permaculture

[Jim <ashevillecurrencyproject@gmail.com>]

Hi-

As the owner of all three books referenced, and someone interested in 
the pre-permaculture movement,
(From Counterculture to Cyberculture, What the Doormouse Said and 
Counterculture Green),
mentioned in Kevin Kelley's
http://kk.org/ct2/2008/09/the-whole-earth-blogalog.php
let me put in a plug for two books and a talk that went on the web a few 
days ago.

The first book is
Back from the Land: How young Americans went to nature in the 1970's, 
and how they came back,
http://www.amazon.com/Back-Land-Young-Americans-Nature/dp/1566636647/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221861255&sr=8-2 
<http://www.amazon.com/Back-Land-Young-Americans-Nature/dp/1566636647/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221861255&sr=8-2>
by Eleanor Agnew.  This is the only "academic" study of the movement 
that I know of. It's not a very rigorous study, but more like a heavily 
footnoted memoir by a woman who got a PhD after years of rural living in 
downwardly mobile  poverty. (Ivan R. Dee, 2004)

The second is
Farm Friends: from the late sixties to the west seventies, by Tom Fels 
(Chelsea Green, June 2008)
http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/farm_friends:paperback

Reviewed in the NY Times last Sunday, this memoir looks at the famous 
Western Massachusetts Montague Farm, home to the Liberation News 
Service, about which four books have already been written, and whose 
literate authors and friends spawned about fifty more (check out 
Nathaniel Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance in wikipedia).
The author reminisces about living on the farm,  checks in and then 
writes about  where his friends are in  1980 (this is the best part of 
the book, and probably was written in 1981 and sat  in his desk for a  
few decades).

The talk is by one of the founders of the Farm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farm_(Tennessee) 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farm_%28Tennessee%29>
This talk appeared at an interesting time. Just as I wondering if Rob 
Hopkins, innovator of the wonderful Transition Towns movement had 
investigated what happened the last time people decided en masse to 
stress eco-cooperative living, it turns out that he invited Albert Bates 
of the Farm to talk at Totnes a few nights ago (and it's already up on 
the web). While Bates, like Fels and Agnew, seems a little heavy on what 
was happening in his immediate vicinity and a little light on the larger 
context, it is a fascinating talk. I had heard many of the tidbits 
before, but never heard the story of The Farm put together all at once.

Bates starts the talk by praising the work of John Michael Greer, who in 
his (and my) opinion is one of the more perceptive observers of the 
counterculture and the peak oil movement. He says that Greer's new book, 
The Long Descent, inspired his talk.

You can listen to it at links mentioned in
http://transitionculture.org/2008/09/18/albert-bates-on-peak-oil-relocalisation-and-why-the-hippys-were-right-all-along

I might add that one of the best reflections I've read about life on a 
communal farm was Celery Wine, written by Elaine Sundancer. If someone's 
got a copy  they'd like to sell, drop me a line.
-- Jim
smithmillcreek.blogspot.com