permaculture

[Lee Flier <lflier@mindspring.com>]

Gene Monaco wrote:

>Lee, from my experiences 125 is darn close to the limit in the setting of
>those classes.  The Northern Calif. class was more than double that.

I thought the Northern CA. class was about 200-220.  And I agree, under
normal circumstances it would be too many.  But the point was that I
thought it was a very special situation.  I'll probably take more courses
in the future, just to be in my own bioregion and to experience the smaller
class setting.  But I just wanted to stress as someone who was there that I
didn't think the class size detracted IN ANY WAY from the learning
experience - in fact it might have been enhanced by the fact that so many
of the students were already themselves practicing or teaching
Permaculture, or related subjects, and gave presentations during the
evenings to the other students.  In short, Mollison's presence coupled with
aggressive marketing created a unique critical mass of people who would
probably not have met otherwise.  I thought it was great.

I will add that the Southern California residents who were at this course
felt sufficiently bonded by the experience that they have formed the South
Coast Permaculture Guild (sorry Dan!), and I've already received numerous
flyers, emails and other news of wonderful events they have sponsored in
that region. They also pledged to continue to monitor the facilities where
the course was held - for which the class made design recommendations.
This was REALLY encouraging news to me, as I am from Los Angeles and was
NEVER able to mobilize people in that area to get together to do community
improvement work.

Make no mistake, a lot of good things came out of that course!

>>I agree with you that I think the promoters screwed up, but not for that
>particular reason. <
>
>What then?  I respect Dan's position that we shouldn't gossip, but if there
>is no dialogue on issues without Mollison's presence then we're not going
>to uncover other things pertinent to what we're doing.

Well, I think the problem had little to do with Mollison anyway.  In a
nutshell I think the problem was the promoters' motivations.  Scott Pittman
sent a very frank and open letter to all the students explaining to us what
happened (some of which was mentioned in the PC Activist but I think a lot
of relevant stuff was omitted), starting with the fact that Dave Blume
repeatedly asked Scott and Bill if he could co-teach the course with them
(this in spite of the fact that Mr. Blume only himself took his first
course a year and a half ago).  Scott and Bill politely told him no, but
even without having received Scott's letter I could tell during the course
that Dave's agenda was to draw attention to himself.  He several times
tried to schedule speakers and activities of his own choosing, during class
time, and without notifying Bill and Scott.  Bill was furious about this on
at least one occasion that I witnessed.

Scott also pointed out in his letter (which is certainly provably true)
that he and Bill had told Dave they intended to register the Internet
domain name permaculture-institute.org, but when they tried they found it
had already been registered by Dave Blume!  I remember sending Blume e-mail
before the course and wondering why in the world he would choose that name
when his organization is called International Institute for Ecological
Agriculture.

This and many other smaller incidents I observed at the course really gave
me the feeling that the promoters were just using these courses to draw
attention to themselves at the expense of everyone else.  This was before I
even heard the allegations in Scott's letter about misappropriated or
"missing" money from the courses, etc.

I was very saddened by this because I thought Dave was clearly a
knowledgeable and experienced farmer and has a lot to offer in his own
right, without resorting to such things.  His father is a farmer here in
Georgia and sells his produce at the local organic farmers' market, along
with my other farmer friend  Christopher Daugherty, who was also at the
course in California and also experienced difficulties with Dave despite
being friends with his father!

Well, people are complicated.  But I hope everyone involved has learned
something and I guess we'll all continue to learn as the rest of the
"drama" unfolds.

= Lee =


==================================
Lee A. Flier
lflier@mindspring.com
http://lflier.home.mindspring.com
Atlanta and Ellijay, Georgia, U.S.A.