permaculture

[Keith Johnson <keithdj@mindspring.com>]

Y'all,

You're welcome to use these articles at your websites, on your blogs, in 
email, with links to our site and accreditation. They were all published 
in the Permaculture Activist. Send them to people who might find them 
useful. Offer them as gifts or something. Enjoy.

Another Kind of Energy or ComPost-Modernism 
<http://www.permacultureactivist.net/PeterBane/Jean_Pain.html> by Peter Bane

Between the Ice and Ocean: The Rising Tide 
<http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=64&Itemid=33> by 
Albert Bates

<http://www.permacultureactivist.net/PeterBane/PBDesigning4Change.htm>Designing 
for Change 
<http://www.permacultureactivist.net/PeterBane/PBDesigning4Change.htm> 
by PeterBane

**Lessons In Village Design 
<http://www.permacultureactivist.net/PeterBane/LessonsinVillageDesign.htm> 
by PeterBane

Keystones and Cops: An Eco-Mystery Thriller 
<http://www.permacultureactivist.net/PeterBane/PeterBaneKeystonesandCops.htm> 
by Peter Bane

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil 
<http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/articles/657> by Megan Quinn

** <http://patternliteracy.com/sustag.html>Is Sustainable Agriculture an 
Oxymoron? <http://patternliteracy.com/sustag.html> by Toby Hemenway

<http://www.ecoresources.com.au/ptv2/page8/files/category-10.html>Apocalypse, 
Not - A Critical Look at Peak Oil Catastrophism 
<http://www.ecoresources.com.au/ptv2/page8/files/category-10.html> by 
Toby Hemenway

Learning from the Ecological Engineers: Watershed Wisdom of the Beaver 
<http://www.permacultureactivist.net/articles/Beavers.htm> byToby Hemenway

Unleashing Abundance as a Community Response to Peak Oil: Designing 
Energy Descent Pathways 
<http://www.permacultureactivist.net/articles/EnergyDescent.htm> by Rob 
Hopkins

Zones and Sectors in the City 
<http://www.permacultureactivist.net/articles/urbnzonsectr.htm>* * by 
Bart Anderson

Gaia University 
<http://www.permacultureactivist.net/articles/gaiauniversity.htm>: An 
Educational Paradigm for Global Regeneration 
<http://www.permacultureactivist.net/articles/gaiauniversity.htm> by 
Tami Brunk

Permaculture and Energy 
<http://www.permacultureactivist.net/Holmgren/holmgren.htm> by David 
Holmgren
*

*Permaculture has at it's roots principles about caring, giving and sharing.

Everyone gives something and everyone shares a yield from the 
application of the principles of caring.

In our Design Courses we often say that the First Principle, usually 
unwritten in the Pc texts, is, "Get help."  We might, in another way, 
say, "Magnify the ability to accomplish by cooperating with life's 
inherent excellent intent to survive and thrive."

A question that arises is, "Help with what?

The ;-) ****First Answer**** ;-) is "It all depends"....but the next 
answer is, "Help with caring, giving and sharing." =-O

Seems that's what we're all aiming to be, do and have.

So, Permaculture is a broad set of root memes about caring for place and 
people and sharing yields, and a few basic patterns about the 
development and application of caring to an immediate local landscape, 
urban, sub-urban, rural, wild, and intellectual...basically getting with 
the program and mimicking what nature does well (forests, wetlands, 
prairies, gardens)....making niches for ourselves and establishing links 
with our life support and connecting it with more of itself.

Its the tearing and fracturing of life's systems  that's aggravating our 
grievances, our stress and suffering and it is the reweaving of its torn 
edges that will relieve us.

Most organizations of people somehow have the intent to care, about 
something, at and as their roots. We can be specific.

Permaculture design has for secondary roots sets of patterns / 
principles to assist in the application of care....for a yield...which, 
not surprisingly, looks a lot like being fed, sheltered, clothed, 
educated, and associated with a larger sense of self and 'Other', i.e. 
getting taken care of and having a sense of sufficient and even abundant 
caring habitat around us supplying our needs....all the more 
astonishing, by design...by intention.

This starts to address the question, "Help from whom?" We care for the 
habitat so that the habitat accomplishes care of us. We care for the 
air, water, soil, and light and we get the yields arising from them - 
life, or breath, food, beverage, warmth, friends, and potential - with 
enough to go around and, thus, we help each other.

Associate, Chuck Marsh, has been known to say that, "Permaculture is 
plot by the plants to heal the earth by instilling in humans a level of 
caring that has had a few billion years of experience and evolution 
behind it", or something along those lines.

Whatever the case, the plot either thickens with willful cooperation by 
us, or our habitats go to hell, becoming places of stress and strife, 
war, famine and pestilence, ruled and ruined by unCaring.

Let us conspire (which means, "to breathe with or together") to care. 
Plants are divinely, miraculously equipped to conspire, even, evolved to 
conspire...with US!...so, let's conspire with them, and employ them, as 
well as being employed by them. Trees are conspiring with us to reduce 
the need to turn them into paper. Send electrons they whisper.

If there are 100,000 plus Permaculture Design Course graduates in North 
America alone, how come so relatively few of them subscribe to such an 
excellent continuing-permaculture-education-media, namely the Activist? 
Trees are dying so we can get these words to 8-10,000 people. Those who 
subscribe reportedly keep them as an essential part of their reference 
library and return to them for reinspiration (our devoted and loyal 
customers and friends for whom we are ever in deepest gratitude 
xoxoxoxoxo). Readership is growing and it could grow more. Our rhythm of 
publication is fairly constant and quality is improving, too. I feel 
like we're on the edge of a tipping point where we could grow quite rapidly.

Evidence for this is the recent appearance on Amazon (!) by one of our 
distributors selling the Activist for $10 MORE than we do. Hmm. OK. 
These will no doubt turn into subscriptions. Also, WALMART (!?!) 
recently added permaculture books to their online sales inventory. 
Ecovillagers, bioregionalists, natural builders, peak-oilists, 
biological scientists, many new thinkers, several million science 
fiction readers (Kim Stanley Robinson incorporates Pc into his work... 
I'm sure you can add more people categories) are being exposed to and in 
growing numbers testing the potentials arising from a caring / giving 
permacultural relationship with a garden, a home, a neighborhood, a 
region, a planet.

So, at least part of the reason people don't know about the Activist is 
that ....they DON'T KNOW ABOUT the Activist. Nobody told 'em and they 
haven't stumbled across it yet.

We call permaculture "the connecting science". Connections restore flows 
across edges. Flows transfer increasing nourishment and information. 
Nourishment and information yield health, humor, choice, and curiosity.

It's a formula I can live with.

Anyway, this letter is a request for flow and caring and sharing.

So, uh, whattawegonnadoaboutit, eh?

I have a hint.

Lets let it go, let it flow, let 'er rip.

Peace.

Keith

http://www.permacultureactivist.net
Support independent environmental journalism with a donation and magnify the 
abundance.* All of our webpages have donation buttons. Thank you*.
--
Keith Johnson
"Be fruitful and mulch apply."
Permaculture Activist Magazine
PO Box 5516, Bloomington, IN 47408
(812) 335-0383

also Patterns for Abundance Design & Consulting
also Association for Regenerative Culture
also APPLE-Bloomington (Alliance for a Post-Petroleum Local Economy) It's a 
small world after oil.
http://www.relocalize.net/groups/applebloomington
also Bloomington Permaculture Guild