[Scpg] *SEPT/OCT 2008 Santa Barbara Permaculture Network/Upcoming Events

[Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

Hi Everyone-


It's been a long time since we have sent out a newsletter with 
commentary, but we find ourselves in interesting times, thought we 
would say hello.

         Our next event is the launch of a new series called 
"Permaculture Around the World" beginning with Warren Brush of Quail 
Springs Learning Oasis and Permaculture Farm, speaking about his 
experiences in Liberia, West Africa.  In reading one thing and 
another on the Quail Springs website and Warren's blog on Africa for 
this event, I came upon something Warren wrote called "A Pattern 
Revolution".  In these uncertain times it seemed appropriate to share 
part of it with our readers.  It is beautifully written and has a way 
of bringing things into perspective, as many things about 
Permaculture will do.  So many of our permaculture teachers & 
designers have so much wisdom to share,  with foresight into a 
shifting world and the need for re-orienting ourselves in practical 
and positive ways.  I am grateful they have acquired and shared the 
skills they have learned with all of us.

         It has been a busy summer, Santa Barbara Permaculture 
Network convened with Quail Springs, as the host site, the first 
Annual Southern California Permaculture Convergence.  It was a very 
special event, with keynote speakers, honored guests, and 
permaculturists from all over the southland sharing their experiences 
and projects.  It was really all we could have hoped for. The only 
negative was we could only accommodate 60 people due to site 
restrictions at Quail Springs, so many people who wanted to attend, 
weren't able to.  Our job was to kick-start and initiate a Southern 
California Convergence, passing it on to others to organize future 
events, with hopefully larger sites becoming available.  A website 
was developed to be handed over in trust, support & advisory 
committees in place to assist future conveners, and even an official 
banner was created!  It fulfilled our mission of beginning to 
identify ourselves as a region, and to link and network effectively 
for changing times.

Please see Warren's "A Pattern Revolution" article at the bottom of 
this email.  Warren's talk "Child Soldiers of Liberia, Transformation 
through Permaculture" takes place on October 4th, 7pm at the Santa 
Barbara Public Library, and is a fundraiser for his work in 
Africa.  When times are tough, the best thing is to do the
"Abun-dance", free up your heart in generosity and love, bring your 
$10 to support another part of the world that has experienced 
troubled times, managed to come out on the other side, actually ready 
to teach us a thing or two.

Hope to see you at an event soon-

Margie Bushman
SB Permaculture Network


Upcoming Events:

Friday, Oct 4, 7-9pm - Fundraiser donation for work in Liberia,  $10
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network "Permaculture Around the World Series"
Talk with Warren Brush, "Child Soldiers of Liberia, Transformation 
Through Permaculture"
SB Public Library, Faulkner Gallery, 40 E. Anapamu St, Santa Barbara
No reservations needed
More info, (805) 962-2571, margie at sbpermaculture.org, www.sbpermaculture.org
Co-sponsored by Everyday Gandhis



Wed, Oct 8, 6:30-8:30pm Free
Slideshow & Book Signing with Heather Flores, author of "Food Not Lawns"
Goleta Valley Community Center
5679 Hollister Ave # 1, Goleta, CA 93117 (near Santa Barbara)
For more info http://sustainability.sbcc.edu
Co-sponsored by Fairview Gardens, SB City College Adult Ed Programs, 
SBCC Center for Sustainability, and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network


Sunday, Oct 12, Noon - 3pm
Community Seed Swap at Fairview Gardens
with Guest Speaker, Heather Flores, Author of "Food Not Lawns"( 
http://www.foodnotlawns.com/seedswap.html )
Music by "The Underscore Orkestra"
Potluck, Bring Seeds & Seedlings to Swap, a Family Event!
Parking at the Christian Science Church
for more information, contact Tiffany Cooper 967-7369
www.fairviewgardens.org
SB Permaculture Network helps to sponsor, call Tiffany if you are able to help


Tuesday, October 28, 7-9pm, $10 Fundraiser donation for Bustan 
Permaculture Center
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network "Permaculture Around the World Series"
featuring "Sustainable Community Action for Land and People" at 
Bustan Permaculture Center, with Michal Vital,
  long-time Bustan volunteer, and leading Eco-Builder in Israel.
Bustan is an Israeli NGO working at the nexus of social and 
environmental justice in the Negev region of Israel. www.bustan.org
No reservations required
More info, (805) 962-2571, margie at sbpermaculture.org, www.sbpermaculture.org


More Info:

<<<<>>>>
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
  Permaculture Around the World Series

Child Soldiers of Liberia, Transformation through Permaculture
with Warren Brush

Saturday, October 4, 7-9pm 2008
Fundraiser Donation $10
Santa Barbara Central Library, Faulkner Gallery

         Please join Santa Barbara Permaculture Network as it 
launches its new series "Permaculture Around the World" by hosting a 
talk with Warren Brush of Quail Springs Learning Oasis and 
Permaculture Farm as he talks about his journey and work in Liberia, 
West Africa.

       Invited by the Santa Barbara based non-profit Everyday Gandhis 
( www.everydaygandhis.org), Warren Brush traveled to Liberia to teach 
workshops in Permaculture as a part of a peace building process, with 
vocational training for many former child-soldiers from a brutal 15 
year civil war the country had endured.  After the long civil war, 
the land was injured, but so were its children, now grown to young 
adults.  Caught in the nightmare of a war they didn't create, but had 
been conscripted into, many were reluctant to return to their homes 
after the terrible atrocities of war. Could Permaculture help heal 
the land and its people?

Warren Brush made his first journey to Voinjama, Liberia in 2007 to 
teach a Permaculture course to students from a wide variety of 
backgrounds. These included elders of all the local tribes, medicine 
people, ex-combatant youth, trained agriculturists, subsistence 
farmers, men and women, all teaching translated into the local 
language.  Teaching sustainable agriculture and building techniques, 
as a part of the course, the students participated in a design 
project for a newly created Peace and Permaculture Demonstration 
Farm.  In March 2008, the first graduating class of a Permaculture 
Design Course in Liberia's history received their diplomas from an 
assistant to the country's President H.E.Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, 
noting the significance of the event.

Permaculture (PERMAnent agriCULTURE) is the conscious design and 
maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems that have the 
diversity, resilience, and stability of natural ecosystems. It is the 
harmonious integration of landscape with humans in providing shelter, 
water, food, energy and other material and non-material needs in a 
sustainable manner.

Quail Springs is a 450-acre working farm and wilderness center 
focused on modeling and teaching the concepts and practices of 
sustainability. Located in the Cuyama Valley north of Ojai, CA, Quail 
Springs ( www.quailsprings.org) has been incorporating Permaculture 
into all of its land practices on their farm and demonstration site 
since it's inception.  Permaculture teachers from around the world 
have taught at Quail Springs, and most recently, students from 
Liberia have attended advanced training courses there.  The hope is 
to share ecological design techniques and strategies with both the 
local communities of California and the world.  Currently Quail 
Springs is involved in a capital campaign to help build a Core 
Mentoring Center to accommodate this work, and join a network of 
Permaculture Training Centers around the globe.

Warren Brush is a certified Permaculture designer, educator, and 
storyteller. He is co-founder of Quail Springs Learning Oasis & 
Permaculture Farm, Wilderness Youth Project, Mentoring for Peace, and 
Trees for Children.  He works extensively in Permaculture education 
and sustainability design in North America and in Africa.  Follow 
Warren's work in Africa on his blog at 
http://web.mac.com/warrenbrush/iWeb/Site/African%20Journeys/African%20Journeys.html 
.


The event takes place at the Santa Barbara Public Library, Faulkner 
Gallery, 40 East Anapamu St, in downtown Santa Barbara, on Saturday, 
October 4, 7-9pm, 2008.  No reservations are required, fundraiser 
donation for Quail Springs work $10. For more information please call 
(805) 962-2571, or email 
<mailto:margie at sbpermaculture.org>margie at sbpermaculture.org; 
www.sbpermaculture.org. Sponsored by the Santa Barbara Permaculture 
Network and Everyday Gandhis.

<<<
A Pattern Revolution

by Warren Brush

(complete article can be found on the Quail Springs website at 
www.quailsprings.org)


For many years my life work has been to facilitate the best next step 
process for youth and adults alike through various workshop and 
mentoring modalities.  In my working with and learning alongside 
thousands of people during these years, several key patterns have 
emerged that are instrumental in connecting us with our next best 
step toward knowing how to be responsible for our lives and for the 
communities in which we live.  These subtle ideas/patterns are truly 
revolutionary in their capacity to bring healing change, and they are 
approachable from where you dwell TODAY in your uniqueness of being 
and life circumstance!  Our work is in the weaving of a cultural 
basket that supports the health, well-being and spirit of individuals 
and their communities. The wefts of change beneath are the constant 
pattern understandings innate in all peoples.  The weaves come from 
our own uniqueness and the beautiful diversity that we are capable of offering:

       Incorporate Nature Into Your Worldview:  Develop routines that 
immerse your senses in the influences of the natural world on regular 
basis.  This could be a daily ritual of sitting in one place over and 
over again, surrounded by nature, for a few minutes each day, whether 
in the woods or leaning against a tree in your urban 
neighborhood.  This is the beginning of awakening your true nature as 
you step into a worldview that includes nature rather than ignores 
its deep connection to you.  Another key ingredient to shifting your 
worldview is to be mindful of where you focus your mind energy.  So 
many people spend countless hours giving their attention to the 
medias often fearful and politically motivated interpretation of the 
world around us.  Begin by losing your television, look at the 
newspaper less, read more books, observe the happenings of the world 
around you in present time.  Replace fear, depression and 
hopelessness with a positive outlook.

       Link the World Together Into Patterns:  The world is made up 
of multitudes of patterns that make up larger sets of patterns that 
make up still larger sets of patterns that are inextricably 
interdependent.  We are forever integral to this amazing web that 
touches everything.  The industrial human has been unfortunately 
acculturated to see the world as individual and separate parts 
disassociated from the patterns of the whole. It would be like trying 
to picture a friend, their uniqueness, what they love, and their 
value in the world by looking at one cell in their pancreas rather 
than stepping back and seeing the amalgamation of patterns that make 
up the wholeness of their being.  It seems idiotic at best, yet for 
many of us this metaphor accurately represents our daily relationship 
with the world that sustains us.  Try this linking exercise: Find a 
tree across your yard or street and then identify another tree at 
least 100 yards away.  Then find a link between them by tracking 
those nuances that touch both of them through a storyline.  Maybe you 
will find a ground squirrel visits the base of one tree to pick up 
the dropped food of a crow eating a chestnut high in the branches. 
The ground squirrel carries the food back to its in-ground nest and 
stores it for a rainy day.  During those rare spring rains, water 
enters the nest hole and reaches down into the storage of the 
squirrel and sprouts the chestnut seed, which grows toward the light. 
That sprout gets eaten by a deer, which leaves its scat, as a natural 
fertilizer, on the other tree.  It does not matter if the trees, or 
any element of this world, for that matter, are hundreds of miles 
apart. You can link them together with enough investigation.  This 
understanding, once kinesthetically learned, is the basis of 
understanding our deep need to be responsible for our impacts on the 
earth and one another.

       Develop Routines of Gratitude:  I believe it is better to live 
in a state of gratitude than to be in a state of hopefulness.  Hope 
has often served to stagnate action; i.e. If only the (democrats, 
green party, republicans, etc.) were in political power; everything 
would change for the better; I could afford to do what my heart wants 
me to do if I only won the lottery;  If I find the right partner I 
would then be a happy person.  In hope, often we relegate ourselves 
to sitting and waiting when there is so much work to be done now in 
our lives and our communities to bring about positive 
change.  Gratitude engages a different energetic mechanism than hope. 
Gratitude opens doors to awareness of the tools needed to be in 
rightful action. Everyday our family and visitors to our Permaculture 
farm sit in a circle before dinner where we share our gratitude for 
the things we are truly thankful for that day. It has become an 
important feedback loop in our unique ecology of action where our 
hopes are being lived and reflected upon in positive ways and shared 
as a part of our developing story.

         Observe Your Life From a Birds Eye View:  Often we see our 
lives myopically through the worries of the brain rather than from 
the wholeness of our hearts.  Regularly stepping back - physically, 
emotionally and spiritually -  to see our lives within a broader 
landscape of space and time, is essential for us to stay synchronized 
with our destiny.  There are infinite ways this can look, yet, we 
have had many successes with these few actions:

         Physically, look at your home, your neighborhood, and your 
community from different vantage points.  Climb a nearby mountain or 
tree, stand on the tallest building, and look at where you dwell.  To 
define and know where you are, you must define that which surrounds you.

          Tend a Re-Membrance Fire.  Kindle a fire in your back yard, 
fireplace, or a special place in the wilderness from sunset one day 
to sunset the next.  Place your intentions of wanting to see the 
bigger picture of your life and your next best steps.

          Gather your family together in a circle and ask each to 
share their dreams as they understand them at this point in their 
journey.  Before you begin, create a safe space of listening and 
sharing by picturing your own circle within a circle of all your 
ancestors who are intently listening and holding each of you in their 
wisdom, grief, and joy.  Then picture a circle inside the family 
circle where you picture the children who are yet to be born the next 
generations.  As your dream sharing circle ensues, remember that you 
are each a vital link that connects the ancestors with the children 
yet to be born.

       Grow a Garden:  History shows us that most of the problems in 
the world can be solved in the garden.  Cultural stability comes from 
living within regional ecosystems that feed their inhabitants, 
whether naturally or by human design. These ecosystems have the 
diversity, resilience, and equitability to support a permanence to 
human habitation.  When we grow a garden, not only do we get local, 
healthy, fresh food that we know the source of, we get the security 
of knowing we can feed ourselves without needing to be reliant on a 
failing industrial complex or imperialistic power. The garden grows 
us through our tending its needs and it tending ours with truth and 
integrity.  Much of the foods and medicines many westerners have come 
to rely on are poisoned, depleted and spiritually crippled.  The 
garden reminds us that our bodies, our emotions and our spirits are 
inextricably intertwined. Our patterns of health, happiness and 
culture are inspired through the gifts of tending life in the garden. 
Nurture a garden to life today!

       Convert Your Economic Capital Into Natural Capital: There is 
immense economic wealth that is squandered daily on products and 
systems that are destroying the capacity for our future generations - 
our grandchildren - to live and thrive.  We are literally stealing 
from our children and grandchildren to feed ourselves.  The western 
economic wealth that has been derived from mining the earth needs to 
be converted into natural capital as we near a catastrophic tipping 
point where life-necessary natural resources become scarce. Many 
economists have stated that we are nearing the point of possibility 
where our money could become completely worthless. There are many 
ways to regenerate natural resources:

          *Convert your monies now into natural capital through 
planting beneficial food-bearing perennials around your home, 
neighborhood, and community.

          *Engage a Permaculture Designer to lay out a sustainability 
plan for your home including food, water and energy stability, and security.

          *Give substantially to groups that plant trees in 
sustainable systems.

          *Join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program where 
the farmers are producing food in regenerative systems that ensure 
ecological health in your region and keep land out of development.

          Take responsibility for your personal impacts on the earth 
by purchasing ALL the goods needed to sustain your life from local 
sources. Know the stories of how the materials and processes involved 
in the production of these goods impact the land.  Better yet, begin 
to produce more of the products you, your family, and your community 
need to survive.

It takes many heartfelt steps to change the pattern of ones direction 
toward healing and balance, and even more to be an instrument of 
regenerative change to the larger patterns that make up society.  By 
reading this book at this fortuitous moment in your own journey, you 
have opened the door for beneficial change to weave itself deeply 
into your life patterns and deeply into the landscape that sustains 
you.  Take courage in knowing that you are not alone in this process. 
Many of us are shifting our life patterns, not only toward being 
sustainable, but toward being instrumental in bringing to life a new 
era of cooperation between humans and this earth that holds and 
nurtures us. Together, we will be the change we want to see as our 
beautifully diverse lives weave together in an earth shaping pattern 
revolution.



-end-

Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
    an educational non-profit since 2000
(805) 962-2571
P.O. Box 92156, Santa Barbara, CA 93190
margie at sbpermaculture.org
www.sbpermaculture.org

"We are like trees, we must create new leaves, in new directions, in 
order to grow." - Anonymous

First Annual Southern California Permaculture Convergence August 2008
http://socalifornia.permacultureconvergence.org

No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com
Version: 8.0.173 / Virus Database: 270.7.5/1700 - Release Date: 
9/30/2008 11:03 AM

Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
    an educational non-profit since 2000
(805) 962-2571
P.O. Box 92156, Santa Barbara, CA 93190
margie at sbpermaculture.org
www.sbpermaculture.org

"We are like trees, we must create new leaves, in new directions, in 
order to grow." - Anonymous

First Annual Southern California Permaculture Convergence August 2008
http://socalifornia.permacultureconvergence.org

No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com
Version: 8.0.173 / Virus Database: 270.7.5/1700 - Release Date: 
9/30/2008 11:03 AM

Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
    an educational non-profit since 2000
(805) 962-2571
P.O. Box 92156, Santa Barbara, CA 93190
margie at sbpermaculture.org
www.sbpermaculture.org

"We are like trees, we must create new leaves, in new directions, in 
order to grow." - Anonymous

First Annual Southern California Permaculture Convergence August 2008
http://socalifornia.permacultureconvergence.org
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