2011 Permaculture Convergences (draft)

2011 USA Permaculture Convergences
(draft list in formation)
If you hear of another, please send word to SmithMillCreek
* at * gmail, or better yet, leave it in the comments section.

I have cut and pasted the 2010 list in here as a placeholder.
Obsolete 2010 entries should be in orange color.
Thanks!
*******************

NORTHEAST
http://northeasternpermaculture.wikispaces.com/Summer+Gathering
Fri- Sun, July 2-4, 2010
Unity, Maine USA $60- $120 ish
• Suggest a Convergence session here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dGFPSUlxdnV5MjRLT19GZEJIMEJMSGc6MA
twitter.com/NEConvergence

SOUTHEAST 2011
http://www.southeasternpermaculture.org
17th Annual Gathering is August 5th-7th, 2011 in Celo, NC
Registration opens April 22nd, 2011.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SoutheasternPermaculture

COLORADO
http://coloradopermaculture.blogspot.com/2010/02/colorado-permaculture-convergence.html
The Colorado Permaculture Convergence is scheduled for Sunday, August 22nd, 2010 at the 63rd Street Farm near Boulder, Colorado. Contact the High Altitude Permaculture Institute if you are interested in helping organize this event.

NORTHWEST
http://www.washingtonstatepermaculture.org
2010's Washington State Permaculture Conference, tentatively scheduled to be held at The Evergreen State College in mid-September, 2010.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA BAY AREA
None planned I can find; last one Summer 2008
http://www.livingmandala.com/Living_Mandala/Bay_Area_Permaculture_Convergence.html

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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
None found for 2010
http://socalifornia.permacultureconvergence.org
1st Annual Southern California Permaculture Convergence
August 29-31, 2008

MIDWEST
The First Midwest Permaculture Convergence in Bloomington IN
September 23-25, 2010
Weblink to come....

UPSTATE NEW YORK PERMACULTURE GATHERING
First was March 2010
Next TBD
http://upstateNYpermaculture.Net

Click Here to Read More..

Everybody's flying and no one leaves the ground

I just finished Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Days of Paranoia, by Francis Wheen, about the seventies.

It's not so noteworthy, but it was a good reminder of the malaise of the seventies. Perhaps more than any decade of this century, this was a decade of disempowerment & frustration. McGovern didn't win; and Nixon did instead and then lost; there were 150 hijackings from 1970-'72; numerous gas lines and in Britain, brownouts. Stocks lost their value, so did wages, so did savings. Elites were hemmed in by new rules of democracy, but unions started losing ground around 1974. The punks celebrated despair, and in Germany there was a Tunix movement (Tu Nichts-- "do nothing").

New York City almost went bankrupt, and did face severe increase in either crime of the perception of it; serial killers abounded, each with a nickname (Zodiac, Son of Sam, freeway Killer); city councillors killed city councillors. In the confusion of role models, cults abounded: Moonies, Scientologists, Rajneesh, Elizabeth Clare Prophet. So did shallow encounter groups.
Drugs grew in use, and moved from an earlier psychedelic focus on a higher truth, to an escape from reality and a contest to see who could get higher on heroin, cocaine, pot.

And as the book's title reminds us: crazy mysticism & conspiracy theories false AND true, abounded: Cointelpro, the assassination of JFK, flying saucers, Chariots of the Gods

I begin to better understand the appeal of Ronald Reagan in promising to end many of these things; and actually pulling it off, in the short term & middle term. Until 18 months ago.

The title of the book & my blog entriy is from a song by John Lennon-- Nobody Told Me.

Click Here to Read More..

Transition Movements springing up like wildflowers!

I just learned about two of these-- Transition Decade & MAHB's outreach push-- in the last ten hours.

I'm going to post an incomplete draft 0.6 and then revise it later today. Disclosure at end.
-- Jim

Transition Decade
The Transition Decade creates a campaign platform and a shared timeline
for action for the next ten years. (Australia, 10 group coalition, launched 2/14/2010, acknowledges debt to Lester Brown's 1990 suggestion of a "Transition Decade" in 1990.)
http://www.t10.net.au/node/13 Official homepage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transition_Decade

Transition (Town) Movement
Started in Fall 2005 in Kinsale, Ireland by Louise Rooney and Rob Hopkins, this movement attempts to build community-based efforts to reduce our carbon footprint, reduce our oil dependence and build community. 284 official initiatives as of April 8th, 2010. Third annual conference coming up in June 2010 in Britain. Now based in Totnes, UK.
http://transitionculture.org/essential-info/why-transition-culture <-- early history
http://www.transitiontowns.org <-- movement home page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns

Great Transition Initiative
Started in 1995, The Great Transition Initiative is a growing
international network of scholars and activists that
analyzes alternative scenarios and charts a path to a hopeful future. Based in Cambridge, MA out of Harvard University. Has many monographs and thinkpieces.
http://www.gtinitiative.org Official home page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Transition

Four Years. Go
Dedicated to the notion that the planet is at a tipping point, this campaign stresses that the next four years will determine the course of the next thousand years. This effort comes out of the Pachamama Alliance. It was born out of a speech by Lynne Twiss. Strongest on outreach, light on theory, the four years in question run from February 14, 2010 (Valentine's Day) to 2/14/14.
http://www.fouryearsgo.org
http://twitter.com/fouryearsgo
http://www.youtube.com/fouryearsgo
http://www.facebook.com/fouryearsgo

Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior (MAHB)
Pronounced “mob”, this initiative was catalyzed by Paul Ehrlich, a MacArthur award winning senior biologist most famous for writing the bestseller The Population Bomb in 1968. While it has been around for a fw months, it went public more loudly on April 6th, 2010 with the publication of an article in an online science magazine.

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000330
http://mahbsustainability.wordpress.com/about

Defusing the Nuclear Threat (Stanford University)

Professor Martin Hellman, who helped build the anti-nuclear group Beyond War, is trying to start a Stanford University effort that will go global. I don't know if he's talked to Paul Ehrlich (I imagine they must know each other, bring professor emeriti on the same campus).

http://nuclearrisk.org

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(Disclosure: I'm on-board with a number of these: I helped start Transition Town Asheville in December 2006 w/ two others; am recently part of the Great Transition Institute network; am recently part of the Four Years. Go connectors group, helped found the US Citizen's Network for the 1992 Earth Summit, and got started with all this by reading the Population Bomb in 1970 after the first Earth Day.)

Click Here to Read More..

Organic Grower's School 1994-2012

Signs of hope escape our eyes easily; we like to see the doom.
Here's some good news: Attendance at the OGS doubles every five years.
Can we shrink our carbon footprint as quickly as this grows (15%)?
Easily, no. Impossible? Probably not.
(tabled updated every year or so since 2008)

Year # Attendance % growth 1994 1st 100 1995 2nd 213 213% 1996 3rd 141 66% 1997 4th 160 113% 1998 5th 230 144% 1999 6th 430 187% 2000 7th 392 91% 2001 8th 500 128% 2002 9th 533 107% 2003 10th 609 114% 2004 11th 683 112% 2005 12th 800 117% 2006 13th 900 113% 2007 14th 1000 111% 2008 15th 1200 120% 2009 16th 1300 108% 2010 17th 1500 115% 2011 18th 1679 112% 2012 19th 1906 114% Average annual growth= 14.8

Average doubling time = 4.9 years

Figures courtesy of

Meredith Leigh McKissick

Director, Organic Growers School

Crooked Creek Farms; Sweet Earth Flower Farm

www.sweetearthflowers.com

Click Here to Read More..

2010 USA Permaculture Convergences

2010 USA Permaculture Convergences
If you hear of another, please send word to SmithMillCreek
* at * gmail
Thanks!
*******************

NORTHEAST
http://northeasternpermaculture.wikispaces.com/Summer+Gathering
Fri- Sun, July 2-4, 2010
Unity, Maine USA $60- $120 ish
• Suggest a Convergence session here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dGFPSUlxdnV5MjRLT19GZEJIMEJMSGc6MA
twitter.com/NEConvergence

SOUTHEAST
http://www.southeasternpermaculture.org
The gathering is Fri- Sun, August 6-8, 2010 at the Arthur Morgan School in Celo, NC
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SoutheasternPermaculture

COLORADO
http://coloradopermaculture.blogspot.com/2010/02/colorado-permaculture-convergence.html
The Colorado Permaculture Convergence is scheduled for Sunday, August 22nd, 2010 at the 63rd Street Farm near Boulder, Colorado. Contact the High Altitude Permaculture Institute if you are interested in helping organize this event.

NORTHWEST
http://www.washingtonstatepermaculture.org
2010's Washington State Permaculture Conference, tentatively scheduled to be held at The Evergreen State College in mid-September, 2010.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA BAY AREA
None planned I can find; last one Summer 2008
http://www.livingmandala.com/Living_Mandala/Bay_Area_Permaculture_Convergence.html

*************************************
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
None found for 2010
http://socalifornia.permacultureconvergence.org
1st Annual Southern California Permaculture Convergence
August 29-31, 2008

MIDWEST
The First Midwest Permaculture Convergence in Bloomington IN
September 23-25, 2010
Weblink to come....

UPSTATE NEW YORK PERMACULTURE GATHERING
First was March 2010
Next TBD
http://upstateNYpermaculture.Net

Click Here to Read More..

Some Haiti Resources

I just got this via email. I myself would do well to compile some other responses I got from others.
-- Jim
*******************************
I am cut and pasting all the answers b/c quite frankly there were so many that I hesitate to choose.

I will narrow down some favorites later when I come back from work.
Alice Backer, Esq.
http://www.kiskeacity.com
http://twitter.com/kiskeacity
*********************************

Books:
1. Red and Black in Haiti (Matthew Smith)
2. The Uses of Haiti
3. Haiti and the United States
4. Haiti: State Against Nation

Novels:
1. Love, Anger, Madness
2. Brother I am Dying
3. Masters of the Dew

Films:
1. The Agronomist
3. Heading South
4. Man by the Shore
5. Ghosts of Cite Soleil
6. Moloch Tropical
7. Egalite for All
8. Royal Bonbon

Click Here to Read More..

After Copenhagen: Community Climate Discussion

After Copenhagen: Community Climate Discussion
Talking Together about How We Feel, and what we might do, alone & together
(NOT at West Asheville Library Community Room & relocated next door to)
Waking Life Espresso
976 Haywood Road, West Asheville, NC 28806
Saturday, Jan. 2nd, 2010 10 AM to noon
Free and open to people who think that human-caused climate change is real
and worth stopping. don't drive-- if you can walk comfortably, come on over)

If you are on Facebook, you can "rsvp" (optional, but nice) at
http://j.mp/AvlAfterCop15

Questions? Email smithmillcreek at the domain of gmail dot com

Click Here to Read More..

More BAD action on climate later

My blog action day post on climate change will probably be a few days late--
I'm preparing a talk on the phases of movements for the student climate conference, Powershift '09, this Saturday in Chapel Hill, NC.

the workshop will be a repeat of the one I did in November 2008.

-- End--
Click Here to Read More..

Tolstoy on Causation

The human mind cannot grasp the causes of phenomena in the aggregate. But the need to find these causes is inherent in man’s soul. And the human intellect, without investigating the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions of phenomena, any one of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, snatches at the first, the most intelligible approximation to a cause, and says: “This is the cause!"

-Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace

Click Here to Read More..

Important August Essays on the Eco-Crisis

All the essays agree on one thing: big changes are ahead of us, and soon.
All of the essays below are by some of the top eco-thinkers alive.

Paul Kingsnorth and Paul Monbiot debate the future in the (UK) Guardian

Northwest US-based Tom Atlee on the Great Turning

NY Times eco-columnist Andy Revkin on a new stage in humanity

Sharon Astyk (upstate NY) and Rob Hopkins (Devonshire, UK) debate Permaculture and Transition Towns.

Click Here to Read More..