permaculture

[Richard Morris <pfaf@scs.leeds.ac.uk>]

Ava wrote,
> Speaking of Purdue!  Home of Dr. Jim Simons and his 'New Crop' program.
<snip>
> They do nothing here to help support permaculture, sustainability, etc.  
> I've tried getting information, etc. from Dr. Simon and he won't even take 
> the time to respond. 

You may be aiming a little high in the organization. Try ringing
one of secretaries and find out if there's any graduate
students/postdocs
about. You'll probably find them less busy and more approachable. If
his dept is anything like ours the the top people are incredibly busy
going to conferences, sitting on committees, writing papers etc. Hence
no time for joe public. It will also help if you have a specific
query and have done your homework. The more knowlegable you are the
more likely they are to see you as a worthy collaborator.
Going in trying to convert them to the gospel of permaculture won't
be helpful.

BTW folks might like to know that Plants For A Future have got our
own domain name now www.pfaf.org. There's also a redesign of the 
home page and a facility to add comments to all our database entries.

        ttfn
                Rich
-- 
Plants for a Future: 7000 useful plants
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