Starhawk on Permaculture & Paganism

Earth Activist Training

Earth Activist Training
Marshfield, Vermont, USA
July 25-Aug 8, 2010

Co-taught by Starhawk and Charles Williams

Two weeks that can change your life and change the world!

A permaculture design certificate course with a grounding in earth-based spirituality, and a focus on organizing, activism, and social permaculture as well as urban and rural land-based systems. Learn how to heal soil and cleanse water, how to design human systems that mimic natural systems, using a minimum of energy and resources and creating real abundance and social justice. Explore the strategies and organizing tools we need to make our visions real, and the daily practice, magic and rituals that can sustain our spirits. Participatory, hands-on teaching with lots of ritual, games, projects, songs, and laughs along with an intensive curriculum in ecological design.

Cost: $1400-$1800 sliding scale. Work trade and scholarships available, apply early!

CThis will be a rustic EAT. We will camp on the land, attend class in the Earthship, and eat as much local food as we can (including wildcrafted food).

Location: Neruda Community in Marshfield, VT http://neruda.editide.us
Childcare can be arranged for children over 3 at additional cost.
For more information: www.EarthActivistTraining.org
800-381-7940 (USA).
earthactivisttraining@gmail.com

container gardening

You do not need a large garden, how about A VEGETABLE GARDEN IN PLASTIC BOTTLES?

I feel this is an interesting idea, worthwile to try out in a very dry part of my garden....

'It can efficiently be used for “desert gardening“.
....
As in the drylands extreme drought, and thus extreme evaporation, is one of the main problems for agriculture and gardening, I suggest to limit this evaporation by using a plastic bottle to obtain a higher water use efficiency. Indeed, water can be stocked in a volume of potting soil, wherein a water absorbing soil conditioner can play its supplementary water stocking role.'

Source: Seeds for Food

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Let us ban hunger and poverty from the world

Banning all hunger and poverty from the world seems an impossible task, but we can empower ourselves and others by doing some small contributions.

"We don’t ask you any money.
Only send, when it suits you, the seeds you find in the fruits you eat yourself.
Just rinse these seeds in water and dry them on a plate (not on a piece of paper as it would stick to the seeds).
As soon as the seeds are thoroughly dried, put them in a paper envelope and put the name of the species on it.
The more we gather seeds the more families we can help."

Source: Seeds for Food

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." (Daodejing, 64.12)

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The image is the circus performer twirling plates on sticks, except in the circus those plates are sometimes attached to the sticks and their precarious balance is an illusion.

Sometimes, though, the plates are really being balanced on the ends of the sticks.

Do you ever feel like you're watching a bad movie about the collapse of civilization, while doing your best to hold visions of viability and creative possibility? There is so much about the governing corporate bodies that essentially rule the world that is corrupt. We can see that their game is rigged. The plates are attached to the sticks. There is no balance, no real brilliance, just illusion.

Outside of the circus ring, however, real people are balancing plates on sticks everyday. We all know places where we are pulling off the challenging, maybe even the seemingly impossible. We know others doing the same.

The possibility for continued human viability, for a while anyway, lies in our resilience and our ability to do the seemingly impossible, or even just the very difficult.

HOME project

There still time to serve and protect Gaia!

HOME is an ode to the planet's beauty and its delicate harmony.
Through the landscapes of 54 countries captured from above, Yann Arthus-Bertrand takes us on an unique journey all around the planet, to contemplate it and to understand it.
But HOME is more than a documentary with a message, it is a magnificent movie in its own right.
Every breathtaking shot shows the Earth - our Earth - as we have never seen it before.
Every image shows the Earth's treasures we are destroying and all the wonders we can still preserve. "From the sky, there's less need for explanations".
Our vision becomes more immediate, intuitive and emotional. HOME has an impact on anyone who sees it.
It awakens in us the awareness that is needed to change the way we see the world. (HOME embraces the major ecological issues that confront us and shows how everything on our planet is interconnected.)

YouTube - homeproject's Channel

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The Skills for the New Millennium Tour

Here is a link to a project happening in the United States, The Skills for the New Millennium Tour. Check it out! This is a traveling road show teaching permaculture and life skills. Their motto is "Cultivating revolutionary ways of living."

Obama, you have four years to save Earth, yes you can!

2012 is a very important date, when Obama's term at the office expires; before that date he has a huge job to do!

"Soaring carbon emissions are already causing ice-cap melting and threaten to trigger global flooding, widespread species loss and major disruptions of weather patterns in the near future. "We cannot afford to put off change any longer. We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead."

President Obama 'has four years to save Earth' (The Observer)

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100 Mile Diet: Local Eating for Global Change

There is some logic in eating only food that's locally raised and produced in a radius of 100 Mile...
Of course, in a heavy urbanized setting you'll have to be creative!

In 2005, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon began a one-year experiment in local eating.
Their 100-Mile Diet struck a deeper chord than anyone could have predicted, inspiring thousands of individuals, and even whole communities, to change the way they eat.
Locally raised and produced food has been called “the new organic" — better tasting, better for the environment, better for local economies, and better for your health.
From reviving the family farm to reconnecting with the seasons, the local foods movement is turning good eating into a revolution.

100 Mile Diet: Local Eating for Global Change

Polar bears resort to cannibalism as Arctic ice shrinks - CNN.com

"The Arctic sea ice melt is a disaster for the polar bears," according to
Kassie Siegel, staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. "They are
dependent on the Arctic sea ice for all of their essential behaviors, and as the
ice melts and global warming transforms the Arctic, polar bears are starving,
drowning, even resorting to cannibalism because they don't have access to their
usual food sources."

On the other side....

Sen. John McCain's choice of a running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska,
favors drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, questioned the
science behind predictions of sea ice loss linked to global warming and opposed
a state initiative that would have banned metal mines from discharging pollution
into salmon streams.
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/510779.html

Sarah Palin is really into drilling mother earth...