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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] (Fwd) Interview with Bill Mollison Part Two

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  • From: Scott Pittman <pci@permaculture-inst.org>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] (Fwd) Interview with Bill Mollison Part Two
  • Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 11:10:31 -0600

A few comments on Mollison interview:

SV: If someone was interested in studying permaculture in America,
where would you send them? What do you think are the best
centers?

BM: Damned if I know. The Bullock brothers up on Orcas Island
have always been great, you know, mixed system, marsh and hillside
and there are many others, I'm sure. But for every Bullock brother,
there are a hundred woo woos spinning around in circles.

Bill knows very well that their are many good teachers in the U.S. most of whom he trained. He has always enjoyed bashing the U.S. because it is so easy to bash, I must admit I enjoy bashing myself but I confine it to the corporate greed heads and don't bash my allies in permaculture. So in addition to the Bullock brothers there is Dan Hemenway, Jerome Osentowski, Jude Hobbs, Tom Ward, Penny Livingston, Toby Hemenway, Larry Santoyo, Peter Bane, Keith Johnson, and etc. etc. There are many good teachers in the U.S. who have been teaching for many years and who deserve credit for furthering the work of permaculture. At present Bill is miffed at some of those teachers and as a result paints all of U.S. permaculture with the same black brush. It is not helpful.

If this interview had been in Australia I think it very likely that Bill would have had difficulty in recommending anyone there as teachers as well.

Woo woo is another example of Bill's black brush work which is applied to any person or group that holds beliefs contrary to Bill's.

I find it disturbing that in all of the references to permaculture's origin in this article Bill doesn't once mention David Holmgrin. I also found this true when I taught with Bill, that he was loath to share credit with anyone. The personal pronoun "I" predominates this interview which I think is a clue to why Bill is unwilling to promote any work that might not be his own.

Scott







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