbet</a>, PhD., OSHER Institute.</p><p></p><p>“Mythography & the Universal Human” : Interview with <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2137">Allison Stieger</a>, Principal at Mythic Stories (Seattle).</p><p></p><p>“Alley Allies Project” : Interview with <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2138">Katie Hughes</a>, Mill Street Community Planning, Portland, OR.</p><p></p><p>Hands on Resilience : Interview with <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2144">Russell Evans</a>, Director of Transition Lab.</p><p> </p><p><span class="font-size-4"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1423">See all of the interviews from this period</a></span></p></div>“Oh, PermaTrans, where art thou?” : Rant by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/oh-permatrans-where-art-thou-rant-by-willi-paul-planetshifter2013-11-02T19:00:11.000Z2013-11-02T19:00:11.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><h2 class="entry-title"><span class="font-size-7"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2147" target="_blank"><span>“Oh, PermaTrans, where art thou?” : Rant by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazine</span></a></span></h2><div class="entry-meta"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author"> </span></div><div class="entry-content"><div class="pd-rating" id="pd_rating_holder_2748361_post_3528"><div class="rating-icons" id="pd_rate_2748361_post_3528"><div class="rating-star-icon" id="PDRTJS_2748361_post_3528_stars_2"> <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2147"><img class="aligncenter align-center" alt="" src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_23.PNG" width="505" height="274" /></a></div></div></div><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong><a href="http://youtu.be/7WWdve2VJmU">Children</a>! </strong>Are we passing the buck – and our kids – into crazy crowd funding bashes in the hope for the next best green thing?</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>A Unified Movement? </strong>Where? The Occupy Movement is fried, where are we going?</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>Getting beyond the listservs, pundits, and U Tubes</strong>: how about a new “national newspaper”? Transition Television? Where is permaculture’s mega hit rock band? I can’t hear you!</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>Spiritual Now?! </strong>Forget the religion block from “Permie control” in Australia; without this healing power, we are just farmers.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>Capitalism vs. Transition? </strong>perpetuating profit lust while disguising our greed as global conscious change is ugly.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>Heroes and Business Women? </strong>Too many expensive and redundant events, groups and classes; not enough grass-roots labs and initiatives, urgh?</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>Our Collective Consciousness. </strong>How do you define, measure, evaluate and shape this yack?</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>Where are our <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1855">debated visions of the future</a>? </strong>Big templates for change? Have you heard any feedback from the recent 2013 NorCal Transition – Permaculture Convergence?</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>Painful. </strong>Permaculturists are still using unpaid interns and volunteers to grow their markets!</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>Politics? </strong>How many of the runners for Fall City Council elections are including Permaculture or Transition ideas? I can’t hear you!</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4">* * * * * * *</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>Get More:</strong> <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1976">Permaculture 2012: Four Problems in Need of Integrated Solutions by Willi</a></span></p></div></div>“Meet Us at the Legal Café!” “Interview with Chris Tittle, Director of Organizational Resilience at The Sustainable Economies Law Center” (SELC) by Willi Paul, PlanetShifter.com Magazinehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/meet-us-at-the-legal-caf-interview-with-chris-tittle-director-of2013-10-21T20:00:00.000Z2013-10-21T20:00:00.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p></p><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-label"> </div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_29.JPG" alt="" title="" width="504" height="378" class="align-center" /></div><div class="field-item odd"></div></div></div><p><strong>“Meet Us at the Legal Café!” “Interview with Chris Tittle, Director of Organizational Resilience at <a href="http://www.theselc.org/">The Sustainable Economies Law Center</a>” (SELC) by Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/">PlanetShifter.com Magazine</a></strong></p><p></p><p>“<a href="http://www.theselc.org/city-policies/">We want to live</a> in cities filled with a diversity of microenterprises, urban farms, community markets, transportation-sharing, cohousing communities, shared housing options, cooperative enterprises, and a wide variety of economic solutions developed at the grassroots level.”</p><p></p><p>Shareable & SELC’s <strong>Policies for Shareable Cities</strong> has 32 specific policy recommendations that enable communities to remove barriers to sharing and realize the full benefits of the sharing economy in food, jobs, housing, and transportation. <a href="http://www.theselc.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Policies_for_Shareable_Cities_SELC_9_9_13.pdf">Click here for the PDF</a>.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2146" target="_blank">Interview with Chris by Willi</a></strong></p><p></p><p><strong>What is community, Chris?</strong></p><p>I like to think of community as both place and process. There are communities of place – geographically bounded communities where people share a common connection to a particular area and the experience of living there; there are also communities of passion based on a shared identity or set of values that extend across physical borders but are nevertheless bounded by something shared.</p><p>It’s important that we nurture both types of communities and that we are very clear about how we use terms like “community” in this type of work. <strong>Part of creating community resilience is extending decision-making</strong> and autonomy so people can define their own communities by what they have, rather than what they lack. And as a dynamic process, “community” is always being created or unraveled or adapting to change. Creating tools to strengthen community as both process and place is essential for resiliency.</p><p></p><p><strong>What is resilience? How far does this idea extend in your life?</strong></p><p>The concept of resilience is about learning from the natural world how to adapt and respond to change. In a time of so many converging transitions – in the regenerative capacity of the Earth, in the ways we meet our individual and collective needs, in how we relate to the larger web of life around us – how can we build our collective capacity to adjust and co-evolve in response to changing conditions around us? In the social and economic context, resilience is about creating more culturally appropriate and community-determined ways of meeting our needs, and re-embedding our economies in real human relationships. It’s also about distributing power and decision-making to the most appropriate scale so that people affected by decisions have the most say in what decisions are made.</p><p>At the personal level, I have a variety of practices that help me to stay grounded and balanced, like mindfulness meditation and Aikido. Having traveled quite a bit, living and learning from many different cultures from Japan to Nepal to Senegal to Spain, I have internalized a lot of different perspectives and cultural lenses. The capacity to continually learn, question my own assumptions about what works and what doesn’t, and develop practices that increase my personal and spiritual resilience has been invaluable. At the interpersonal level, I share my living space with a group of really supportive and creative people, and together we cook for each other, grow some fruits and vegetables, and share things through some cool online tools like <strong>couchsurfing, yerdle</strong>, and our local <strong>timebank</strong> – sharing these various things and responsibilities makes it possible for each one of us to live a richer life than if we needed to procure everything ourselves.</p><p>And at the systemic level, my work at the Sustainable Economies Law Center, as well as other projects in the community that I’m involved in, is enabling communities to meet their own individual and collective needs with the skills, knowledge, and passions that already exist close at hand. Ultimately, resilience is as psychological and cultural as it is physical – being able to hold different stories about the world and our place in it is as important as cultivating different ways of meeting our physical needs for housing, sustenance, and health.</p><p></p><p><strong>What tools are you using to "build SELC’s internal resilience?"</strong></p><p>As a small collectively-run organization, the health and wellbeing of each individual is in some ways a reflection of the health of the organization as a whole. So we’ve started an ongoing inquiry into how we as individuals can support each other and ourselves while contributing to the important work that SELC does as an organization. Part of this process is helping to create enabling structures that provide a balance of autonomy and accountability to each of us – for instance we use an organizational process called <strong>Holacracy</strong> that distributes decision-making throughout the organization, allows for self-organization within our different program areas, and uses overlapping circles of responsibility to keep everyone accountable to the organization as a whole. This creates clear ways to provide feedback to each other, rotate and distribute certain responsibilities throughout the organization, and keep an open and ongoing conversation going about where we are as an organization and where we’d like to go. And we just really enjoy working with each other!</p><p></p><p><strong>Please tell us about SELC’s Community Currencies program. What models and heroes are in your vision?</strong></p><p>The community currencies movement is going through an explosion of innovation and awareness right now. The way our current economy functions, most dollars spent in a community ultimately leak out of it as they go to out-of-town corporate headquarters. And because US Dollars are mostly created through debt, they also foster certain social values such as competition, scarcity, and anonymity. Community currencies, on the other hand, can be designed so they always circulate within a community, creating a multiplier effect for the local economy and giving local people a means of exchange when dollars are absent.</p><p>Monetary resilience may be one of the most essential aspects of economic resilience in the coming years, and has the potential to re-localize our economies in very direct ways. SELC is working to identify and remove various legal barriers to communities creating their own means of exchange, and providing legal advice and research on best practices for managing and governing currency projects so they foster values such as cooperation, democratic control, and mutual aid.</p><p>I’ve been inspired by models from all over the world that have sprung up in response to very context-specific needs: the Swiss WIR, for example, developed during the Great Depression as a way for businesses to continue exchanging between themselves when the national money supply dramatically dried up. It has been functioning since then, and serves as a counter-balance to the normal national currency – businesses use it more when the national currency is scarce, and use it less when national currency is abundant. I’ve also learned from pioneering electronic local currencies like the Bristol Pound in England, where the mayor recently announced that he is taking 100% of his salary in the local currency. There are also hundreds of timebanks popping up around the world, which are mutual aid systems based on the radical idea that everyone’s time is worth the same, whether you are teaching someone guitar or offering legal advice.</p><p>A really exciting project that we are collaborating on now is exploring how multiple currencies might fit together into a “monetary ecology” within a particular community. The central idea is that different currencies can be designed to meet specific needs within a community, thus creating multiple ways for meeting people’s personal and collective needs.</p><p></p><p><strong>OK, I'll bite! Tell us about the "neo-liberal market paradigm" and your current alternatives?</strong></p><p>Neo-liberalism, as a political and economic project, is both a process of restructuring entire societies around the duopoly of “the market” and “the state,” and a singular way of viewing the world. What is important to say is that this social organizing system is surprisingly new in the world and has arisen out of very specific cultural and historical contexts – namely modern Western civilization. The “Market Society” involves a process of turning living processes and beings into abstract commodities - or as the influential political economist Karl Polanyi said back in 1944, “disembedding economic activity from community.” A commodity is something with no inherent value of its own, something which only has exchange value - meaning it has value only in a market context.</p><p>The global market, as a way of viewing the world, also has a very specific internal value system – markets prioritize and thus promote efficiency, homogenization, and competition for scarce resources over other values like resilience, diversity, and cooperation. The spread of this worldview is destroying any sense of place or autonomy in cultures that don’t historically prioritize those same values (which is most of the world beyond the industrialized West). The result has been a massive concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, an explosion of global poverty and social inequality, and the very rapid erosion of bio-cultural diversity around the world.</p><p>What I’d like to suggest is that something very different is simultaneously happening around the world, seemingly in small isolated ways but increasingly in solidarity and harmony with one another - <strong>another story is unfolding right where this dominant system and story is collapsing</strong>. New economies are taking shape in myriad ways, and are often exploring new forms of ownership or stewardship of our common wealth (such as community land trusts that hold land in communal ownership), and new interpersonal relationships based on sharing and co-producing the things we need (such as worker owned businesses where those that create the value also make the decisions). These are both radical and commonplace ideas - radical in the way that they challenge the dominant economic paradigm, yet commonplace in that they are unfolding in neighborhoods and favelas and inner-cities and farm communities around the world by normal people. Worker cooperatives, land trusts, urban agriculture, community currencies, and local investing are all re-embedding economic relationships in the larger social fabric of our communities and bioregions, re-humanizing the economy if you will.</p><p>The growth of timebanking and other online sharing platforms are part of a movement to re-create non-market spaces and ways to meet needs outside of the so-called formal economy. I’m particularly inspired by movements, many from the Global South, like La Via Campesina, the Zapatistas, the Transition Movement, and Idle No More that are both articulating and creating alternative visions of what it means to live well, to exist as part of a larger community of life. Right here in Oakland, this is taking similar forms of self-help and mutual aid, such as community-based alternatives to the police and prison system, and the growing food justice movement that is reclaiming vacant land to grow organic and culturally appropriate food for people that lack access to nutrition and economic opportunity.</p><p></p><p><strong>Are you a supporter of “anything Occupy?”</strong></p><p>I think one of the lasting impacts of the global Occupy movement has been a new narrative of the possibility of change. Occupy mini-communities around the world have demonstrated the power of people coming together to not just demand change, but live it and create it in real time. This has helped shatter the really disempowering narrative that “there is no alternative” to the status quo. I was living in the UK when Occupy Wall Street first emerged and quickly got involved in Occupy London, one of the more thriving Occupy camps. Since then, I’ve contributed to one example of the ongoing evolution of the original Occupy model, called Occupy the Farm here in the SF Bay Area. OTF has moved beyond just occupying physical and political space to actually meeting real local needs through the power of collective direct action - in this case re-claiming historic farmland in an urban space and creating a thriving organic farm and community space.</p><p></p><p><strong>Please evaluate your Legal Cafe program?</strong></p><p>The Resilient Communities Legal Cafe is a pay-it-forward legal clinic and community-building space that we’ve been running nearly every week since February in Berkeley and Oakland, and have already provided support to well over 120 organizations and individuals working for community resilience. In addition to the pay-it-forward legal assistance, we often host themed conversations and teach-ins on legal topics such as starting a worker co-op or housing co-op, legal barriers to urban farming, participating in a lending circle, or forming a community energy project.</p><p>We’ve recently expanded these “cafes” to Richmond and are still very much cultivating relationships with other organizations that can help connect us with people who could benefit from these services. We realize this can be a slow process of building trust and co-creating with communities so that what we provide is culturally relevant and truly inclusive, rather than a bunch of outsiders coming in to “save the day.” We are pretty excited about the direction of the Legal Cafe and our vision is that they can be replicated in communities around the country by local groups wanting to meet the legal needs of the resilience movement.</p><p></p><p><strong>Can SELC promote an alternative law practice -- given that most folks seem to be trapped in the capitalist one?</strong></p><p>One of the areas that we are increasingly focused on is breaking down barriers to who can enter the legal profession. Currently in the US, 88 percent of lawyers are white, 70 percent are men, and 75 percent are over the age of 40 – this obviously does not reflect our society very well. Similarly, the average law school graduate leaves school with over $100,000 in debt. This debt burden forces new lawyers to find high paying corporate jobs, which reinforces the capitalist approach to law practice. But California happens to be one of only a handful of states with an alternative path to becoming a lawyer without going to law school, commonly known as a legal apprenticeship. This part-time, experiential process is open to nearly anyone and offers practical, community-based training at nearly no cost. We are actively working to raise awareness about this path and create resources to support apprentices and mentoring attorneys, particularly in communities that have traditionally lacked access to legal education and services. Knowledge is power, so empowering more people from traditionally marginalized communities with legal knowledge could really transform who the law is practiced for and by. Four of our staff, including myself, are on the legal apprentice path and we are keeping a blog about the process at <a href="http://www.likelincoln.org/">www.LikeLincoln.org</a>.</p><p></p><p><strong>How is SELC funded and who are your partners?</strong></p><p>SELC has partnered with over 40 different organizations working on different aspects of community resilience and new economics – from co-hosting workshops on food justice to co-authoring our policy recommendations on shareable cities to collectively working on advocacy initiatives that remove legal barriers to urban agriculture or worker cooperatives. We also have an active and growing community of volunteer attorneys and legal professionals that work with us to run our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151893598617509&set=a.10151893597147509.1073741846.288721762508&type=1&relevant_count=15&ref=nf">Resilient Communities Legal Cafe</a> and outreach to different communities that they are part of.</p><p>At the moment, we are largely funded by small progressive family foundations and individual donors. We are actively working to diversify our funding sources, both through more grassroots fundraising efforts to get more people invested in this work, and by developing creative ways to generate revenue without limiting accessibility to our work. Some examples we are exploring include membership models that extend a wider sense of ownership in our organization into the community. We also barter for things like office space, and are part of some local currencies like Bay Bucks and the Bay Area Community Exchange. If you, dear reader, are interested in supporting our work, I’d love to speak with you!</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong>Chris’ Bio</strong> - A recent transplant to Oakland, CA, Chris is passionate about exploring life-sustaining alternatives to the neo-liberal market paradigm. In his role as Director of Organizational Resilience, he is working to build SELC’s internal resilience and bring principles of social and economic justice into SELC’s funding strategy. Among his many other roles, he is contributing to SELC’s Community Currencies program and working directly in the community on issues such as access to land and local food sovereignty.</p><p>Chris recently completed an MA in Economics for Transition at Schumacher College, an international whole-person learning center near Totnes, UK. While in the UK, he was active in Occupy London’s Energy, Equity and Environment working group, and helped guide a community exploration of Totnes’ monetary ecology with Transition Town Totnes. His dissertation focused on alternatives to market-based ‘development’ in the context of climate change adaptation in the Global South. Chris has previously worked as an ecological educator, outdoor guide, and environmental journalist, earning his BA in Non-Western History and Poverty Studies from Washington and Lee University. His writing can be found on Shareable.net, MNN.com, and his blog at oaktreegarden.wordpress.com. He can usually be found on his bike, in his garden, in the hills, or fermenting tiny lifeforms in his kitchen.</p><p></p><p><strong>Connections –</strong></p><p>Chris Tittle, Director of Organizational Resilience<br /> <a href="http://www.theselc.org/">The Sustainable Economies Law Center</a><br /> Oakland, CA<br /> (760) 569-6782<br /> chris at theselc.org</p></div>
“Hands on Resilience : Interview with Russell Evans, Director of Transition Lab” by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazine
* * * * * * *
Transition Lab has developed viable alternatives to thehttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/4961666-BlogPost-302432013-10-09T18:09:07.000Z2013-10-09T18:09:07.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-label" style="text-align:center;"> </div><div class="field-items" style="text-align:center;"><div class="field-item odd"><span class="font-size-4"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_17.PNG" alt="" title="" width="383" height="386" /></span></div><div class="field-item odd"></div><div class="field-item odd"></div></div></div><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>“<a href="http://transition-lab.com/models">Hands on Resilience</a> : Interview with Russell Evans, Director of <a href="http://transition-lab.com/">Transition Lab</a>” by Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/%3Ca">Planetshifter.com Magazine</a></strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4">* * * * * * *</span></p><p><strong>Transition Lab</strong> has developed viable alternatives to the 40-hour-a-week job that enable the underemployed to get to work doing what they love. First, we connect inspired and creative young people with hosts who are willing to put their empty guest bedrooms to use so their guests can do good work in their community. At the same time, we offer students a curriculum that covers everything from growing their own food to creating affordable housing, participating effectively in our democracy, starting their own business and bringing to life their deepest calling on this planet.</p><p></p><p>Empowered with a comprehensive skill set to build a resilient future, and with the ability to meet their basic needs in just 15 hours of work a week, our graduates become “Skilled Residents.”</p><p></p><p>Think about how radical this is: If you get all your basic needs taken care of in 15 hours a week by doing things that you would do in your free time anyway--things like running a community garden or becoming a green builder--you suddenly gain the freedom to do whatever you want with the rest of your week! One Skilled Resident paid off thousands of dollars in debt in just a few months, while another has reduced his life expenses to $50 a week and is putting his free time into starting a new business. Becoming a Skilled Resident gives you the freedom to do what you really want your life, while also making the world a better place at the same time.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p><strong>Interview with Russell by Willi</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>What is your definition of transition?</strong></p><p></p><p>I have always thought of "Transition" as an organic term that refers to nature constantly adjusting and evolving to co-create a world that we can all thrive in. At Transition Lab, we are excited about the possibility of building a resilient future and part of that is trying new things out. That's where the "Lab" comes into our name- because we know that we'll have to experiment a lot if we are going to be successful.</p><p></p><p><strong>How do you balance the spirit vs. technology mandates at the Lab?</strong></p><p>Do I pray and interact with Spirit every day? Yep. Do I use computers? Yep. That's just part of living in this age I guess.</p><p></p><p><strong>How is the lab marketing its programs and vision?</strong></p><p>Being part of Transition Lab is about being a storyteller that articulates a very different vision of the future. So many people have very apocalyptic views of what lies ahead because of the combination of traumatizing news and a scarcity of visible solutions. We have had the most success marketing our vision by simply living it and sharing our experiences in every way we can- whether we are talking on the phone to a friend, or a putting together a video. We tried to use paid advertising last year which failed spectacularly because it couldn't express the heart qualities of our program. Conversely, the folks that we've been able to sit down and drink tea with have been our best participants.</p><p></p><p><strong>Define localization and share some examples in your work that address this critical Transition theme?</strong></p><p>I think that Localization is really about having control over our lives. Gandhi had a term "Swaraj" which meant making the choice to live justly in all aspects of your life. This includes your job, your community, and yourself. When we look at globalization, it becomes impossible to have any say or control over many of our choices because the systems that are in place where never designed to give us power. Many were even designed to take away our voice. What localization does is to focus our energy into places that really matter- where we really have a voice and opportunity to be creative and responsible people. Good food comes out of that, as do good business practices, good governance, and good communities.</p><p></p><p><strong>Who are the enemies of fixing climate change?</strong></p><p>The only enemy of fixing climate change is old thinking that believes we will be able to solve it through using existing economic models. It's not that I don't believe in using tools like a carbon tax that would fit into our economic system. It's rather a question of creating economic models that can support people as citizens and not just as consumers. When this happens there will be thousands of people ready to engage as global citizens to demand the changes we need to see.</p><p>Another way of saying this is that there is no shortage of people who want our government to do something about climate change. But we are limited because those folks have mortgage payments and jobs that prevent them from taking the time to participate as citizens. In addition to not having the time to participate, most folks who do have the time have never trained in what it takes to be affective citizens.</p><p>Transition Lab was created by a unique set of folks who found ways pay the bills AND to engage as citizens. One of our teachers, Jim Branscome, taught at the Highlander Folks School in the 1950's, which trained Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and many others key civil rights figures in civic engagement. More recently, Jake Hanson and Ashley Sanders have been on the forefront of the Peaceful Uprising, Occupy, and Move to Amend movements. These people have also managed to pay the bills and created prosperity in their lives.</p><p>So we are have brought together models that can economically support folks to become active citizens, while also giving them training in how to be the best active citizens that they can be. As long as people show up and participate, I think we can create the kind of movement that we need.</p><p></p><p><strong>What kind of values and experience are you looking for in Skilled Residents?</strong></p><p>More than anything, we are looking for people who have realized that things are not going to work out if humanity maintains its current trajectory. At the same time, our students need to possess a radical self-respect that drives them to continue working for a more beautiful, just, and fun world that we know is possible. It's so easy to become apathetic, depressed, or cynical about the world. It's much harder to have the courage to think that we have a chance- but we also know that having the courage to move forward is a lot more fun.</p><p></p><p><strong>What zone is most important for the Transition: the home or the neighborhood?</strong></p><p>I don't think any zone is more important than any other. From every place - whether that is the self, home, or neighborhood, we need to act in creative and compassionate ways. We also need to build the models which will support this behavior. Like nature, it's all inter-related and we are just seeking to observe and interact in the ways that best serve us and others.</p><p></p><p><strong>Please view and react: "<a href="http://youtu.be/Es2F-pWVgqQ">Transition Visions from Parking Lots</a>" : Premiere Video, The Sharing & ReSkilling Show</strong></p><p>I'm always inspired to see folks trying things out. I think that's the key to the future- that we don't necessarily try to do everything at once, but focus on our own communities and the solutions we see there. In a sense I think every community does what it sees best for itself. What will need to unfold organically is for communities to radically alter their approach of what they believe is possible. I think that the Transition Visions for Parking Lots is a step in that direction.</p><p></p><p><strong>How is the lab promoting new songs, poems and myths?</strong></p><p>The storytellers of the digital age gather around Youtube instead of the campfire. So we're making videos all the time- each time refining our narrative a little more. Here's the latest. We are also sending out a monthly newsletter each month with all the fun stuff we are up to. Folks can subscribe to that here. Enjoy.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p><strong>Russell’s Bio –</strong></p><p></p><p>Russell began teaching as Program Coordinator at Intercambio in Boulder, CO. He later taught high school Spanish for 6 years and earned a Master's Degree from Naropa University in Contemplative Education. He wrote his master’s thesis on Loving Kindness Meditation and how it could help relieve trauma in high-school students. This work was subsequently published in Shambhala Sun Space. He has also been recognized by various organizations including 350.org and The Huffington Post for his ideas and activism. He is the director of Transition Lab -- and when he is not teaching, gardening, or making ice cream, he spends time with his wife Heather, and their daughter Genevieve.</p><p></p><p><strong>Connections –</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Russell Evans- Director</strong> <br /> <strong><a href="http://transition-lab.com/">Transition Lab</a></strong><br /> russell at transition-lab.com<br /> (970) 433-2513</p></div>