Farming 2.0

I'm taking an online course on Permaculture with Geoff Lawton and the Permaculture research institute out of Australia. I've been trying to come up with an easy way to explain it. Here's a few that I've seen and a few I've tried to come up with.


Permaculture - an easy definition

Ecology, applied
Ecological Architecture
Life support systems
Abundance by design
The Design of Abundant Ecosystems for Humans

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For 8000 years we've tried to extract the maximum food from our environment through pushing natural systems up to and beyond their breaking points. Using energy intensive chemical fertilizers, genetically modified organisms and pest controls, and relentlessly specialized crop and animal breeding programmes, we have created farming methods that are highly productive but environmentally unsustainable and dangerously unresilient.

Built on cheap energy and an ever expanding agricultural land base, we are now faced with fossil fuel driven climate change and a degraded stock of fertile territory. Business as usual will drive us off a cliff.

It's time for a reboot.

The aim of permaculture is to create abundance through ecosystem management and design. To feed and care for people through the intelligent optimization of natural systems via ever increasing soil fertility and biological interactions.

It's like harnessing "the power of compound interest" for your farm or garden.

Living systems remain the most powerful energy harvesters known.

Through the application of careful design principles, food systems have been developed that can radically increase the productivity of almost any area. By maximizing energy and resource usage and beneficial interactions within the system and reinvesting surplus biological materials and energy into the system future fertility and productivity is increased.

Resilient and robust, these systems favour complex self-reinforcing biological, energetic and chemical interactions, whereby every element fulfils multiple functions and supplies multiple products for use within the system and for the humans relying upon it.

As the web of interactions is dense, the system is dynamically responsive to outside perturbations such as extreme weather or pests, all the while building increasing fertility and productivity through the constant "reinvestment" of materials into the system.

By working to reinforce natural systems instead of attempting to exploit them for short term, unsustainable gain, more people can be fed with less land while drawing more carbon out of the atmosphere.

And by fostering dispersed, redundant, self-sufficient ways of feeding ourselves, we increase food security and empower citizens to make positive changes both for themselves and for the planet.

Life is order, entropy is chaos

Life is order.  Entropy is chaos.

Life exists because it is more stable than random chemical elements heated by the sun.

Individual elements like oxygen and hydrogen gas (O2 and H2) tend to combine into water and release energy - under most terrestrial conditions water is more stable than the elements in their molecular forms.

Life exists because the chemistry of elements combining into molecules thermodynamically favoured a level of complexity where biological systems emerged with the property of being able to reproduce themselves.

Life uses energy to maintain order for a time, before returning it to the universe as heat.  

The more life in a system, the less heat.   While the sun shines relatively constantly on the planet, the more life there is, the more of that energy is captured and stored in biological structures, rather than simply heating the planet or bouncing back into space.  

When a drop of water falls on a hillside it is carrying the energy from the sun that allowed it to evaporate into the atmosphere before condensing into a droplet and transferring that now kinetic energy to the hillside.  It can either transfer some of that energy into biological systems, increasing order, physical systems by shaping the landscape via erosion, or release it's energy as the from friction as it rolls down the hill.

Grow Hope

Inspired most recently by Shawn Atleo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dO5b_h7El6s

Shame on you for letting fear and greed into your heart.  For thinking you could save yourself while others perish.  Wilful ignorance, actively ignoring what you want not to be true is the ultimate cowardice, and through its practice you forfeit your dignity and self respect.  

The path of evil knows no limit, no depravity becomes unimaginable, no excuse too banal. By ignoring the unpleasant you become as much it's cause as it's originator, sins of omission are a commitment to pretending to be blind.

There's a dead heat going on between climate change and adaptation; mitigation and demonstrating best practices are our ethical imperatives.  The test of our times.  Until you know you are leaving the world better than you found it, your path is clear - foster order, build complexity, lower entropy in all it's forms.

Grow - leave more life on the planet than when you joined it.  Draw carbon out of the air and back into the earth.  Waiting is petulance.   Learn what living systems are around you and feed them.  And in growing life you will feed your soul.  

Il y a du place en mass dans mon jacuzzi - Quebec Election 2014

[I was going to link to Gens du Pays on You Tube, but the nastiness of the comment thread stopped me, I don't what to stir that pot...we need each other too much. So I went with Radio Radio]




It's time progressive Quebeckers start showing the world a better way forward.

The awful Quebec election that saw ugly nationalistic and cultural divisions flare up in a way we'd not see in almost two decades is over with a massive Liberal Majority and the all but collapse of the Parti Quebecois.

Pauline Marois and her advisers took Quebeckers down a dark path and she's been served her head. Thirty years of public service will now be forgotten.

I really didn't like her, I thought her fanning the flames of ethnic nationalism was evil, her arrogance revolting.



But I'm a progressive. And a federalist. And while I'm proud Quebeckers rejected this incarnation of the Quebec nationalist dream, Liberal business as usual is not acceptable and the question of federalism vs separatism, living together or living apart needs to be addressed head on. It's not going to go away and to let it fester is a recipe for disaster.

So there's work to be done on the ground.

I'm lucky - I live in Montreal in the middle of Projet Montreal and Quebec Solidaire territory. It's a bit like Fantasy Island



(google it, younguns) - a mixture of successional immigrant communities, artists and professionals. People inclined to try out new ideas.

I worry sometimes that it's an artificial island - that our collective good fortune makes our situation so different from other communities that initiatives that work here are not translatable elsewhere.

But you work with what you have.

I feel it's time to redouble our efforts to demonstrate what a vibrant, ecologically sound, culturally inclusive and politically engaged community looks like. What is possible.

The number of individuals and groups doing inspiring things is growing all the time. I've not started a local list, but I've started a global one. A jumping off point for hope for the future.

This election is a clarion call for action. Divisiveness leaves us weakened, and individuals and groups licking their wounds are not capable of taking the kinds of actions all human societies need to to confront the challenges of the 21st century.

So get planting, building, renovating, teaching, learning, playing together, whatever - find something to keep moving forward. Grow a garden on your balcony, do stand up at a senior's centre. And do not despair.

Practicing Gratitude and the need to take Action - Signing up for Permaculture Design Course

(I've signed up for a Permaculture Design Course - check out their website for hope for the future)

Sure we tell ourselves stories, rationalize our choices, on a good day with ourselves the heroes. But I can trace a story that goes back to 121-43 Buell street - in grade four or five. When I made a rainforest in a blue tupperware that I wanted to enclose. A perpetual motion machine. I can't remember where the idea came from - maybe skylab or something in the space programme. It could have been Cosmos - I'll check the dates - but I got excited about the idea of a homeostatic (not my words at the time) self-contained system. Life everlasting. Those are Verna's words, speaking of her progeny...

The maple tree I picked out of Hampton park and planted in the tupperware is today in my parents' backyard. Taller than the house. The tupperware, knowing Dad, might still be kicking around - I'll adopt it if it is...but the story is:

I love life.

The process of life - and early today I got to thinking: there are two tendencies in the Universe - Order and Chaos. Life arises when the raw elements of the Universe combine, randomly, in ways that decrease Chaos and capture energy. Molecules arise because two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms are more stable together than apart. And the properties of chemistry - how molecules interact - emerge from this greater stability.



2H2 + O2 = 2H2O + ENERGY (572 kJ)


[origin of life animations]

And so - completely just because - because elements combine into molecules, and molecules combine into polymers, or minerals, and polymers and minerals and molecules and atom interact in ways that increase order and release energy, to the point where collections of inorganic materials find themselves contained in micro-environments that make their continued replication, locomotion, reactivity, [the other defining characteristics of life] inevitable.

Which leads to us who are able to stand slack jawed at the wonder of it all. At least for a few hundred thousand years until we start teasing out how some of it all works, and we realize our responsibility to choose. Do we create Order or wallow in Chaos?

Morning Robot Flight of Fancy

So when you get the chance, day dream.

Found myself watching 5 year old playing with Zoob Blocks by Infinitoy. (affiliate links to Amazon ... Infinitoy Zoob Basic Set, 500 - Piece) The 3 yo was on lockdown for hitting so he had a few minutes to get ambitious.

Watching as he built a long robot arm I got to dreaming - wouldn't it be cool if it WAS a long robot arm? How would it work? You'd need motors in the socket that would spin the ball, just X and Y directions. You'd need some way to hold a position so grasping motors on either side.


Then why not make the stem a hydraulic piston so it can expand and contract?

How would you power it? Either each unit would have its own rechargeable power source or you'd have to wire them together in some way that wouldn't get tangled...either conducting through the balls and sockets or...?

And to control it? Each element would need a way to receive instructions - perhaps a firmware chip of some sort?

And I went off like that for awhile - just dreaming. The kind of dreaming you don't often get a chance to pursue. Now later I can look up actual roboticists doing such things, but today, a day off - with work lined up (otherwise I'd be the fretful unemployed) - I just went for it.

And did a little photoshop.

These are awesome toys - I've posted amazon affiliate links if you'd like to buy one, and kick something back.








or

One App to Rule them all and in the Day light bind us.

{I know things like this are out there - please send links to the best...}


Our fragile little egos need attention. Sure we can aspire to zen detachment and transcendence, but in the meanwhile perhaps we can take a page from Facebook and Twitter, and capture this need in more constructive ways than likes and shares?

Like microdonations - ways to transfer money to charitable causes easily instead of indulging in an expensive latte or sugary treat? Little feedback mechanisms that let us brag about giving money, encouraging others to do so, while also pursuing some personal goal of not overeating, affecting a career change, etc.

[And it's got to be easy...like one click shopping easy...the tech exists for Amazon and iTunes, twice in the past 48 hours I was about to donate but it was X clicks too far. I was about to join the Green Party but then my info got deleted when I selected PayPal...if it's easy, it will take in WAY more money.]

A sponsorship system - we set ourselves a fitness or similar goal and collect sponsors who will donate to some cause as we work towards it. A way of offering support and encouragement to people living with disease or other challenges? Like metres for millions or readathons, but online and Facebook social.

Perhaps there's some system where we can elect a group of friends to vote on what goal we should pursue and then sponsor our pursuing it? Like submitting our top three goals for the opinions of others, then if we accept their verdict, we go for it?

LifeCoach the App - combining the need for external motivation and feedback, with social reinforcement...

The 'Hidden' Web - Mitch Joel on the Private Internet

Mitch Joel gave an interesting talk on the ’hidden’ web at Creative Morning Montreal's March 28, 2014 event.

How a new batch of apps are offering privacy and the promise of impermanence. Snapchat, cyber dust , secret ...Cloak a reaction or antidote to our over publicized Facebook lives.

The kids are of course leading the way not wanting parents to pry etc.  My first thoughts went to cyber bullying, and other nastiness, but it's not like that's not already happening.

His business is marketing, and the business takeaway is that privacy and 'hiding' is booming.  It was very interesting.   He's an accomplished speaker, relaxed, funny.  Steve Jobs in a sports jacket.  He told the little anecdote that wasn't an anecdote - about seeing a guy looking at Buckingham Palace under an umbrella wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, that has nothing to do with the presentation, other than that it's a slide, and the presentation is about anonymity...and got everyone laughing.

The hidden web - (not even the dark web where the real action no doubt is) it's all around us.   Not surprising that people are starting to push back - looking for alleged anonymity after Facebook got over run by parents and uncles.

I wanted to ask about Luddites. How there will be increasing numbers of people who reject technology or never had any to begin with. What will their world look like? How will they communicate? Who will market to them?

Hand delivered cards? Telegrams? Messengers waiting for the message to be destroyed? Sin eaters? People who have taken vows of silence available to hear confessions for a fee? Like 'Brick' I expect the hipsters will soon be at least publicly entirely offline....

And how will our personas evolve? How predictable will our profiles be and how good will algorithms get at guessing what's between the lines?  What will the psychic costs be of maintaining uber public (Facebook etc) and private personas?  Will we get confused?  Hell, managing more than one Twitter account almost gave me an embollism...

He mentioned how Facebook had guessed his high school, the sophistication of what we've already shared and what it says about us.

Will there be cleaners? Hackers skilled at erasing our tracks? Or will we just stop caring? Oh yeah, that's me, when I had a thing for sheep...

So 'chapeau Monsieur' - and thanks to the organizers and everyone who came out.  What will the future hold?  Will the genie ever go back into the bottle?  I think more people will start to turn off, but then again I saw my first glasshole ....

Playback Online: You Tube Announces Canadian Collab Partners FEATURING @beavercanuck and @werytube

An article today in Playback Online's New publication for You Tube Partners Canadian Collab program. Featuring
a mention for WeAreYTube and links to BeaverCanuck's You Tube.

Beaver Canuck and We R Y Tube collaboration getting You Tube support

Beaver Canuck vs Stephen Harper

Check out Beaver Canuck's updated You Tube channel as he searches for Beavette and seeks vengeance against Stephen Harper




watch the process of updating the teaser trailer and artwork here

You won't believe what this Beaver wants for Christmas

@Beavercanuck's home was destroyed by oil sands

Listen to a story of a man named Steve SONG

"Listen to a story of a man named Steve

Cut down a forest made a hobo out of the Beav

Spent all his life in the service of big oil

Doesn't give a French seal which makes my blood boil

What the ph....

Aimee Davison provided the voice of Beavette, and Scott Ryan provided the music and vocals.

Deb Grey is featured holding her autobiography "Mein Kramps"... And the young Steve Harper is shown attending the Wild Rose Public School. I've always found the name of this particular brand of right wing zealotry funny as I once interviewed at Wild Rose Productions...I wonder if there's any official connection?

The episode occurs after Happy Forest has been destroyed by tar sands development and it's the first we learn that Beavette was not killed by heavy machinery. She's clearly distraught, so we don't know if she lost the babies.

Working on the Jazz Amnesty Sound System Jazz Mass Movie

The week it was...

I probably *should* be looking for work. But instead, I'm working. Working on a project I've been calling my TOHOE in my SOHO - triumph of hope over experience in my small office/home office. It's a movie about a 'Jazz Mass' put on by Jazz Amnesty Sound System. My friends Andy Williams and Lew Braden, two DJs, who hosted 'the jazz illuminati' of Montreal to come and jam in St John the Evangelist's church while they 'conducted' from their turn tables.



You can watch the teaser here…

The genesis of the project was Lew asking me to help them film a demo of the event. I asked Bruno Goulard to help me with it and he encouraged me to shoot a little higher. So he brought together a professional crew and we shot a multi-camera live event, with multi track audio. So, you know, we got something.

Now we 'just' need to turn it into a movie. Editing, more interviews, etc. It's going to require some resources.

And it won't happen overnight.

So I AM looking for work - if you know of anything in the writing/directing/editing vein please get in touch (hepworks@gmail.com).

If you know anything about financing also GET IN TOUCH!

And stay tuned...

Related Posts:

Jazz Mass Questions
Jazz Mass Backstory
What is Art?

Jazz mass

I want to primarily bear witness to the event - capture the moments as they naturally occur.

But  our presence will influence the participants 

I am interested in the artistic impulse - the many reasons for making music, and in this case jazz.

Are the roots of jazz important?

Was jazz born from oppression?

Did jazz provide succour?  

What is it about jazz that raises your spirits?

Does jazz offer something that other forms of spiritual music lack or does it expand and build upon other traditions?

What are the mechanics of jazz? What's a blue note? Syncopation? Swung note?

What does it mean if it doesn't have that swing?

Improvisation is central to jazz - so can a DJ play jazz?

JJ Johnson “jazz is restless, it won't stay put and it never will”

Can anyone learn to play jazz or will certain personalities never be able to handle it?

Jazz can challenge the musically less sophisticated - but at some point isn't the risk of pushing the form too far that it becomes noise?

What is art? An off the cuff approximation

What is art and why does it matter?

There's a great tension amongst many “artists” - between making what they want and need to make, and earning money.  Inara Moloney, paraphrasing Aristotle often said “the good is what we do for its own sake” - and so, art.

We are living in difficult times.  The “values” of our civilization are seemingly so confused, so short sighted, that people from all walks of life feel the psychic and spiritual disconnect between that which the market rewards, and that which has lasting value.

As humans - whose lives are short - it's hard to create a culture that values planning for anything approximating the long term - it's hard enough not over eating, over indulging, grasping the easy, greedy, wins, no matter the costs.

And so art -

Jumping ahead here as the preamble is not the punch line.

To make good art - to build a culture - is to strive for a form of immortality.

That's only part of it.

To aspire to beauty - even when it's ephemeral - perhaps especially when it's ephemeral - is to attempt to reflect into the world some iteration of our cosmic dance.  To strive for grace - 

Transcendence - as I understand it - is the acceptance of this short time we have for a gift of infinite beauty that can be fully appreciated in an instant.  It is gratitude in the face of oblivion.

It is the painful awareness of our mortality that makes us rage to make each instant worthwhile.  The beauty of each moment can be hard to take if we don't have some way of accepting and indeed revelling in the fact it might be our last. 

And there are many paths that can take us there.

Our species is young - we are adolescents, childless, raging our way across this planet, and running fatally into each other, our own limits, and the bounded reality of the biosphere.  We don't know, and we are very worried, to see what the future holds.  Will our current problems be solved by some as yet undiscovered technologies?  Or are the tensions mounting in the system - overpopulation, resource scarcity, environmental degradation - going to lead us to apocalypse?  

These tensions fill us with fear, and fearful humans seek certainty, a sense of security, some inkling of being in control.  So we turn tribal at times - reducing complex challenges into “us” vs “them”...

But we also seek communion and community.  We love to be listened to, valued...our experiences are validated by a sympathetic ear.  

I believe the impulse to art is this attempt to find connection.  To overcome the fear of suffering and dying alone.  There are few burdens not lessened by being shared.  

Jazz images

In no particular order some jazz images in preparation for the J.A.S.S. mass...

And their thematic arrangement at the end

Jazz Mass - Backstory

Andy Williams and Lew Braden are Montreal DJs that have been running events under the Jazz Amnesty Sound System name (J.A.S.S.) – where they spin jazz.

They are now hosting a ‘J.A.S.S Mass’ where they will play jazz records and have invited musicians – ‘the jazz illuminati of Montreal’ to play along – as the spirit strikes them. It’s spiritual but non-denominational – an attempt to bring together a congregation or community that love jazz and love improvising.

Acting as ‘conductors’ they’re spinning will provide the musical arc , MCed by Bob Olivier (‘Pastor Bob’) – for people to come together – no one knows what will happen – but we’ve been asked to film it.

The original mandate was to shoot a demo of the event – something Lew and Andy could use to show other venues how a show like this unfolds. That remains my priority – but we’d like to take things further.

CLICK HERE FOR SOME JAZZ PHOTOS AS STYLE REFERENCES

We’d like to capture the musical event but also bear witness to the larger context. The reality of the event on the day will dictate what direction the story takes but here’s some questions we’ve been thinking of.

QUESTIONS:
What is spiritual? What is transcendence?

What is “good” jazz? Why do people play jazz? What is it about improvisation that attracts people? Novelty seeking versus predictable – are all jazz heads liberals?

Questions about art – Lew and Andy came to DJing through a love of music – but rather than become musicians they’ve become curators, historians, champions of such a breadth of music that it boggles the mind…
Lew has said there’s two walls when it comes to DJing jazz – one wall is the jazz musicians that don’t always see DJs as “creators” and the other wall being DJs who don’t understand how you can spin jazz.

So the big question of the event is: Can these divisions be overcome? Can DJs and musicians play together, and what will that collaboration create?

How do the musicians see art? What drives them to play? In the face of all the challenges of ‘making a living’ can art become a compulsion? An addiction?

And identity – living through the Quebec Charter of Values – what does community mean? What does it take to “get along”?

Improvisational musicians must learn to instinctively play well together – the greatest virtuoso in the world sounds like crap if they don’t share the stage.

The mix that Lew and Andy are starting from covers a wide range of spiritual traditions – a diversity that many people cherish, but many people also fear.

In a time of great tensions – what is the culture we want to create? Must there always be a “us” and a “them” – or can that division be overcome? Can music help to show the way?

Free Nelson Mandela

Always liked this song...