paul - Blog - SCOCO Network2024-03-29T07:21:49Zhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/paulMy 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>“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>"The Transition Movement and the New Global Mythology" (+ PDF ver). By Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Mediahttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-transition-movement-and-the-new-global-mythology-pdf-ver-by2015-01-02T22:00:00.000Z2015-01-02T22:00:00.000ZWilli 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"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2235" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_147.png?width=396" width="500" class="align-center" height="549" alt="centerspace_147.png?width=396" /></a></span></div></div></div><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>"The Transition Movement and the New Global Mythology" (+ PDF ver). By Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2235">Planetshifter.com Media</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p>New Global Mythology is digitized, soil, people in synergy. Ideas / fodder / form flow back and forth in our geo-alchemy loop. Not a “one-way ride” or a “top down flip chart, Man.”</p><p>Interestingly, catalysts and <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1908">symbols</a> are the hub and are shared influences in the development of shared resources and media.</p><p>The Internet is a spiritual space in our hearts and on our screens that promotes universal awareness not technology for gadgets and chat sake. It is a high speed crucible for new mythologies and the awareness that comes with them.</p><p>As <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2228">resilience</a> is created, tested and shared in the Transition Movement, this force filters through the Internet bolstering other movements.</p><p>The impact / importance of Jung’s <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2194">archetypes and subconscious</a> in this model are debatable although indirectly represented in “symbols and inspirations.”</p><p>New Global Myths are the result of <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2214">creative</a> and <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2230">creation</a> mythological processes and are co-partners in the growth of Transition values and activities.</p><p>There are plenty of apocalyptic groups pushing their brand of mythology. Transition folks want to transform survivalism’s fear into a new global sharing and peace.</p><p>Journeys and initiations, made famous by Joseph Campbell, are in the permaculture backyard and on the Internet. Where do you want to plow?</p><p>Transition is <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2205">LOCAL</a>, community-sourced and driven. The community garden is often the Hero. The Hero is key in seeing change, teaching new rituals and carving <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2200">new dream songs</a> into myth.</p><p></p><p></p></div>Rituals of the Return (via Transition Movement) by Willi Paul, CommunityAlchemy.comhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/rituals-of-the-return-via-transition-movement-by-willi-paul2014-12-13T16:41:07.000Z2014-12-13T16:41:07.000ZWilli 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"><span class="font-size-3"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_78.jpg" alt="" title="" height="360" width="504" class="align-center" /></span></div></div></div><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>Rituals of the Return (via Transition Movement)</strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>by Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2233">CommunityAlchemy.com</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Are your closets, basements, attics, trunks, offices and garages crammed full of stuff you longer want? Your community can benefit from those clothes and other items. Take a cue from the <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1367">localization principle</a> in the <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2196">Transition Movement</a> and create a <strong>new giving ritual</strong> that gives back to you and others and bolsters meta/physical space in your life.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Rituals of the Return</strong> are active caring rituals that build community while feeding, protecting and reducing the amount of trash in the land-fill.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>We have options:</strong></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">+ Every end of the month, select items that you no longer use and take them to the <a href="http://openmythsource.com/2014/03/10/spring-holidays-transition-tales-3-transition-palo-altos-spring-sharing-expo-march-16-1-3-pm-at-common-ground-palo-alto-video-interviews-hosted-by-will/">Sharing Expo</a> or donate them</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">+ Volunteer at local food bank or shelter</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">+ Enjoy the planting and harvest cycle at your community garden</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">+ Invite your neighbors over for a <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2180">pot luck</a> and talk trust and security</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Why a new ritual? </strong>What do we know about such things? Because this work can be supported within a group of dedicated people. Call this a new individual – community practice that acknowledges love and caring first for others that calls for a <strong>non-religious, spiritual sweat equity</strong> for everybody on Earth.</span></p><p><br /><span class="font-size-3">Ultimately, I am calling for a more hopeful footprint in service to our communities and an integration with Nature as care givers and stewards of the Planet.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>New rituals are the glue</strong>.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">* * * * * * *</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>On Rituals from Planetshifter.com Magazine</strong></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2157">5 New Nature-based Rituals for the Permaculture Transition. Vision by Willi Paul</a></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2225">“Nature is not a Ritual” – Online Roundtable Topic by Willi Paul</a></span></p></div>“Blackwater Rising” – Interview with Regina Hirsch: Organizer: Localizing California Waters Conference. 11/3 – 06/2014, Yosemite. By Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Mediahttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/blackwater-rising-interview-with-regina-hirsch-organizer2014-10-26T22:01:04.000Z2014-10-26T22:01:04.000ZWilli 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" style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_126.png" alt="" title="" class="imagecache imagecache-standard" /></span></div></div></div><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong>“Blackwater Rising” – Interview with Regina Hirsch: Organizer: <a href="http://californiawaterreuse.org/">Localizing California Waters Conference</a>. 11/3 – 06/2014, Yosemite. By <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2223">Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Media</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p><a href="http://californiawaterreuse.org/">Localizing California Waters</a> is a unique conference focusing on Integrated Water Reuse and LID techniques: <strong>Stormwater, Rainwater, Greywater, Blackwater as well as California Water Reuse Policy and Watershed Management</strong>. Half day seminars covering design, management, and permitting will be coupled with tours of systems under construction. Tours will focus on inspection and hands-on construction participation.</p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p><strong>Interview with Regina by Willi</strong></p><p><strong>Who owns our water?</strong></p><p>Besides how much water there is available, this is the question of the year for California. Our water is a common good resource that is finite. Since there is less than 1% of all water on the planet is available as freshwater, and much of that is polluted or unreachable, it is small resource that must be allocated fairly. In California, the state has just had a huge overhaul with three groundwater bills that will steer the public to regulating groundwater supplies for the first time in the history of the state. Who owns surface water, is still a complicated scenario in this state, which still has a ‘first come, first served’ senior water right allocation system. This is contradictory to a finite critical common resource, but very much in accordance with private property rights that are prevalent in the state.</p><p><strong>Please define a watershed from the POV of a civil engineer and a water rights activist!</strong></p><p>A watershed to a civil engineer is a calculation of dynamic forces; a spatial unit of cumulative measures following rivers systems to a common basin. An engineer is looks at a watershed in terms of flow, hydraulics, pollutant loads inputs, land use cover and flooding potentials.</p><p>A water rights activist would define a watershed as a planning unit, a geographical area in which stakeholders who inputs affect downstream basins. Either way, a watershed is a map of geographical inputs which during storm events, flow into a common basin, such as San Francisco Bay. All water flows downhill, and therefore thinking like a watershed promotes the idea that all upstream land uses affect the downstream business and ecology downstream.</p><p><strong>Are you using permaculture principles in your work at the Sierra Watershed Progressive?</strong></p><p>Always. Our favorite is looking to re-frame the problems of the site into solutions. In addition, we also always look to grow our projects from the ground up, starting with soils, and usually looping back into soils. Growing soils has given us a myriad of benefits and resources which interplay into our other design criteria, heat island cooling, drought tolerance, disease resistance, decreased energy consumption, habitat and species diversity, groundwater recharge, and food foresting (for animals and humans). Trees and wastewater have been my favorite of late to get the soil party started, and build on it from there. Lastly, we look to rules of proximity to aid in relationships with local regulators, businesses and neighbors to create the best path for implementation and long term buy in and education of a project.</p><p><strong>What’s hot at the California Water Reuse Policy Council?</strong></p><p>The first statewide : <a href="http://californiawaterreuse.org/">conference</a> on site water and reuse November 3-6th, 2014. This will include input on green guidance documents for onsite water and wastewater. This conference is a unique hands-on build workshop with agency regulators, advocates, designers, residents and students and more, in an incredible setting near Yosemite. Half day seminars will be coupled with half-day tours and builds to get the most of in depth training. Sprinkled in the mix is Brothers Comatose, a fantastic band from the bay area, and various networking and social gatherings.</p><p><strong>Tell us about your new life in the Sierras? Pros and Cons?</strong></p><p><strong>Pros</strong>: Best pro, the people. No surprise, mountain people are tough and typically more connected to their environment. Other pros: No people, no traffic, no people in your granite swimming holes. There is fantastic fall color, great kayaking near beaver ponds, high plant and raptor diversity in my backyard.</p><p><strong>Cons</strong>: A bit more driving to good surfing spots, and continual forest fires, such as the Rim Fire 2014.</p><p><strong>How is Mountain Sage Landscapes working to lessen the local impacts from the state-wide drought?</strong></p><p>Most our larger projects include 30-50% reductions in potable water use onsite. We use every tool from the tool kit possible, depending on the site and users. Rainwater, mechanical water, plant typing, blackwater repurposing, irrigation audits, greywater and stormwater infiltration.</p><p><strong>How do you sell greywater solutions to a residential client?</strong></p><p>I really don’t sell it, as greywater is such a user intense solution. I let greywater come about from an analysis of need and site conditions. Greywater needs to have the right plant pallet, and homeowner or user to have it work well. If the user has a constant stream of wastewater, and the right plant pallet or site, I work out their water budget and let it sell itself. In a drought, sometimes the most reliable source of water in a Mediterranean climate is greywater.</p><p>The most fascinating thing about greywater is that done properly, people may be able to shunt some of their wastewater toxins (pharmaceuticals, hormones, etc.) to a biological soil system that can actually break it down instead of sending it deep into our groundwater or to our surface waters, while provided crucial nutrients and water to plants based systems that can regenerate and be useful.</p><p><strong>Don’t farmers own the water rights to their land?</strong></p><p>Some do, some don’t. First, groundwater rights are part of the land ownership. As for surface water, some land is dry farmed and has no water rights. In some instances water rights are appurtenant to the land, but in other instances the rights may have been severed and transferred off the land.</p><p><strong>What is blackwater repurposing?</strong></p><p>Reusing the effluent from toilets and kitchen sinks once again, typically in a subsurface drip line dispersal setting. You can also reuse it to other beneficial uses if you abide by Title 22 state standards, as well as recharge groundwater with intention to drink it once again (direct potable). This is usually a more cost and energy intensive solution due to water quality standards and monitoring to protect public health. Many advancements are being made in monitoring that may make these methods more efficient, safe and affordable in the near future.</p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p><strong>Regina Hirsch - Bio</strong></p><p>Regina Hirsch is dedicated to bringing appropriate best management solutions to the public by working on the ground in their homes and in public as well as commercial demonstration areas. After working on watershed water quality work at the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Board and the Morro Bay National Estuary Program as Scientific Coordinator, she moved to the Sierras for a different approach to reaching people. She opened Mountain Sage Nursery in 2003, and quickly created a community center in her family (1867 farm house) integrating focused educational programs, high caliber live music, a farmers market, hands-on appropriate landscaping and water integration, all within a nursery café that roots the community together.</p><p>Regina also founded Sierra Watershed Progressive, the watershed-scale arm of Mountain Sage Landscapes which focuses on onsite water best management practices aimed at rehydrating watersheds. Since 2010, Sierra Watershed Progressive has helped design and install projects restoring over 514 acres of habitat and aiming to increase watershed hydrologic recharge functionality through water conservation and reuse. These projects include over 1,327,300 gallons of rainwater (tanks), 2,170,518 gallons of stormwater, 21,560 mechanical water and 4,948,725 gallons of greywater which are reused each year. Recent watershed based projects include projects for California Conservation Corp, San Luis Obispo County, California Polytechnic State University, Mono Lake Committee, and Evergreen Lodge. In addition, Regina is a executive board member of various organizations, such as The Telele Foundation, Clavey Coalition, and the California Water Reuse Policy Council.</p><p><strong>Knowing what people do in their homes and backyards is what can make a difference</strong>, Regina Hirsch’s goal is to spread the word on good and appropriate decision making when it comes to water, energy, plants, soils and most of all, community.</p><p></p><p><strong>Connections:</strong></p><p><strong>Regina Hirsch</strong><br /> Regina at sierrawatershedprogressive.com<br /> Sierra Watershed Progressive<br /> Groveland, CA<br /> 209-206-2234 - cell</p><p><strong>Willi Paul</strong><br /> willipaul1 at gmail.com<br /> New Mythologist & Transition Entrepreneur<br /> @planetshifter @openmythsource @PermacultureXch</p></div>“One web site. One action plan. One planet” - Vision by Willi Paul, CommunityAlchemy.comhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/one-web-site-one-action-plan-one-planet-vision-by-willi-paul2014-10-11T15:30:00.000Z2014-10-11T15:30:00.000ZWilli 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"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2219" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_113.png" class="align-center" alt="centerspace_113.png" /></a></div></div></div><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>“One web site. One action plan. One planet” - Vision by Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2219">CommunityAlchemy.com</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p>One big dream that has recently meandered up my stained whiteboard laments a “super nova-global-local” re-alignment of people and resources. A kind of “last dance” campaign, with a hoped for “Beatles coming to America” cultural impact and vision!</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p>The zillion web masters, their CEO’s and followers banking on today’s electronic frontier must give up server control and join the One Web Site platform. Everything commercial is juried, rated and ranked. Many sales sites decline and drop from the pressure of the sustainability filters. Not-for-profit causes are also scrutinized through critical real Earth parameters like their impact on climate change and species extinction. Putting the planet into one web site (and one global marketplace) will have many untold synergies, energy savings and human-Nature benefits, not yet realized today.</p><p></p><p>I recently asked my Transition-flavored listserv based in Palo Alto if the group had an action plan. Days past: pure silence. Now I realize my hypocrisy! <strong>I have no action plan</strong>. Interests, posts, reads and memories do not bundle into a robust schedule with goals. There are too many disparate movements, like permaculture, with loads of egos, heart and event pages but no long range strategic plans. Why is this?</p><p></p><p>The one web site plan is a great way to distill the issues, generate transparency across countries and reduce the politics and competition between the haves and have not’s - and plan for a just and unified global future.</p><p></p><p>In <a href="http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/">World Wildlife Federation’s <em>Living Planet Report 2014</em></a>, they state: “We are using nature’s gifts as if we <strong>had more than just one Earth</strong> at our disposal. By taking more from our ecosystems and natural processes than can be replenished, we are jeopardizing our very future. Nature conservation and sustainable development go hand-in-hand. They are not only about preserving biodiversity and wild places, but just as much about safeguarding the future of humanity – our well-being, economy, food security and social stability – indeed, our very survival.”</p><p></p><p>We have one planet. Let’s risk attending a few more community workshops before the music stops and our beloved Amazon returns Error 404.</p><p></p><p><strong>This is my mythology and action plan. </strong></p><p></p><p></p></div>Instinct + Paranoia = Resilience? Climate change, species extinction and terrorism in the Chaos Era. By Willi Paul, CommunityAlchemy.comhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/instinct-paranoia-resilience-climate-change-species-extinction2014-09-30T17:35:32.000Z2014-09-30T17:35:32.000ZWilli 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" style="text-align:center;"><img title="" src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_66.jpg" alt="" width="503" height="336" /></div></div></div><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>Instinct + Paranoia = Resilience? Climate change, species extinction and terrorism in the Chaos Era. By Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2217">CommunityAlchemy.com</a></strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p>[ 1 ] <strong>Three Definitions -</strong></p><p></p><p><strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instinct">A behavior is instinctive</a></strong> if it is performed without being based upon prior experience (that is, in the absence of learning), and is therefore an expression of innate biological factors.</p><p></p><p><strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia">Paranoia</a></strong> is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Making false accusations and the general distrust of others also frequently accompany paranoia.</p><p></p><p><strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_resilience">Psychological resilience</a></strong> is defined as an individual’s ability to properly adapt to stress and adversity. It can be learned and developed by virtually anyone. Resilience should be considered a “learned behavior.”</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p>[ 2 ] First, let’s consider the general impact of the equation on <strong>three global concerns</strong> -</p><p><strong>Climate Change</strong>: Moderate public paranoia with little instinctual solutions (avoidance). Low Resilience.</p><p><strong>Species Extinction</strong>: Low public paranoia and little instinctive behavior to reverse course. Low Resilience.</p><p><strong>Terrorism</strong>: High public paranoia with “kill or be killed” instincts. Moderate Resilience.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p>[ 3 ] According to <strong><a href="http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_archetypes">Jungian approach of psychology</a> </strong>, some highly developed elements of the collective unconscious are called ‘archetypes’. Carl Jung developed an understanding of archetypes as universal, archaic patterns and images that derive from the collective unconscious and are the psychic counterpart of instinct.</p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="color:#800000;"><strong>How does this definition of resilience influence both current and potentially new archetypes?</strong></span></p><p></p><p>A. <strong>Permaculture & Nature Archetype</strong>: A love to preserve unique landscapes for future generations. Mistrust of greedy, short-term land and energy developers<br /><strong>Symbol</strong>s: Tree of Life, Permaculture logo, Yosemite, Seeds, Amazon Rain Forest, US Gulf Coast</p><p></p><p>B. <strong>Permaculture & Nature Archetype</strong>: Our hope is to build sustainable systems in our local neighborhoods and towns. Fear of food and fuel shortages; fights for resources between neighbors and governments<br /><strong>Symbols</strong>: Crude oil on rails, GMO; Convergence and sharing expo events; neighborhood plans and new rituals</p><p></p><p>C. <strong>Permaculture & Nature Archetype</strong>: A deep love for freedom to own fire arms; fear of guns and killing.<br /><strong>Symbols</strong>: AK-47, US Flag, Scenes from mass shootings, vigils, pawn shops</p><p></p><p>D. <strong>Permaculture & Nature Archetype</strong>: Fear that global warming will destroy all life on Earth. Mistrust of business and goal of short-term profits<br /><strong>Symbols</strong>: Rising coastal tides, melting polar ice, coal fired power plants.</p><p></p><p>E. <strong>Permaculture & Nature Archetype</strong>: Mistrust of energy privatization and corrupt safety practices. Love of the system and blind faith in corporate responsibility<br /><strong>Symbols</strong>: BP, PG&E, Duke Energy</p><p style="text-align:center;"> - <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2194">5 Proposed Permaculture & Nature Archetypes and their Symbols in 2014, by Willi Paul</a></p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p>[ 4 ] <strong>Study Questions -</strong></p><p></p><p>+ How to change paranoia behavior to instinctive behavior?</p><p></p><p>+ If we update our global symbols, what are the possible benefits?</p><p></p><p>+ Is paranoia a necessary trigger or stimuli for adaption and evolution? Can we teach it?</p><p></p><p>+ How is <strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_and_cover">duck and cover</a></strong> expressed, taught and implemented now?</p><p></p><p>+ Is instinct a <strong><a href="http://openmythsource.com/myth-lab/">mythic trigger</a>?</strong></p><p></p><p>+ Is paranoia is the gut or check of an individual or social movement?</p><p></p><p>+ Is <strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance">surveillance</a></strong> increasing paranoia and weakening resilience?</p><p></p><p>[ 5 ] Next Step -</p><p>How would a “<strong>resilience app</strong>” work?</p><p></p></div>“Our Revolution Starts Here” – The Little Free Library Network. By Willi Paul, CommunityAlchemy.comhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/our-revolution-starts-here-the-little-free-library-network-by2014-09-27T15:30:00.000Z2014-09-27T15:30:00.000ZWilli 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/2216" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_64.jpg" class="align-center" width="438" height="576" alt="centerspace_64.jpg" /></a></div></div></div><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>“Our Revolution Starts Here” – The <a href="http://littlefreelibrary.org/">Little Free Library</a> Network.</strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>By Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2216">CommunityAlchemy.com</a></strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p>“A Little Free Library (LFL) is a box full of books where anyone may stop by and pick up a book (or two) and bring back another book to share. It’s a … <strong>gathering place</strong> where neighbors share their favorite literature and stories – and perhaps more?”</p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2216" target="_blank">read the piece</a></span></p><p></p><p></p><p></p></div>“Light: A Glossary for Creative Writers.” By Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Mediahttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/light-a-glossary-for-creative-writers-by-willi-paul2014-09-20T16:49:51.000Z2014-09-20T16:49:51.000ZWilli 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" style="text-align:center;"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_63.jpg" alt="" title="" height="385" width="505" /></div></div></div><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>“Light: A Glossary for Creative Writers.”</strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>By Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2215">Planetshifter.com Media</a></strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong>Light needs a “source, calendar, scene, context, container, shield, and / or shadow;</strong></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong>a flash light on a journey.” - WOX</strong></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2215" target="_blank">http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2215</a></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong><span style="color:#993300;">excerpt ...</span></strong></span></p><p></p><p><strong>Light as (1-4):</strong></p><p></p><p>1. a <a href="https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091118121258AAeY3kS">symbol</a> -purity, re-birth, cleansing, revelation. Light can also represent safety or a goal.</p><p></p><p>2. a <a href="http://www.pbase.com/image/122976741">metaphor</a>, a progression toward the achievement of knowledge.</p><p></p><p>3. a <strong>mythic element</strong> - comet, camp fire, candles.</p><p></p><p>4. a <strong>weapon</strong> - torch or a flaming arrow.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="color:#993300;"><strong>“Where Does the Light in your Dreams Come From?”</strong></span> - WOX</p><p style="text-align:center;"><span style="color:#993300;"><strong>“It’s Always Light Somewhere.”</strong></span> - WOX</p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p></div>“Soil & Spirit: Quakers & Permaculture” By Willi Paul, CommunityAlchemy.comhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/soil-spirit-quakers-permaculture-by-willi-paul-communityalchemy2014-09-09T17:00:00.000Z2014-09-09T17:00:00.000ZWilli 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"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2212" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_52.jpg?width=499" width="499" alt="centerspace_52.jpg?width=499" /></a></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-4"><strong>“Soil & Spirit: Quakers & Permaculture”</strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>By Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2212">CommunityAlchemy.com</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p>“Having become a Quaker in 1978, <a href="http://quaker.org.nz/rosemary-morrow">Rowe</a> realized that there was a correspondence between Quakerism and <a href="http://www.patternliteracy.com/permaculture-reference/ethics-and-principles/">permaculture</a>. They had in common: care for people, simplicity, community, ethical use of money and right livelihood. They both render infinite positive outcomes when practiced.”</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p>As a low dogma and universal practice, a <strong>Quaker & Permaculture union</strong> could increase community building and action on a host of issues like increasing community gardens and educating the public about the danger of oil on rail and GMOs. A team-up can add vigor, expertise and support for event design, outreach and implementation.</p><p></p><p>The best reasons for this collaboration? Making Friends and the co-enjoyment of <strong>Nature, Song and Spirit.</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p>In my 20’s, I attended many Quaker Meetings as I “ <strong>travelogued</strong>” across the country and each Meeting took me in and shared their love and Light. My silent meditations brought peace and sustainable reflection.</p><p></p><p>Gentle, thoughtful, anti-war and wary of authority, the Society of Friends or Quakers, remains a sane and green hearted group seeking connections to make a just world. Quaker values are aligned with the ethics and principles in permaculture. At the heart of a <a href="http://www.sffriendsschool.org/about-us/quaker-values">Friends school education</a> are the Quaker values, or “testimonies,” of Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality and Stewardship:</p><p></p><p><strong>+ Simplicity</strong> - Clearing the way for deeper engagement in ourselves, our community, and our education</p><p><strong>+ Peace</strong> – Creating peace in ourselves and our community</p><p><strong>+ Integrity</strong> – Being true to oneself and one's values and honest with others</p><p><strong>+ Community</strong> – Respecting and valuing every person's place in our lives</p><p><strong>+ Equality</strong> – Respecting every person's right to fairness and respect</p><p><strong>+ Stewardship</strong> – Valuing the gifts we have been given</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong>Consider this synergy</strong>: <a href="http://www.quakerearthcare.org/deepen-spirituality">Quaker Earthcare Witness</a> is different from organizations that come from a purely environmental standpoint in that they seek to improve their relationship with the Earth by respecting all creation. They feel that a spiritual need rests at the heart of our current environmental crises and that by applying Friends’ ways and testimonies, they can bring a voice of connection, reflection, deepening, and right action to today’s environmental concerns.</p><p></p><p><strong>Query</strong>: How can we help each other?</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong><a href="http://www.quakerearthcare.org/">Quaker Earthcare Witness</a></strong><br /> Info at quakerearthcare.org</p><p></p></div>SYMBO: A Symbolic Permaculture Supported Language for the Post-Chaos Era. By Willi Paul, CommunityAlchemy.comhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/symbo-a-symbolic-permaculture-supported-language-for-the-post2014-08-24T16:55:57.000Z2014-08-24T16:55:57.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2207" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_100.png" class="align-center" alt="centerspace_100.png" /></a></div></div><p></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>SYMBO: A Symbolic Permaculture Supported Language for the Post-Chaos Era. By Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2207">CommunityAlchemy.com</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p>In the near future, after world-wide Chaos breaks apart long-held corporate control on financial and transportation systems, humans will be <a href="http://openmythsource.com/2012/08/16/the-plastique-sea-barge-tribe-new-myth-26-by-willi-paul-openmythsource-com/target=%E2%80%9Dblank%E2%80%9D">living in tribes</a>, with a host of food and security issues. New sustainable systems, based on resource specialization (solar energy, water production, medical services) and geography - called Grids - will be required.</p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2207" target="_blank">http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2207</a></span></p></div>"lawyers, guns and water" - a permaculture sound comic. New Myth #64 - Willi Paul, CommunityAlchemy.comhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/lawyers-guns-and-water-a-permaculture-sound-comic-new-myth-642014-08-20T00:39:20.000Z2014-08-20T00:39:20.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-5"><b>"lawyers, guns and water" - <a href="http://youtu.be/SM5RjmC4W8Y">a permaculture sound comic</a>. </b></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><b><br /><span class="font-size-3">New Myth #64 - Willi Paul, <a href="http://communityalchemy.com/LGW/CommunityAlchemy.com">CommunityAlchemy.com</a></span></b></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><b>Watch the LGW Video <a href="http://youtu.be/SM5RjmC4W8Y">here</a>.</b></span></p><p><b><img src="http://communityalchemy.com/LGW/SCORE.jpg" alt="" width="637" height="997" /></b></p><p>* * * * * * * </p><p><br /><b>“Groundwater is like a bank account. You can’t take out more than you put in on an ongoing basis.”</b></p><p>“<a href="http://blogs.kqed.org/science/2014/06/02/drought-drives-drilling-frenzy-for-groundwater-in-california/">Scientists are already sounding alarm bells</a> about pumping too much groundwater. State water managers estimate that water tables in some parts of the Valley have dropped 100 feet below historical lows. As water levels sink, the land can sink, too — in some places by about a foot per year. Groundwater pumping could also put more stress on the San Andreas Fault. “If you own property, you can dig a well and you can pump as much groundwater as you a want,” says Famiglietti, “even if that means you are drawing water in from beneath your neighbor’s property into your well. So it’s not unlike having several straws in a glass, and everyone drinking at the same time, and no one really watching the level.”</p><p></p><p>That could change. SB 1168 making its way through the state legislature could, for the first time ever, require local agencies to track, and in some cases, even restrict groundwater pumping. Some farmers oppose it, saying it’s a violation of their property rights. But retired attorney and water activist Jerry Cadagan says counties should be thinking hard right now about the permits they’re giving to farmers to drill thousands of new wells. “You’ve got to put reasonable restrictions so people are only pumping out a reasonable amount of water that underlies their land,” says Cadagan, who lives in Stanislaus County, and is suing farmers there for drilling wells without considering the environmental impact.</p><p><br />* * * * * * * </p><p><br /><b>Sound Sample Credits</b> -</p><p></p><p>Floor_trading6.wav<br /><a href="https://www.freesound.org/people/touchassembly/sounds/146320/">https://www.freesound.org/people/touchassembly/sounds/146320/</a></p><p>GunRange_Mega3.wav<br /><a href="https://www.freesound.org/people/touchassembly/sounds/145580/">https://www.freesound.org/people/touchassembly/sounds/145580/</a></p><p>gurgle.aiff<br /><a href="https://www.freesound.org/people/eirons/sounds/117084/">https://www.freesound.org/people/eirons/sounds/117084/</a></p><p>Gas wird angezündet<br /><a href="https://www.freesound.org/people/mwirth/sounds/137174/">https://www.freesound.org/people/mwirth/sounds/137174/</a></p><p>Shopping -- At The Check out --.wav<br /><a href="https://www.freesound.org/people/illtype/sounds/83835/">https://www.freesound.org/people/illtype/sounds/83835/</a></p><p>Working with shovel.wav<br /><a href="https://www.freesound.org/people/Ohrwurm/sounds/64416/">https://www.freesound.org/people/Ohrwurm/sounds/64416/</a></p><p>Anthony Bowman<br /><a href="https://ia600307.us.archive.org/5/items/AnthonyBowmanThisLandIsYourLand/ThisLandIsYourLand.mp3">https://ia600307.us.archive.org/5/items/AnthonyBowmanThisLandIsYourLand/ThisLandIsYourLand.mp3</a></p><p></p><p><b><a href="mailto:pscompub@gmail.com">Contact Mr. Paul</a></b></p><p>copyright 2014: willi paul, planetshifter.com media</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>"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>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>"The Permaculture Potluck Cafe" - "New Myth #53" by Willi Paul, NewMythologist.comhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-permaculture-potluck-cafe-new-myth-53-by-willi-paul2014-05-04T17:21:30.000Z2014-05-04T17:21:30.000ZWilli 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/2180" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_38.png" alt="centerspace_38.png" /></a></div><div class="field-item odd"></div></div></div><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>“The Permaculture Potluck Cafe” – “New Myth #53”</strong></span></p><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>by Willi Paul, <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2180">NewMythologist.com</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p>A <strong><a href="http://layogamagazine.com/content/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=92">concerted grassroots effort</a></strong> with the potential for peaceful solutions is taking root through the spread of permaculture, an Earth-centered expression of the spiritual practice of yoga.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p>A few years ago, Dee Dee’s organic restaurant went under in downtown Richmond - an extravagance that too few could afford during the2021 <strong><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2105">infrastructure wars</a></strong>. But today she still has her house, a garden and a bountiful spirit to match.</p><p></p><p>She walks the neighborhood with a few invitations on long lost and found recycled printer paper, hawking a “transition” idea about sharing and love around her dinner table.</p><p></p><p>The Permaculture Potluck Cafe, as the flyer reads, is part barter, part cooking class, but mostly a great inducement to cook, eat and share stories with her neighbors.</p><p></p><p><strong>It’s the end of the restaurant as we knew it and the start of the neighborhood cafe.</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p>As soon as seven invitations turned into seven reservations, Dee Dee had her head count, setting the coming Saturday nite at 5:30 pm for the cafe. A menu is chalked down on her kitchen blackboard; some folks are assigned to mains and others (she knows her neighbors well) get to bring wine.</p><p></p><p><strong>The weekly Permaculture Potluck Café schedule starts with a weekly food theme:</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>3:00</strong> – Prep cooking: chopping, sautéing, blending, chit chat!</p><p></p><p><strong>5:00</strong> – Friends Mingle in</p><p></p><p><strong>6:00</strong> – Dinner starts</p><p></p><p><strong>8:00</strong> – Dessert with Story Hour</p><p></p><p><strong>9:00</strong> – Leftovers, recipe exchange and hugs good bye</p><p></p><p><strong>9:15</strong> – Clean-up and compost</p><p></p><p>Folks see the Cafe has a new neighborhood <strong><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2157">sharing ritual</a></strong>; a key <strong><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1367">local not-for-profit translation</a></strong> that brings the best of the old restaurant vibe back to families around the block.</p><p></p><p>Dee Dee’s weekly donation bowl is always full with offers to help in her garden and local currency.</p></div>"Life in the Edge (an edu-video)" on Permaculture Principle 8 by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Mediahttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/life-in-the-edge-an-edu-video-on-permaculture-principle-8-by2014-05-02T00:31:17.000Z2014-05-02T00:31:17.000ZWilli 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://youtu.be/6p4XcMgBFW8" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_36.png" class="align-full" alt="centerspace_36.png" /></a></div><div class="field-item odd"></div></div></div><p><strong>"Life in the Edge (an <a href="http://youtu.be/6p4XcMgBFW8">edu-video</a>)" on <a href="http://www.patternliteracy.com/resources/ethics-and-principles">Permaculture Principle 8</a> by Willi Paul,<br /><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2179">Planetshifter.com Media</a></strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Life in the Edge</strong></p><p><span><a href="http://youtu.be/6p4XcMgBFW8"><span><strong>Watch the Video</strong>!</span></a></span></p><p></p><p><strong>Questions for Kids from the Project:</strong></p><p>+ Where are the edges that you live work and play in?</p><p>+ When is an edge a barrier? A passage way?</p><p>+ Can an edge in Nature be a home? Protection for many?</p><p>+ How many examples of an edge are around your house or school?</p><p>+ An edge is where life blends and transforms. Have you ever built an edge?</p><p></p><p>video total time: 2:27 sec</p></div>“The Coil Pattern and the Global Warming Meme” - Vision by Willi Paul, NewMythologist.comhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-coil-pattern-and-the-global-warming-meme-vision-by-willi2014-04-08T19:16:55.000Z2014-04-08T19:16:55.000ZWilli 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/2175" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_30.png" class="align-center" alt="centerspace_30.png" /></a></div><div class="field-item odd"></div></div></div><p><span class="font-size-4"><strong>“The Coil Pattern and the Global Warming Meme” - Vision by Willi Paul, <a href="http://newmythologist.com/">NewMythologist.com</a></strong></span></p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong>I. Consider Two Definitions:</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p><strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming">Global warming</a></strong> refers to an unequivocal and continuing rise in the average temperature of Earth's climate system. Since 1971, 90% of the warming has occurred in the oceans. It is extremely likely (95-100%) that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.</p><p></p><p>A <strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme">meme</a></strong> is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture." A meme acts as a unit for <strong>carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices</strong> that can be transmitted from one mind to another. Memes spread through the behavior that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate.</p><p></p><p><strong>II. Web of evolution of connected memes resulting in Global Warming Meme:</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>The Global Warming meme is a Global Meme – made of smaller events, protests and political shenanigans. Chaos in society has increased from 1950 to present as have the number of memes. While some Small Memes are more important than others, all are inter-connected – like the World Wide Web. As the graphic illustrates, memes can be film-based, political-based, government-based, business or grassroots-based memes.</p><p></p><p>Whether one small meme is more important in the development of the Global Warming Meme is debatable.</p><p></p><p>Please see the <strong><a href="http://communityalchemy.com/GWmeme/GWmeme.pdf">meme map attached</a></strong> (.pdf)</p><p></p><p><strong>III. The Global Warming Meme Story:</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>Life Cycle of a Meme:</p><p></p><p>1. <strong>Inception</strong> - combination of science, commercial trends and spirit = community alchemy</p><p></p><p>2. <strong>Diffusion</strong> - memes are linked to habits and brands and are assimilated by communities</p><p></p><p>3. <strong>Morphing</strong> - a sort of social DNA mixing, changes occur and new memes are created from old ones</p><p></p><p>4. <strong>Integration</strong> – finally memes get “stuck” and become political cliques, song titles, or names for babies and Start-ups</p><p></p><p><strong>IV. Discussion and Value of Memes</strong></p><p></p><p>Memes are “disruptors “or early warnings of chaotic behavior. Of course, memes equally arise out of current chaos (war protests and the PEACE symbol). Memes are Small Data (re: Wilderness Act in 1964) that can combine to form Big Data (Global Warming Meme in 2014 and Peak Oil in 2018).</p><p></p><p>Memes are about specific events, but also about building overall awareness, challenging and integrating new values into the next Big Meme. <strong>Memes are evolutionary agents.</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>Memes are often the “trend” before the trends arise. Best and strongest memes embedded in cultural dialog. Memes could be experienced as archetypes. It is possible that memes contribute to our dreams and help to predict future memes, movements, more disruption and global chaos.</p><p></p><p><strong>V. Future Memes:</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>1. Memes are the building blocks for new stories and myths.</p><p></p><p>2. The inception and diffusion patterns of memes should support the argument that they are predictors of future behaviors. Thoughts?</p><p></p><p>3. Are there any new memes “under the Sun?”</p><p></p><p>4. Will we survive the <strong><a href="http://openmythsource.com/2012/07/29/the-cascadia-funnel-and-the-last-3-eras-on-earth-new-myth-25-by-willi-paul-openmythsource-com/">Chaos Era</a></strong> together?</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>Blister: Our Long, Final Season on Earth by Willi Paul, NewMythologist.comhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/blister-our-long-final-season-on-earth-by-willi-paul2014-02-08T17:17:02.000Z2014-02-08T17:17:02.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2163" target="_blank"><img src="" width="500" class="align-center" alt="" /></a></p><p></p><p><strong><span class="font-size-3"><span>Blister</span>: Our Long, Final Season on Earth by Willi Paul, NewMythologist.com</span></strong></p><p></p><p>“To me ritual is the sacred art of stopping, listening and being. Whether we gather as a group to celebrate and connect, to share the inspiration of tribe or dance in the insanity of personal connection and vision. Ritual allows the humdrum of perceived normality to collapse beneath delicious connection as we reach out to our inspiration, to our ancestors and the spirits of place. Ritual is that place outside of time where we express the connection between tribe and land.” <a href="http://druidnetwork.org/what-is-druidry/elements-of-ritual/point-ritual/">Kris Hughes</a></p><p></p><p><strong>Please don’t tell me the seasons are gone?</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>*******</p><p></p><p>“<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Season">A season</a> is a subdivision of the year, marked by changes in weather, ecology, and hours of daylight. Seasons result from the yearly revolution of the Earth around the Sun and the tilt of the Earth's axis relative to the plane of revolution. In temperate and polar regions, the seasons are marked by changes in the intensity of sunlight that reaches the Earth's surface, variations of which may cause animals to go into hibernation or to migrate, and plants to be dormant.”</p><p></p><p>In a very few years, when the planet is de-oiled, super-parched, and seed toxic, our Gaian lover will turn into an unforgiving “blister master”, and the notion of <strong>four romantic seasons</strong>, including the fall harvest and the Thanksgiving celebration, will be deleted from our post-digital brains.</p><p></p><p><strong>The Endless Dry Season</strong></p><p></p><p>Given that the traditional four seasons are tied to the Growing Cycle: Composting, Seed Planting, Weeding / Watering and Harvest, a dry parched planet will no longer express or support this organic dance. A terrifying mono season is coming that is only dry and hot. Any artistic ritual that boils up from this egg fry might include displays of shedding, cave dwelling and theatric stages with mock cooling winds.</p><p></p><p>A Sun-torched planet will cook our eyes, ears, throats and skin forcing us to “hide from the fireball”, the Blister Season will force mankind to hunt and peek under cooler Moon-enlightened spaces. If inter-community war is still needed to capture resources, Blister will make obtaining and stock piling water the end game.</p><p></p><p><strong>Blister Season Mythology?</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>With Nature out of the spiritual equation, the Blister season will be separated in two camps: scavengers vs. resourcers. Since there are no seasons to guide <a href="http://openmythsource.com/2012/07/29/the-cascadia-funnel-and-the-last-3-eras-on-earth-new-myth-25-by-willi-paul-openmythsource-com/">Post-Chaos Era</a> human farming and soul searching, only survival stories and clubs will rule. This tricky and final dry chapter in our ritual evolution could <strong>exterminate mythology</strong> all together, given that we use it so infrequently today anyway.</p><p></p><p><strong>Moon glow lipstick and hand printed cave symbols will not save you here.</strong></p><p></p><p>********</p><p></p><p>"<a href="http://shawcss.tripod.com/REL101/ritual/ch5_6.htm">Seasonal ritual</a> is always directed to securing the well-being of both the community and the individual." Seasonal rituals assume that life is a "series" of leases that must be renewed each year.”</p></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>“Storms, Extreme Tides, and Sea Level Rise.” Interview with Author and Climate Explorer John Englander by Willi Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/storms-extreme-tides-and-sea-level-rise-interview-with-author2013-12-30T22:30:00.000Z2013-12-30T22:30:00.000ZWilli 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"></div><div class="field-item odd"></div></div></div><p><strong>“Storms, Extreme Tides, and Sea Level Rise.” Interview with Author and Climate Explorer John Englander by Willi Paul, Planetshifter.com Magazine</strong></p><p>. . . . . . .</p><p>Some of them were dreamers<br /> And some of them were fools<br /> Who were making plans and thinking of the future<br /> With the energy of the innocent<br /> They were gathering the tools<br /> They would need to make their journey back to nature …</p><p>Some of them were angry<br /> At the way the earth was abused<br /> By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power<br /> And they struggled to protect her from them<br /> Only to be confused<br /> By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour<br /> And when the sand was gone and the time arrived<br /> In the naked dawn only a few survived<br /> And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge<br /> Believed that they were meant to live after the deluge</p><p>Now let the music keep our spirits high<br /> And let the buildings keep our children dry<br /> Let creation reveal its secrets by and by<br /> By and by --<br /> When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky</p><p>"Before The Deluge"<br /> <strong>JACKSON BROWNE</strong></p><p>. . . . . . .</p><p><strong>Interview with John by Willi</strong></p><p><strong>It seems that slow environmental impacts require a different mindset and preparedness vs. fast catastrophic events, like flooding or fire? Correct?</strong></p><p>Slowly rising sea level does require a different mindset than catastrophic events, but it's more nuanced that most would likely realize intuitively. To start we should distinguish three things which tend to blend together for most people: storms, extreme tides, and sea level rise.</p><p>We know what a storm surge is and how to prepare, even though there is no long term prediction for the event. "King Tides" are different in that the extreme water heights at certain predictable days of the lunar and astrologic calendar are now flooding low lying areas in most coastal cities from the Bay Area to Miami Beach, to Bangladesh to Australia. Slowly rising sea level worsens the effects of storm and extreme tides, but is hard to notice because by itself, it is so small and slow to change. But in the long term, it will be like the parable of the tortoise winning the race.</p><p>The simple fact is that sea level has not been higher than at present for 120,000 years, the last "warm spot" in the repeating ice age cycles. So we have no recall of that in our culture. Then it got about 25 feet higher than at present. But sea level is now headed even much higher than that level. We just cannot know for sure whether it will happen in a few centuries or a few millennia.</p><p>Sea level is a function primarily of the size the ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica and to a smaller degree the glaciers all over the world. Usually the amount of ice adjusts over thousands of years. Now it is happening quickly. Three figures make clear that we have no awareness in human history for what has now started to happen. For about 6,000 years, sea level has been rather stable, essentially the time span of human civilization. 20,000 years ago, at the maximum extent of the most recent ice age, when the ice sheets extended rather far down the northern hemisphere, global sea level was nearly 400 feet lower than at present, illustrating the range of movement that is possible. Now carbon dioxide levels and global temperature are creeping up and sea level is going in the same direction as it always has for five hundred million years.</p><p>There is a lag time for the ice to melt and the ocean to get higher, particularly at the extremely fast rates of warming over the last century. If we look at the big picture, it was about 15 million years ago, when CO2 levels were at the present level of 400 ppm. Then global average temperature was about 5-10 degrees F warmer and sea level was about 75 feet higher than now. That is why geologists realize we are headed for MUCH higher sea level. We just don't know how quickly that can happen. Could be three hundred years; could be three thousand years. It depends on how warm the planet get over the next century or so, which will be determined by such factors as population levels, how much energy we use and how we make that energy. No one can possibly know the exact answer to those questions for the rest of this century.</p><p>But that is no reason not to being preparing. Rather than arguing about the accuracy of models and predictions for how many inches it will rise by 2050 or 2100, I advocate starting to plan for three feet of rise, which is already inevitable. If the worst happens and that occurs this century we will be prepared. If we can slow the rate of rise by doing all the right things to reduce greenhouse gases, then we might delay it until the next century. But it gives us a clear target for our planning, engineering, and architecture. Planning with the long term picture in view will challenge us greatly, but it can also inspire us to do great things. It should also give us a better ROI "return on investment" - the usual economic metric, since our designs will anticipate three feet and then more.</p><p><strong>How many public agency impacts can you foresee involved as the waters rise on the coast of California? Who will be in charge?</strong></p><p>I can't answer that. I have met with several groups in the Bay Area, including the Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the Joint Policy Committee, who are definitely focusing on the issue. In fact that question of who will be in charge is something that California is asking. Earlier in December I was interviewed by the staff of a state group known as the "Little Hoover Commission" who are mandated to report on the effectiveness of the Executive Branch of State government. They were discussing that very question of whether restructuring will be necessary to deal with rising sea level. Their report is still are in process.</p><p><strong>Define preparedness?</strong></p><p>It is a little similar to earthquake preparedness, which everyone accepts and may have some level of experience, but at the same time is totally different. As I explained above, sea level has not been higher than the present for 120,000 years and is thus the extreme challenge for preparedness and public understanding.</p><p>Preparing for sea level will effectively never be finished, because there is the possibility that sea level will rise by ten feet in as little as a decade if we get a collapse of sections of the West Antarctic ice sheet -- something we simply do not know at the present. We need to hope that does not happen this century, and many scientists think it is a very low probability. But it is very real possibility so we must continue to prepare for higher and higher sea levels. But even if the collapse happens, that ten foot rise will likely happen fairly slowly, perhaps over a decade. So there will be time to evacuate. But the sooner we plan for it the better. Let's start with 3 feet. Planning groups in the Bay Area like SPUR are now looking at this issue.</p><p><strong>How do you propose to teach the average citizen about sea level rise and climate change?</strong></p><p>It is so radical that it is going to take extraordinary effort, coordination, and time. For the first time in human civilization the shoreline has started a slow move inland, as sea level gets higher. This will continue for centuries. Since this has not happened EVER before to our species, it is a big challenge that cannot be minimized. Fortunately the awareness is starting. There are more and more articles in the media, including print and video. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/High-Tide-On-Main-Street/dp/0615637957">My book</a>: "High Tide on Main Street" Rising Sea Level and the Coming Coastal Crisis", is selling much better than I expected both in print, e-book, and audio versions. So there is interest. Your blog reader’s right here are an example of unconventional thinkers who are starting to tune into this issue and looking at the planet shift that it represents.</p><p><strong>Share a myth (story) about Typhoon Haiyan with us?</strong></p><p>I have no direct experience with Haiyan. Often I have been asked, even on television, as to whether it represents an example of human-caused climate change. To most people's surprise, my response is that it is very hard to say that with certainty, even though the higher levels of ocean heat over the last century can be correlated with increased storm activity. Here is an analogy. Imagine a basketball player who typically got twenty points a game and then suddenly started getting 50 points. They test him for drugs and find steroids. Was the last point he got due to the steroids, or was that one of the 20 he was getting previously? Impossible to say. It sounds academic, but it illustrates the trap of saying that a specific storm was due to warming ocean temperatures.</p><p>But here is an effect that was evident with Haiyan. Sea level in that area of the Pacific is about a foot higher than a century ago. Whatever the storm surge of that typhoon, its impact was considerably worse due to the higher sea level. Storm surge is on top of the base sea level. And each foot of higher sea level can move the ocean about three hundred feet farther inland as a global average. That is the example of the hidden effect of slowly rising sea level on the extreme tides and storms with which we are all familiar.</p><p><strong>Tell us about <a href="http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/">geoengineering</a><a>? Are you a fan of manipulating weather?</a></strong></p><p>We should recognize that things are going to get pretty strange this century, just given the elevated CO2 and temperature levels at present. It will be hard to not try to do something in the face of more and more catastrophes. But certainly we have to be very careful with efforts to intentionally tinker with the planet's "HVAC" (heating ventilating & air conditioning) to use the term for our homes and buildings. In fact I think we have been geo-engineering for thousands of years. For example, centuries ago when we discovered antiseptics and reduced natural infant mortality from about ninety percent to less than ten percent we changed the population dynamics. Nutrition and medical technology have also allowed us to alter population levels. Seven billion people on this planet headed to ten billion by mid century could be considered geo-engineering. Everything we do amounts to changing the planet's natural state. It happened even before humans, as other flora and fauna evolved, changing the eco system. To some degree it is a natural process. I know I am digressing, but it is important to put the ominous term "geoengineering" into perspective.</p><p>Now we use the term GEOENGINEERING to mean purposeful ways to reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth, or ways to remove the excessive carbon dioxide that is causing the warming. Given what is happening with our climate, and now melting the glaciers and ice sheets, I think there will be some efforts to try to slow the effects, though it is hard to say when or how. Suffice to say, we need to proceed VERY cautiously due to the possibility of unintended consequences, the "side effects." So I am not a "fan of manipulating weather" as you say, but as our weather goes more and more whacky, and the ice sheets melt, raising sea level, there will almost certainly be some efforts to try to slow things.</p><p>In fact as I explain on my <a href="http://www.johnenglander.net/">blog site</a> and in my book, even if if we all became perfectly "green" and sustainable, if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today, sea level would still rise due to the excess heat already trapped in the ocean. The ocean is about 1.5 degrees F warmer than a century ago. As a result it is simple physics that the ice sheets will continue to get smaller. We can slow the process but not stop it this century. So it seems to me that some country in the world is going to try to reverse things even if it is a "rogue effort."</p><p><strong>New islands are being created from volcanic activity in the oceans more and more. What is the big picture?</strong></p><p>In the middle of the last century, we understood continental drift and seafloor spreading, the mechanism where new ocean bottom is generally created in the mid Atlantic and a similar amount of earth's crust disappears from the Pacific. We realized that the land area was dynamic, a very natural geologic process. In a few places like Hawaii and to a lesser degree in the Caribbean and elsewhere there are some new islands being created when enough lava spews forth and breaks the surface, creating or expanding an island. But that phenomenon will be tiny compared to the amount of land that will disappear as sea level rises.</p><p>For centuries we assumed that sea level was generally fixed, meaning the shoreline was rather permanent, except for some erosion. Geologists did not fully understand the ice age cycles until the 19th century. Even today, most people believe that coastal land is permanent. It is not. The ice age cycles gave us the knowledge that sea level moves up and down about four hundred feet roughly every hundred thousand years. Most of the public still does not understand that. But that was not a problem until a few decades ago, when we realized that we were starting to melt the great ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica very quickly, way outside the natural patterns of the ice ages. At the current rate of warming and melt, we now face a totally new dynamic in terms of the limited duration of most coastal property, even if that duration is more than a century. This is a game changer. It means re-thinking our entire coastal use.</p><p>While really disruptive and potentially catastrophic, it will happen almost in slow motion. This is a huge planetary shift. It means changes in government policy, in architecture, finance, accounting, law -- indeed for our entire society, and our consciousness. It is a new reality. We must begin adapting to this new reality, while we also try to slow the warming (sometimes referred to as "mitigation"). We need to see this as a huge challenge. It can be the glass half full or half empty. If we just focus on the negative, we will become 'frozen' like the deer in the headlights. I believe there is time to adapt. But, there is no time to waste.</p><p>. . . . . . .</p><p><strong>Mr. Englander’s Bio -</strong></p><p>John is an oceanographer and global ocean explorer with expeditions under the polar ice cap, deep dives in research submarines and visits to Greenland and Antarctica. His mission is to be a clear voice on our changing climate and oceans. Mr. Englander's broad marine science background coupled with majors in Geology and Economics allow him to see the big picture on climate and look ahead to the large scale financial and societal impacts, particularly as they relate to sea level rise. For over 30 years, Englander has been a leader in both the private sector and the non-profit arena, serving as CEO for such noteworthy organizations as The Cousteau Society and The International SeaKeepers Society, and The Underwater Explorers Society (UNEXSO).<br /> He is now President of the Sea Level Institute, working with businesses, government agencies, and communities to understand the financial risks as increasing severe storms and long term sea level rise challenge us to adapt to a shoreline that will move inland for centuries. Mr. Englander is a Fellow of the Institute of Marine, Engineering, Science and Technology, and The Explorers Club. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union and several other scientific societies. He blogs at <a href="http://www.johnenglander.net/" title="www.johnenglander.net">www.johnenglander.net</a></p><p><strong>Connections –</strong></p><p><strong>John Englander</strong><br /> johnenglander1 at gmail.com<br /> <a href="http://www.johnenglander.net/" title="www.johnenglander.net">www.johnenglander.net</a><br /> +1-954-684-5859 cellular<br /> Skype ID - johnenglander</p><p>"Copyright by John Englander and used with the author's permission. <a href="http://www.johnenglander.net">www.johnenglander.net</a>"</p><p>//</p></div>5 New Nature-based Rituals for the Permaculture Transition. Vision by Willi Paul, openmythsource.comhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/5-new-nature-based-rituals-for-the-permaculture-transition-vision2013-12-21T17:28:29.000Z2013-12-21T17:28:29.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><div class="field field-type-image field-field-image"><div class="field-label"><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>5 New Nature-based Rituals for the Permaculture Transition.</strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>Vision by Willi Paul, openmythsource.com</strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p></div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><img src="http://www.planetshifter.com/uploads/imagecache/standard/centerspace_36.PNG" alt="" title="" height="1192" width="464" class="align-center" /></div></div></div><p></p><p><strong>Shared Work / Experience > Result + Evaluation > Celebration / Reflection / Lesson / Prayer = Ritual</strong></p><p></p><p>* * * * * **</p><p><br /><strong>Prelude</strong></p><p></p><p>‘A ritual is a stereotyped sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place, and designed to influence (unusual) entities or forces on behalf of the actors' goals and interests.’ Rituals may be prescribed by the traditions of a community…. Rituals are characterized by traditionalism,… sacral symbolism and performance and are a feature of almost all known human societies, past or present.’</p><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual" title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual</a></p><p></p><p>“… one of our most ancient methods for bringing people together is through rituals. When stepping into a sacred space, such as a festival or community garden, you pass through a certain threshold. You are able to step outside of your individuation and participate as one part of a greater whole; the community. The very nature of shared experience requires a certain level of communion.”</p><p><a href="http://permaculturenews.org/2013/08/28/festival-culture-the-importance-of-ritual-and-organized-activity/" title="http://permaculturenews.org/2013/08/28/festival-culture-the-importance-of-ritual-and-organized-activity/">http://permaculturenews.org/2013/08/28/festival-culture-the-importa...</a></p><p></p><p>“Certainly a great deal, perhaps even most, of religious ritual has arrived at mere rote routine or even emptiness after a couple of thousand years. The ritual itself had replaced the sanctity of the real events it was meant to represent. However, ritual is valuable and can have great depths of meaning, can even be a gateway to inspiration, even enlightenment, … and from my observation, the principal ceremony to mark Quaker milestones is a meal: baby and new member welcomings, newcomers’ brunch, graduation, Friendly sevens — all revolve around a table where Friends are gathered to share food. These are not very complex events, but nevertheless, in their regularity and simplicity, maintain the meal as an important ritual celebration.</p><p><a href="http://lightwithspirit.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/ritual-among-friends-quakers-2/" title="http://lightwithspirit.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/ritual-among-friends-quakers-2/">http://lightwithspirit.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/ritual-among-friend...</a></p><p></p><p>“Ritual is meant to inform, educate, and care for the soul and spirit in such a way that inner energy can blossom forth. Rituals encourage people to express their creative potential fully and also connect people with a sense that they are on a team which includes both other human people (in the form of community), and unseen forces of the Other world (like ancestors and allies and nature). It is not a technical, or engineered, chain of logic which connects a ritual to any effectiveness – it is an attempt to enroll whole systems in alliance for healing, movement, birthing the new life that wants to join this world.”</p><p><a href="http://mythicnature.com/" title="http://mythicnature.com">http://mythicnature.com</a></p><p></p><p>“The mythic images associated with the winter solstice help us shift our identification from the individual human condition to that which is eternal, bringing us into alignment with the powers of nature that operate in the universe, and in ourselves—thus generating harmony between macrocosm and microcosm. Amid the dark and cold of the long night, we celebrate the birth of hope.”</p><p><a href="http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php" target="_blank">JCF MythBlast - Winter 2013 Solstice Edition</a></p><p></p><p>“Ceremony and rituals have long played a vital and essential role in Native American culture. Often referred to as “religion,” most Native Americans did not consider their spirituality, ceremonies, and rituals as “religion,” in the way that Christians do. Rather, their beliefs and practices form an integral and seamless part of their very being. Like other aboriginal peoples around the world, their beliefs were heavily influenced by their methods of acquiring food, – from hunting to agriculture. They also embraced ceremonies and rituals that provided power to conquer the difficulties of life,….”</p><p><a href="http://www.legendsofamerica.com/na-cermonies3.html" title="http://www.legendsofamerica.com/na-cermonies3.html">http://www.legendsofamerica.com/na-cermonies3.html</a></p><p></p><p>Earth Activist Training Permaculture Design Course: “This unique permaculture design certificate course has an additional focus on earth-based spirituality, organizing, activism, and social permaculture. Learn how to heal soil and cleanse water, how to design human systems that mimic natural systems, how to use a minimum of energy and resources to create real abundance and social justice. Explore the strategies and organizing tools we need to make our visions real, and the daily practice, magic and rituals that can sustain our spirits. This course is participatory, hands-on teaching with lots of ritual, games, projects, (and) songs… .</p><p><a href="http://www.earthactivisttraining.org/jan_2014.html" title="http://www.earthactivisttraining.org/jan_2014.html">http://www.earthactivisttraining.org/jan_2014.html</a></p><p></p><p><strong>Introduction</strong></p><p></p><p>Rituals have been invented and enjoyed by humans for eons. There is much connective tissue here including historic trends, sacred rites, religious routines, myths and laws.</p><p>The 5 new rituals in this work are synchronistic with ideas from my vision: tribes, the new mythology, in the<a href="http://openmythsource.com/2012/07/29/the-cascadia-funnel-and-the-last-3-eras-on-earth-new-myth-25-by-willi-paul-openmythsource-com/">Post-Chaos Era</a>. Tribes are approximately 20 – 25 humans and their animals and plants are best viewed as the sustainable and spiritual unit for survival in the future.</p><p>Some rituals are fading (like classic myths) while new ones rise as our notion of the sacred evolves. At base, rituals are time-based and Nature-grounded. Finally, one could argue that there are major and minor rituals.</p><p></p><p>* * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong>Key <a href="http://www.patternliteracy.com/resources/ethics-and-principles">Permaculture</a> & <a href="http://www.transitionnetwork.org/cms/york-transition/news/2011-01-01/values-and-goals-workshop-saturday-18-december-2010">Transition</a> Values</strong></p><p></p><p>It’s time to gear-up permaculture and transition principles with the tools of the new world:</p><p></p><p>• Appreciation for land preservation and environmental sensitive crops (non-GMO)<br />• Saving and sharing seeds<br />• Knowledge Sharing<br />• Inclusivity (Youth to Seniors)<br />• Resilience (back-up systems)<br />• Localization (local food and alt economic systems)<br />• Re-use & Re-cycle<br />• Alternative energy sources & practices<br />• Social justice<br />• Obtaining and using the Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC)</p><p></p><p><strong>Seek the Archetypical</strong></p><p>Archetypes are very powerful images or dreams in our creative tool kit that can offer insights and guidance on our journey:</p><p>• Growing Season / Cycle<br />• Spiritual Healing<br />• Visioning<br />• Giving Thanks</p><p></p><p><strong>Preparing for New Rituals?</strong></p><p>Here is a checklist to reference when you are testing the ritual waters:</p><p>• Who is leading the event?<br />• How long is the ritual?<br />• When does it take place?<br />• What are the words?<br />• What is the foundation for the event?<br />• How is it integrated with others vales, ethics, events, practices?<br />• What are the symbols and songs?<br />• What materials / space are required?</p><p></p><p><strong>New <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOrtMowCGEY&p=0FAEA97D12725FB0">Symbols for Rituals</a></strong></p><p>Here are six new symbols from my work in sacred permaculture that can be utilized in the new rituals:</p><p>• Diversity (Soil)<br />• Growth (Seeds)<br />• Harvest (Basket)<br />• Transformation (Fire + Smoke)<br />• Stewardship (Compost Pile)<br />• Localization (Community Well)</p><p></p><p><strong>Stirring <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOrtMowCGEY&p=0FAEA97D12725FB0">New Alchemy & Ritual</a></strong></p><p></p><p>Alchemy is the spiritual driver for the new world. Here are some types of alchemy to consider when building new myths and rituals:</p><p></p><p>• <strong>Imaginative Alchemy</strong>: This alchemy excites and creates our ideas, conflicts and even prayers in our brains.</p><p>• <strong>Eco Alchemy</strong>: Seeds, soil, plants and animals living, birthing and dying in an inter-related system pulsed by eco alchemy.</p><p>• <strong>Shamanic Alchemy</strong>: This is alchemy transmutates healing through ceremonies and rituals lead by a trained spiritual leader.</p><p>• <strong>Sound or Sonic Alchemy</strong>: The ancient alchemic power of song from cave rants to classical music and rock’n’roll.</p><p>• <strong>Digital Alchemy</strong>: Electronic learning and feeling working with computers including chat text, email and documents.</p><p>• <strong>Community Alchemy</strong>: People working with people: transforming attitudes, sharing ideas and making plans.</p><p>• <strong>Earth Alchemy</strong>: Planetary consciousness building and human evolution on a universal scale.</p><p></p><p><strong>5 New Nature-based Rituals for the Permaculture Transition</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Abundance Dance</strong> (Celebrating Nature)<br />Winter<br />Multi-stage art & music festival</p><p></p><p><strong>Compost Festival</strong> (Seed Sharing & Harvest Share)<br />Spring & Fall<br />Planting Tools, Dirt and Food Meet-up</p><p></p><p><strong>Annual Cascadia Convergence</strong> (Concert)<br />Late Fall<br />Big Education and Networking Event</p><p></p><p><strong>Food Forest Work Trek Weekends</strong> (Caring for the Earth & People)<br />Early Spring<br />Multiple Community Work Actions with Evening Pot Lucks</p><p></p><p><strong>Resilience Expo – Practical Seminars and Clothing Share</strong><br />4 times per year<br />Local Community Education and Support for Basic Needs</p><p></p><p><strong>Conclusions</strong></p><p></p><p>Fair to say that the modern rock concert is about big money, big egos, big security, big noise, big lights, big stages, big separation; big banality. But are these scenes a ritual? In contrast, Post-Chaos Era rituals can be hosted through reduced fee / barter exchanges, Nature-centricity, camp fires, mini-community theatre, bottom up and kid focused, not top down corporate profit chasing, not idol worship, but with community- based values, organizing and storytelling.</p><p></p><p>Integrated sacred action, new myths and rituals can start to each Tribe and then their networks.</p><p></p><p><strong>Are your traditions - rituals?</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>* * * * * * * *</p><p></p><p><strong>Additional References</strong></p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2139">“New Sharing & Return Rituals & Their Symbols in Transition...</a></p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2090">"Transition Prayer Percussion Ritual" by Willi Paul, NewMythologist...</a></p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2081">"Cascadia Dream & Rituals" - Children’s Video by Willi Paul, Ne...</a></p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1493">Instinct, observation and tribal wisdom Interview with Bron Taylor,...</a></p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOrtMowCGEY&p=0FAEA97D12725FB0">Permaculture Teaching Video #3</a> - Sacred Alchemy & Symbols for the Permaculture Transition by Willi Paul. Filmed & Edited by claroscura.com</p></div>“THE TALISMAN”. INTERVIEW WITH MYTHOLOGIST WILLI PAUL BY DEREK JOE TENNANT, EARTHEVOLUTION.INFOhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-talisman-interview-with-mythologist-willi-paul-by-derek-joe2013-12-07T23:30:00.000Z2013-12-07T23:30:00.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4">“THE TALISMAN”. INTERVIEW WITH MYTHOLOGIST WILLI PAUL BY DEREK JOE TENNANT, EARTHEVOLUTION.INFO</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><div class="entry-meta"><em><a href="http://wp.me/p2JLqK-ih" target="_blank"><img src="http://earthevolution.info/WP%20Talisman.jpg?width=529" width="529" class="align-center" alt="WP%20Talisman.jpg?width=529" /></a></em></div><p></p><div class="entry-content clear-fix"><p></p><p><em>“</em><a href="http://www.theopinionatedartist.com/2013/06/the-new-mythology-of-life.html"><em>Just before his death</em></a><em> Joseph Campbell was interviewed by Bill Moyers and that interview was later turned into the documentary, “The Power of Myth.” In this interview he postulated the idea that humanity was in need of new mythologies. Ones that were not rooted in the ancient world as all our current ones are. But myth’s that would help us navigate this new and strange world we are creating.”</em></p><p></p><p><strong>Willi, I know you have lots of ongoing projects going. Please tell us about them.</strong></p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/">Planetshifter.com Magazine</a> (1st Gen site)</p><p><a href="http://openmythsource.com/">openmythsource.com</a> (2nd Gen site)</p><p><a href="http://newmythologist.com/">NewMythologist.com</a> (3rd Gen Site)</p><p><a href="http://openmythsource.com/myth-lab/">Myth Lab</a> (9 completed) is an ongoing process to produce New Myths</p><p><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/56">New Myths</a> (50 published to-date)</p><p><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1423">Interviews with Thought Leaders</a> (~ 450 published)</p><p><a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2115">eBooks</a> (13 released)</p><p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0FAEA97D12725FB0&action_edit=1&feature=view_all">Videos</a> (135 posted)</p><p>Children’s Institute for New Mythology</p><p><a href="http://newmythologist.com/workshops/">Workshops and Consultation</a></p><p></p><p><strong>I want to know more about Myth Lab; in particular, we all tell ourselves stories to make sense of our world. How is myth different from these common stories?</strong></p><p>Myth Lab and the New Myths incorporate permaculture and Transition training and values and take a proactive approach to classic mythology that is sleeping with the big boy brands and their trademarks that are not working in our age.</p><p></p><h3><strong>Myth Lab</strong></h3><p></p><p>The Myth Lab <a href="http://openmythsource.com/myth-lab/">process model</a> includes discovering an <strong>Artifact</strong> and <strong>mythic imprinting</strong>. The goal is to integrate permaculture, transition, Nature and sustainability with the emerging values and struggles in the Chaos Age. Myth Lab is designed as an interactive, open source and iterative experience. One goal is clear: we need to build new values and myths to build new Post-Chaos Era food and governance systems.</p><p></p><h3><strong>Myth Lab Key Terms:</strong></h3><p></p><p><strong>Artifact </strong>– The New Myth Artifact is a Nature-Human symbol; examples include graffiti, a bill board, film clip, and a permaculture garden, with special powers and messages to both present and future.</p><p><strong>Mythos</strong><strong> </strong>– The pattern of basic values and attitudes of a people characteristically transmitted through myths and the arts. What is the mythos of the Post-Chaos Era?</p><p><strong>New Mythology</strong> – Is a call for new Nature-based, globally integrated stories independent of any classic mythologies. New Mythology incorporates new symbols, alchemy and rituals with an eye on the future.</p><p><strong><a href="http://transitionculture.org/2008/05/01/what-is-a-transition-initiative-the-archers-definition/">The Transition Movement</a></strong> includes new business exchange schemes where waste is used by another business; garden sharing that allows neighbors to re-use barren land. The movement encourages people to choose local food, including support for smart transit and sharing / barter.</p><p><strong>Mythic Imprinting</strong> – Imprinting is defined as a two-way interaction with a selected Artifact that generates synergistic meaning for both creators and the reader. This iterative and transmutative process is grounded in the initiation, journey and hero work from Joseph Campbell and is one way that neighborhood artifacts can help participants generate new songs, poems and myths.</p><p></p><p><strong><a title="8 Elements of New Myths by Willi Paul" href="http://youtu.be/hfPS5EJxocM" target="_blank">8 Key Elements in the New Mythology</a> include:</strong></p><p></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></p><p><strong>Do myths evolve? If so, how; and especially, can they be made to evolve by our conscious intention?</strong></p><p>Humans create myths in response to their Age; once these stories are popularized, they are passed on to new generations largely unchanged. It is my contention that new myths are needed for our new challenges and dangers. Whether the classic myths are applicable wholly or in part to our Climate Crisis Age is a good <strong>TED</strong> question.</p><p>By creating new myths via conscious intention we evolve. When we stop creating new myths, we perish.</p><p></p><p><strong>One recent myth I was reading on your website points to our near-future using the terms Pre-Chaos, Chaos, and Post-Chaos. Can you explain? Can we avoid Chaos, in your view? And are you hopeful we will transition to a sustainable future?</strong></p><p></p><p>The piece that you are referring to is <strong><a href="http://wp.me/p14SHM-G5">The Cascadia Funnel and the Last 3 Eras on Earth. New Myth 25</a>.</strong></p><p>This an early New Myth supported by permaculture ethics. I see that humankind is struggling against each other in the present Chaos Era but that we can prepare ourselves for cooperation in the Post-Chaos Era. Many of the New Myths are set in the Post-Chaos Era and are my teaching tools for our children’s survival.</p><p></p><p><strong>How can we better spread myth</strong><strong> and storytelling that bypasses the existing paradigm?</strong></p><p>I’d love see Myth Lab in schools and in Scouting. We need to move on from the mind bending control of organized religion and enjoy the broad cultural changes and community building possible with new mythologies.</p><p></p><p><strong>What is the future of myth as it leads us<a></a> on our evolutionary path?</strong></p><p>We are creating a new world together now and we are messing it up! New Myths are a road map to this new place. They will define the communities and Heros and initiations for the succession.</p><p></p><p><strong>What is something I can do today to prepare for our Post-Chaos future?</strong></p><p>Re-organize and control the allocators and resources at your City Hall. This would allow us better control over land use decisions and help to bring people together without the apathy and insider greed that we have now.</p><p></p><p><strong>I also know you are a champion of permaculture. What would you like us to understand about that way of life?</strong></p><p>Well, your sources are off here! Many months ago I came to the conclusion that permaculture (or technology) alone will not “save” us. Without land to design, permaculture is a 30 year old philosophy. I need to be an integrator, combining the best of many fads, movements and the like in a hybrid resource, like my LinkedIn Group (<a title="This is an open group" href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=5080106&trk=anet_ug_hm">New Mythology, Permaculture & Transition</a>) that makes new myths and brings down the corporate power structure that put us in this Era in the first place. Note that most permaculturists practice capitalism while getting unpaid interns to the dirt work.</p><p></p><p><strong>Can you briefly describe how the arc of your life has brought you to the awareness you have today?</strong></p><p></p><p>There are learning dots and consciousness jumps in <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1422">my bio</a> for sure. My love for Nature started early and continues to inform my Myth making today. I do not see this process as an <strong>arc</strong> however; how about a spark rising up from a camp fire?</p><p></p><p><strong>What is an accomplishment you would like people to understand about you?</strong></p><p>That I am striving to stay a spiritual being; to enjoy life long assistance from unseen and un-definable friendly forces.</p><p></p><p><strong>What would you like to tell us that I haven’t asked about yet?</strong></p><p>I was diagnosed at age 19 with bi-polar disorder. Approximately 22 years and 12 manic episodes later my psyche stabilized and the chaotic energies of manic –depression became an asset.</p><p></p><p><strong>How can people best follow your work?</strong></p><p>Everything gets loaded on PlanetShifter.com Magazine first regardless of other destinations.</p><p></p><p><strong>Willi Paul’s Bio -</strong></p><p><br /> Active in the sustainability, permaculture, transition, sacred Nature, new alchemy and mythology space since the launch of <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2115">PlanetShifter.com Magazine</a> on EarthDay 2009, Willi’s network now includes four web sites, a <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups/New-Mythology-Permaculture-Transition-5080106?trk=my_groups-b-grp-v">LinkedIn group</a>, 3 tweeter accounts, a G+ site, multiple blog sites, and multiple list serves. In 1996 Mr. Paul was instrumental in the design of the emerging online community space in his <a href="http://sbs.mnsu.edu/ursi/">Master’s Thesis</a>: “The <a href="http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/planning/articles11/ec.htm">Electronic Charrette</a>”. He was active in many small town design visits with the <a href="http://www.minnesotadesignteam.org/">Minnesota Design Team</a>. Mr. Paul has released <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/2115">12 eBooks</a>, 2140 + posts on PlanetShifter.com Magazine, and over 500 interviews with global leaders (<a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1423">site 1</a> & <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/56">site 2</a>). He has created <a href="http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1855">48 New Myths</a> to date and has been <a href="http://conservatoryofmagic.com/2013/06/01/interview-with-new-mythologys-willi-paul/">interviewed</a> over 25 times in blogs and journals.<br /> Willi earned his permaculture design certification in August 2011 at the <a href="http://www.upisf.com/">Urban Permaculture Institute,</a> SF. Please see his <a href="http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php?categoryid=37&blogid=24">cutting-edge article</a> at the Joseph Campbell Foundation and his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0FAEA97D12725FB0&action_edit=1&feature=view_all">pioneering videos</a> on YouTube. His current focus is <a href="http://openmythsource.com/myth-lab/">Myth Lab</a> - a project that Willi presented at his third <a href="http://newmythologist.com/workshops/">Northwest Permaculture Convergence</a> in Portland, OR. 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></p><p><strong>Willi’s consulting work</strong> is at <a href="http://newmythologist.com/">NewMythologist.com</a></p><p></p><p><strong>Connections –</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Willi Paul</strong><br /> New Mythologist & Transition Entrepreneur<br /> <a href="http://newmythologist.com/" target="_blank">newmythologist.com</a> | PlanetShifter.com Magazine | <a href="http://openmythsource.com/" target="_blank">openmythsource.com</a><br /> @planetshifter @openmythsource @newmythologist<br /> 415-407-4688 | <a href="mailto:pscompub@gmail.com" target="_blank">pscompub at gmail.com</a></p><p></p></div></div>“Words, Color, Sound Samples: Symbols for Kids Art”, Video Short by Willi Paul, openmythsource.comhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/profiles/blogs/words-color-sound-samples-symbols-for-kids-art-video-short-by2013-11-30T15:58:19.000Z2013-11-30T15:58:19.000ZWilli Paulhttps://sustainablecoco.ning.com/members/WilliPaul<div><p><a href="http://youtu.be/2AYNpe7wc2Q"><img class="alignnone wp-image-3602" alt="dirt2" src="http://openmythsource.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/dirt2.png?w=347&h=291" width="347" height="291" /></a></p><h1><strong>“Words, Color, Sound Samples: Symbols for Kids Art”, Video Short by Willi Paul, openmythsource.com</strong></h1><h1>art lesson with colors, sound samples & words for children</h1><h2>Video: <strong><a href="http://youtu.be/2AYNpe7wc2Q">http://youtu.be/2AYNpe7wc2Q</a></strong></h2><h2><strong>Words:</strong></h2><h2>house<br />rules &<br />kids<br />& hope</h2><h2>hands<br />& sky<br />& dirt</h2></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>