permaculture

[David Glober <david.glober@yahoo.com>]

Greetings:

I'm a recent PDC 'graduate' - not quite one year ago - with some prior 
organic gardening and farming experience.

My certificate says I've completed a Permaculture Design Consultancy Course. 
Basically that I went to school for some unspecified period of time and that 
was the subject matter. It doesn't use the word Trainee. What it means to me 
is I've taken a brief and condensed Permaculture Design overview course. But 
the message has seemed mixed to me. To me there was a certain amount of hype 
and confusion. We were told we could now teach a  Permaculture Design to 
other people, but - don't hang a shingle, don't advertise our services, we're 
not ready for that. Now I just look to my own skill set to sort that out, but 
initially it was confusing, not just in terms of qualifications - but 
expectations.

What happened in the course was that really qualified teachers went over the 
Design Manual and gave us some opportunities to practice Design methods and 
principles. And I think that gave us a Design mindset, attitude, overview, 
approach. That's not the same as becoming a Designer. Even Bill worked with 
designs on a couple hundred farms or so before he really put himself out 
there as a designer.

It seems to me the people who were most at ease and enjoyed the course most 
and benefited the most - were the students with prior landscape design 
experience and/or the students with more than an acre land or access to a 
good bit of land....

As with any other teaching - some of the one-on-one time was the most 
memorable, made the deepest impression, may last with me the longest. One of 
several examples I could mention - Geoff Lawton saying to me with great 
sincerity at lunch something he'd mentioned in class - Garden like you'd 
farm, and farm like you'd garden. Having done a bit of both, that really 
struck home, and I think about that one phrase very often, while doing hands 
on work - or when thinking in terms of design.

David Glober
San Francisco

Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com> wrote: Similarly to what Steve Read 
wrote, it's a misconception that the PDC 
makes you a "certified Pc designer."  That was never Mollison's 
intention, and he and others have gone to great lengths to make that 
clear. My certificate from the course I took from Bill and Scott Pittman 
in the early 90s says that I "have completed a Permaculture Design 
Trainee Course," so I was a Pc design trainee. I've never seen a 
certificate that declares that the holder is a certified designer. Does 
anyone out there have a certificate that says that?
 
       
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Subject: [permaculture] Michael Pollan (author of The Omnivore's Dilemma) -
 Google lecture | In Defense of Food: NPR interview with Michael Pollan
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Authors@Google: Michael Pollan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-t-7lTw6mA
March 06, 2008  (Less info)
Michael Pollan visits Google's Mountain View, CA, headquarters to discuss his 
book, "In Defense of Food." This talk took 
place on March 4, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series.


In Defense of Food: NPR interview with Michael Pollan about "Eat food. Not 
too much. Mostly plants."
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/15/in-defense-of-food-n.html
Book: Amazon.com:  
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594201455/downandoutint-20

Last week, Michael Pollan (author of the acclaimed The Omnivore's Dilemma: A 
Natural History of Four Meals)
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0143038583/downandoutint-20) did an 
interview with NPR's Science Friday in order 
to discuss his new book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594201455/downandoutint-20), whose 
contents can be summed up as, "Eat food. Not 
too much. Mostly plants."

Hidden in those seven words is an indictment of "Nutritionism," the 
philosophy that says that food must be approached as 
a scientific challenge, valued for its nutrients, which can be delivered in 
purer, industrialized (and highly 
profitable) forms in packaged, prepared dishes and ingredients.

Pollan makes a convincing case -- citing credible research -- that the 
science behind nutritionism is, at best, 
"promising" but not ready for primetime (he likens it to sixteenth century 
surgery: fascinating but not the kind of 
thing you want to be on the receiving end of). He explains how nutritionism 
has captured politics, so that the FDA isn't 
allowed to say, "Eat less red meat," but is backed into saying, "Make eating 
choices that are lower in saturated fats," 
prompting an industry to spring up around further industrialization of food 
to remove saturated fats. Nevermind that the 
science says, "Eat less red meat" -- by demonizing a nutrient, a blow to the 
cattle-ranchers is turned into an 
opportunity to create even greater markups on their product by charging a 
premium for engineered, "low in saturated 
fats" beef.

Pollan has a set of simple rules for eating that really resonate: "Shop the 
edges of the grocery store, not the middle," 
"Eat things your great grandmother might have eaten," "Eat nothing that bears 
a health or nutritional claim," and so on.

It's a delightful interview and it's led me to ordering the audiobook to 
listen to on my morning walks. Link, Link to In 
Defense of Food
posted in:  Audio  , Book


Michael Pollan - In Defense of Food (broadcast Friday, January 4th, 2008)
NPR: Science Friday
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200801043

Chances are that your holiday meals weren't completely natural. But where is 
the dividing line between 'real' food and 
some sort of artificial pseudo-food-substitute? In this segment, Ira talks 
with author Michael Pollan about his latest 
book, "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto." He suggests that people can 
improve their eating tremendously through 
relatively simple rules, including 'Don't eat anything that your 
great-grandmother would not recognize as food.' Pollan 
boils down his philosophy of nutrition to just seven words: 'Eat food. Not 
too much. Mostly plants.' We'll find out more 
about his ideas, and how to apply them to your local grocery store. Teachers, 
find more information about using Science 
Friday as a classroom resource in the Kids' Connection.
Guests

Michael Pollan
Author, "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" (Penguin Press HC, 2008)
Contributing Writer, The New York Times Magazine
Knight Professor of Journalism, University of California
Berkeley, California
Related Links

     * Michael Pollan: In Defense of Food
       http://www.michaelpollan.com/indefense.php
     * NPR: 'In Defense of Food' Author Offers Advice for Health
       http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17725932