permaculture

[Santoyo & Associates <santoyo@earthflow.com>]

I am probably the last person who would want to defend Mollison 
but... please, let's leave his wife and personal insults out...

The only reason that any of us have ever heard of "permaculture 
design" is because of Bill... it IS his for all intents and purposes 
(with all due respect for David Holmgren)... if he wants to control 
it, I say, LET HIM TRY!..

If we don't want to play the way Bill wants then don't... nothing 
changes... Keep doing what you're doing, call it something else if 
you have to. Yes, that is unfortunate, but I think we can get on with 
the task of earth repair without getting fixated on who wants to 
control a new name for techniques and technologies that are thousands 
of years old anyway.

Bill is too late now... I even want to believe that that is his point 
-that even if he wants everyone to stop -even he can't control it... 
keep going troops! don't stop for anything!

I see it as evolution or, more to the point, natural succession. 
Bill DID say to spread it far and wide, but now he wants to rein it 
in for all kinds of (predictable) reasons -some of them good... 
again, let him try.

The point is that we already have evolved and have, in fact, each 
changed the curriculum in some way... psycho-spiritual crap, 
concensus building, etc; people have added and deleted all kinds of 
things from the original course (I think that that is the root of 
Bill's concerns and recent actions). Correct me if I'm wrong but I 
don't think that building with straw or cob or sandbags is even in 
the book -we have evolved -you see, we already make it ours... just 
keep going... don't stop...

I suspect that many of us can do what we do without a collective 
name... I am still going to teach my students to care for the Earth 
and each other and I am going to go right on designing my clients' 
sites and plant trees today and tommorrow and hopefully the next -I 
don't think I will call it anything -just productive...

fight the good fight instead,

Larry Santoyo
San Luis Obispo, California