A Permaculture Strategy for Haiti - or Turning Haiti's Problems into Solutions

Aside from the three permaculture ethics: Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share - returning the surplus (see www.permacultureprinciples.com/ethics.php), permaculture also has 13 Principles, one of which says that a problem is also an opportunity.

Here's an encouraging article on the permaculture opportunities which could help rebuild Haiti into a more locally self sufficient place. Click on the following title to see the Wired article: "A Permaculture Strategy for Port-au-Prince and Beyond"

Farm and garden supplies

Found a great supply store near me today - Monterey Bay Horticulture Supply (218 Reindollar Ave. Suite 2B, Marina CA). They're a small, locally owned company I think. They have all kinds of soil amendments, worm casting, supplies to make compost tea and their own concoctions for sale, as well as some books and hydroponic equipment. The person who helped me - Jack - I think it was, seemed very knowledgeable and was a great help! I'm excited to discover this great resource. Thanks Kimberly of Kimberly's Garden Care.

Yoga with Judith Lasater

This past weekend I participated in a fantastic workshop with Judith Lasater. She is well known in the yoga world through her books and articles in Yoga Journal. I knew her name from her book: Living Your Yoga which we used in my yoga teacher training course at Yoga High Studio.

She is well know - her experience and accomplishments alone say a lot! (See: http://www.judithlasater.com/about/) But sometimes when I take workshops from these well known teachers, I find them either arrogant, or I just don't see why they are so reknown. But with Judith it was apparent in the first few minutes. The wisdom and humor with which she related her knowledge shone throughout our time with her.

When I take a class from a rare teacher such as her.... I get re-inspired and remember why I love yoga. I highly recommend taking a workshop with her if you can!!

Recipe: Easy Chicken Casserole for a winter day

Here's a fairly simple casserole that's satisfying after a long week of work and cold weather -

Ingredients:

(Of course food that is local and organically grown - or as naturally as possible - is always best for our health, as well as the earth's. Smaller-scale agriculture is preferable. see "the Industrial Cup of Tea" vs "the Permaculture Cup of Tea" here: http://www.spiralseed.co.uk/permaculture/
And organic or naturally fed and free-ranging animals are especially important for healthful eggs, meat and dairy foods. And it's much more humane as well.)

olive oil
- 12 oz. (340 g) fusili or bow tie pasta (I use rice pasta) - cooked very al dente, drained and tossed with 1 teaspoon olive oil
- 1 cup chopped cooked chicken (great way to use the rest of a rotisserie chicken)
- 1 bunch kale - stems removed & chopped
- 1 white onion
- 2 eggs
- 3 cups milk (or substitute soy or other non-dairy milk)
- 1/4 cup water
- 1/2 cup shredded cheese - Parmesan and Monterey Jack, or another favorite cheese
- 1 Tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
- salt
- crushed white peppercorns

Heat oven to 400 degrees
Oil a 9" x 12" baking dish
Saute the onion with the rosemary until onions start to be translucent
Add the kale and cover the pan until the kale is wilted
Stir in the salt and pepper to taste

In a large bowl combine the chicken and pasta with the onions, rosemary and kale
In a separate glass bowl, beat the eggs, adding the milk, water and cheese slowly
Pour this mixture into the chicken mixture and give it a few careful turns
Put this whole mess into to baking dish
Bake for 35 minutes or until firm
Enjoy!

Fall into Winter, and down the gopher hole

As the season moves from the dry, barren summer into late fall, I find I feel a bit down as I look at my garden. What have I grown? Almost nothing is there now except for the lavender, rosemary and sage. It's been so much harder than I thought - both with the amount of work: one person just can't do it all, and with how well the plants are doing - not very.

The tomatoes and squash of the summer are gone, and they did not do all that well anyway. We planted the tomatoes too late, so we lost more than half the abundant crop to the cooling wet weather. We got a few nice large winter squash. But many more were forming when the gophers came up and munched through the vine lying along the ground. We had planted everything in cages, but still, they found a way to get to the squash vines.

Then this weekend I noticed my Stella Cherry tree leaning a bit to the side, it's leaves all wilted. The gopher again! I planted the cherry tree in January of this year and it took off - grew about a foot up till now. I was excited to see it thrive - until those horrible gophers got it!!!

So I pulled it up, most of its roots gone, and put it in a bucket of water with a little worm pee in it. The next morning the leaves looked revived (though many are browning, maybe ready to fall because of the time of year). So today I planted it in a new location, into a wire cage this time, adding lots of fertilizer and compost. Then I soaked it good twice with water mixed with some fish emulsion - for nitrogen, and because I heard the gophers don't like it. Later in the day though, it looked wilty again. I'll see if it can pull through after the gopher maiming to its roots.

I've been trying everything against those gophers: lots of crushed egg shells in the hole when I plant something didn't work, Mole Max-maybe works for a little while, the beeper stakes in the ground - no, the only thing that seems to work so far is wire cages. I hate planting everything in those! I got some sour clover, Melilotus indica or "Gopher Stopper"clover. You can buy it here: http://www.rinconvitova.com/material.htm or at Harmony Farms has it too. It contains coumidin anticoagulant which apparently thins the blood. Gophers stay away from it because they are hemophiliacs. I had just planted seeds of it around the cherry tree about tree weeks ago and it was just starting to come up - but not in time. I was trying everything to keep the gophers away and not have to kill them, but this may have been the last straw.

I found a great gopher guy: Thomas Whittman of Gophers Limited. I'm on the verge of calling him to come and wreak genocide on these little guys. I took a great class from him at Love Apple Farm. Who knew gophers and moles could be so interesting! They are pretty fascinating, and I was trying to peacefully co0exist with them. But with the gopher city I have on my property, it's pretty much a choice between them, or having a garden at all!

Rainwater Catchment Tank Back Up

On Life, Death and a Friendship

I posted this on my personal blog in September, but thought it might be relevant even to those who did not know Annie:

What are you after you die? What is the measure of a life?

My friend Annie Levy died almost two weeks ago -- I went to her memorial today in Berkeley. The memorial was a beautiful tribute to her life through the many stories told by her friends and family.

During this gathering, Annie's colorful and rich life was distilled down to a few endearing traits: her love of chocolate and chardonnay, of gardening and orchids, her shyness, her generosity and sweetness, and her professional interests. But these were just small sips of the full bottle of her life. It was those close to her who poured out a fuller picture.

Her son Max - who I and many of the attendees have seen grow from a little boy, stepped up to the stage as a husband, father and man today to give a mother the most loving goodbye a son could give. Then his wife Meghan - Annie's daughter-in-law said words any mother-in-law would envy. What greater (and more difficult) an accomplishment is there than being seen as a wonderful Mother-in-Law?!

Debbie - Annie's best friend of many years gave us glimpses of very personal moments from their friendship, and from Annie's time with cancer and her death. And several other of Annie's friends from various stages and parts of her life told the tales of their experience with her as a caring professional, as an innocent young woman full of joy, and finally of a mature woman in one of her greatest moments of triumph: overcoming the fear of death.

But it was her husband Richard's loving memorial which wove the fabric of her later adult life into the hero's journey that it was. And it was in his telling of it, that Annie became a hero, at least to me. It was his story that filled in the rest of the life of the person I knew for many years, though not all that well.

Richard told a lot about their lives and beliefs as Tibetan Buddhists, which helped give me insight into their marriage and her process preparing for death - or passing into the next life. And then he talked about her professional life, her passion for furthering the study of the use of psychoactive drugs in psychological therapy, and finally her own participation in a related study.

In the last phase of her life, as she learned her cancer had returned and her chances were slim, she took part in a study which used psilocybin as a means to help come to terms with the prospect of dying.
Richard told us how this experience transformed her from living out of fear, to living with purpose. And as a final expression of this transformation, she went out and told people about her experience - on NPR (http://thestory.org/archive/the_story_570_Magic_Mushrooms.mp3/view), in a documentary aired on the National Geographic Channel and at a professional conference. This was no small feat of courage for one so shy and afraid of speaking to crowds.

Someone said to me that her memorial was almost like the completion of a circle, from Al's (Annie's former husband) life and death, now through to Annie's. What did he mean I wonder? To me the circle represents the cycle of their lives, but also the circle of the community they created, and the circular waves that seemed to emanate from them - outwards. Al certainly significantly touched many lives in his short lifetime, and continues to.

But Richard's tribute to Annie told a captivating and inspiring story which has her living on for me, and probably many others for many years to come. So perhaps the measure of your life is the story you leave behind, and the ripples emanating from it that continue to tickle certain neurons in living brains, leading to actions that trigger new ripples, and so on, and so on...............

Her is but one of the ripples. Even if you didn't know Annie, you can chose to take action here if this tickles you:

It was Annie’s wish that donations in her memory be made to support construction

of a water system in an impoverished community in Tibet.

We hope that you will honor Annie by making a contribution to the Sogan Foundation.

The community is made up of aging nomads who are no longer able to travel and need a place to settle as their families continue to follow their herds. The community lacks a system to reliably deliver clean, safe water to the elderly residents who currently haul buckets of unfiltered water along steep dirt paths to their homes. A gravity-flow “spring catchment” water system will be constructed using a local natural spring at a cost of approximately $40,000.

The Sogan Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non profit charity. Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. Please visit the foundation’s website at www.sogan.org for more information and to make a donation via credit card. Checks can be mailed to: The Sogan Foundation, 1559 28th Ave., San Francisco, CA 94122

Be sure to note that the donation is being made in Annie’s memory. Annie’s family will be informed of all donations (just the donor, not the amount). Thank you very much!!!

More on how I met Annie:

I lived in Berkeley over 20 years ago now - very hard to believe! So I saw some faces from my past today.

Al was Annie's former husband and also my good friend. I met Al when I walked into a small computer store one day in 1986, I think it was, in Berkeley. I was looking for a job to do while I went to school. The store Mr. Natural's Computer Store and its logo was an assemblage of Art Crumb's many characters-drawn by Crumb himself.

As I entered I was greeted by Al's friend Mark. But it was Al I noticed at the back desk, not only because of his unusual look,(he had a rare disease which gave him unusual body and head proportions) and because he was in a wheelchair, but because he was moving a small device in circles on the desktop, and pushing one button. The thing had only one button, and I just could not conceive of a way he was able to do anything on that small computer with just one button! I guessed that it was some special device for disabled people.

As I inquired with Mark after a job in the small shop, Al was not only pressing the one button and looking at the screen; he was talking to someone seated next to him. Despite doing two things at once, he was apparently listening to our conversation as well, because he interjected - no, he yelled into our conversation - asking me to wait a second so he could talk with me. I noticed immediately by his manner (and also by the fact that he was able to listen to two conversations at once while moving that thing in a circle and pressing one button) that he was the one in charge.

The rest is history. I worked at Al's computer store for the 3 or so years I was going to school in Berkeley, and became friends with Al, getting to know Annie and Max as well. And what adventures we had! I met his displaced New Yorker friends when they came into the store to say hi. It would go something like this:

Friend: "Hey Dickhead."
Al: "That's Mr. Dickhead to you."

Except for their language being a little more up-to-date (and foul), they sounded just like my Dad and his sisters who are from Brooklyn. I felt right at home.

Al took me to my first Grateful Dead concert. For a kid who had grown up in the conservative suburbs of Marin County, that was quite an experience!

As I got to know Al and Annie, I began to admire their commitment to one another, the organized why they ran their household and their lives, and Annie's quiet intelligence, as she began and completed her education as a clinical psychologist.

Al died in 1998 I think it was. But Annie and I stayed in touch. She came to visit Rob and I several years later in our Seaside house with her new husband Richard. At first I thought Richard was a little crass, until I realized (I'm a little slow sometimes), that really he had a great sense of humor and that he was actually very funny, and sweet, and adored Annie.

In the last year Annie and I got in touch again, as she told me about her cancer. We decided to try to find a time to do a webcam meeting. She had not yet seen my second daughter. It took us quite a while, but she was persistent. I was busy and didn't really notice how determined she was to do this. It was the last time we talked, and in hindsight, I now see what an important conversation it was. How asleep we are in so many significant moments of our lives!

I miss Annie. But because she's gone, because of her memorial, I understand much more fully who she was, and how powerful she became in her life. I realize how little I appreciated her when she was alive. But she left that gift among many - the little reminder in my head to live and appreciate every moment and to know as well as I can, each person.

Now I find that when I think of going up to the bay area, or think of some interesting question in psychology, my mind just assumes that Annie is there - to visit or to ask. Then I have to remind myself that she's not - the brain can't quite get that -- death.

I just watched the trailer on YouTube to the mind-blowing treasure of a book that is just now being given as a gift to the world: Carl Jung's Red Book. Then I saw this short clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOxlZm2AU4o

It's true, the brain on some level doesn't accept death as a complete and final end. Perhaps the Buddhists have it right, the ride keeps going on.............