permaculture

[Mattiussi Marco <marco.mattiussi@semagroup.it>]

Hi all,
I'm quite new to this list, and this is my first posting, hope will
interest someone....
Moreover, i'm a self teached english speaker, so apologize in advance
for any mistake i could make.

I'd like to suggest the reading that started my interest in
permaculture, organic gardening and so on; 
the book i'm speaking about is the autobiography of one of the greatest
sailorman of all times, 
Bernard Moitessier's "Tamata and the Alliance". 
I began reading it because i was interested in sailing, as a philosophy,
as a free way of living, without boundaries, though disappointed by the
aristocratic behaviour of most of the people involved... you know,
money, girls, sport cars, wasteful way of life and so on (i'm stictly
speaking of Italy, not to generalise).   
However, the french sailor was for me on the "right way" in his view of
sailing, but going across that book 
i started to realize that he was also a great gardener, an
environmentalist and a pacifist of the higher stature; 
He was born in Indochina from french parents, lived there trough the war
and the decolonization process,
then sailed away in the oceans, alternating periods of living in the
small atolls of the pacific sea, where he managed to gardening
organically in harsh conditions, to improve the fertility and yields of
local coconuts plantations, to periods away from everything, alone in a
boat around the world, always in search of the "ALLIANCE", his name for
that mystical fusion of the man with the infinite... but let me stop
tell the story,
just say that he speaks about urban agriculture, forest gardening,
organic gardening, human manure, the difficulties of teaching new ways
of thinking (read about Tamata and the band of the cats!!)...

So, following that, i started reading Bill Mollison 's books, coming
across a lot of new ideas, and, with the help of the net, to realize how
vast is the movement outside my country, where, i'm afraid to say so,
little or nothing is know... yet the potentials i feel are very high.
I'm now starting to go "down to the earth" to cultivate a tiny piece in
my mother's backyard, hoping eventually to start something more
conspicous for the sake of the earth and the nature we're living in,
though neglected as it is today.

Any comment, advise or encouraging word welcome         

Marco Mattiussi (Piedmont, ITALY)