Ed Straker, quite an un-blissfully aware chap, has channeled some of his frustrations for you through a truly no-budget sitcom, using XtraNormal technology. Averaging 90 seconds an episode, you follow G in his hilarious quest to find a place in Crazyland, aka the dream world known as society that the awakened are forced to live in — if they desire to buy their solar panels and goat fences.
There’s actually enough character development to get you hooked.
The I strongly recommend watching this series, not only to laugh, but to feel, if only for a moment, that you’re not crazy, and perhaps even superior to the blind. (remember there are more than one season available)
Why the hell talk about coal mining on a Permaculture site? Especially a solutions-oriented blog?
Because you can’t permify land that’s no longer there.
The first step to Permaculture is observation of a site — TAPO or PATO, aka Thoughtful and Protracted Observation. Imagine observing that the water on your new land is unusable because of coal mining pollution from up stream. Imagine getting cancer from the toxic chemical floating through the air that lands on your tomatoes. F all that — Imagine your land ripped away by coal mining companies with politicians in their pocket. Imagine your land exploding, your soil being dumped into the creek.
How’s your Permaculture working now? The answer is “not at all,” because you didn’t join the fight to stop one of the biggest environmental atrocities of our time — Mountain Top Removal.
Rainforest Action Network’s theatrical, viral action (like below) gets the word out. Huge banks do not have to be convinced to stop funding. Just the right people at those banks, and this is a small chip in embarrassing those people. Get your hands dirty — spread the word via your facebooky twittery thingies.
Page told Teen Hollywood “It’s about living in a holistic way with the earth and reintegrating our lifestyles with the natural cycles … It was amazing. Anyone at all who has a passion for it can learn about it and use it in their lives in so many different ways … like peeing in a bucket and using it on your compost. Pee is an excellent source of nitrogen.”
Urine and acting like the training is expensive could be not the best way to promote Permaculture to a homemaker demographic — actually, it’s about the worst thing you can do — but at least now, thanks to Ellen “Small” Page, Permaculture was on ELLEN, the most main-stream show in America. Who can do a search analytics for “Permaculture” since this show?
Transcript and film below. Start at 1:15 – 2:52, then skip roller derby promo stuff if you want, then Permie stuff picks up again at 3:15. Watch it all if you want to see the full context.
Excerpted Transcript of Ellen Degeneres Show, interview with Ellen Page, Oct 7, 2009
ED= Ellen Degeneres, Page= Ellen Page
Degeneres talked to Page about her overwhelming fame from the movie ‘Juno’.
Page- . . . I took a little break from it because it was becoming a lot, you know, a lot at once. So, I. . .
ED- Well, that’s smart to take a break.
Page- Yeah
ED- What did ya do?
Page- I went to study permaculture design at an eco-village (Lost Valley Eco-village) in Oregon, outside of Eugene.
ED- What is permaculture? Like getting perms?
Laughter
Page- Yeah it was. . ah. . close. It’s about living more simply, and about living in a holistic way with the earth, and re-integrating our lifestyles with the natural cycles, you know. So I lived on an eco-village for about a month.
ED- Wow! That’s great.
Page- It was amazing
ED- God, that would be a really great thing for us to all be able to do. Do you think that we could?
Page- I was really lucky because I could afford to take time off work, and to pay to go there, and learn this. But any one at all, who has a passion for it, can learn about it and use it in their lives, in so many different ways. From simple ways, to more elaborate ways- like peeing in a bucket, and using it on your compost.
Laugter
Page- Pee is an excellent source of nitrogen
ED- I pee in a bucket here
Page- Yeah, yeah
Laughter
ED- I do. I try to save money in the budget where ever I can.
Laughter
Page- It’s a recession, it’s nice that your doing that.
ED- That’s what I do. . . We just bought a farm.
Page- Oh, wow!
ED- And we are trying to do the same thing, and live off the land, and do every thing we can to simplify. It’s a goal, it’s hard to do. But it would be so great if we would all start treating the earth a little nicer, and using it what it’s for, instead of abusing it.
Page- Well, you would love this, you should check this out.
ED- I would love to. I would love to
Applause. . .
They chat about Page’s new movie ‘Whip it’. . .
ED- Now you need to find a movie where you can pee in a bucket.
laughter
Page- Yeah, your really on this bucket thing
ED- I’m just sayin’. Then you try to do a movie where your encouraging people to learn all the ways to be kinder. I mean, um. yes we would get away from that, you wouldn’t show that on camera. You would be behind a partition or something. . .
laughter
Page- We would have an apparatus, yes.
ED- Yes, you wouldn’t show that. But we all know from this conversation, when that movie comes out, (whispering) she’s peeing in the bucket.
For regular Permies or for those trying to show their parents the real story behind what Permaculture is, this is one of the best ways I’ve seen so far!
We’ll always use coal because it’s so abundant, therefore we eco compromisers must make coal clean. Right?
Well, if there are only a few decades of coal left and clean coal is several decades away at the earliest, is clean coal even worth attempting? Even worth the spit that should be spewed on it?
Hold that saliva.
Here’s a campy/parody video I did with/for Post Carbon Institute about Richard Heinberg’s new book BLACKOUT, which examines exactly that.
Watch this video, and if facts interest you, buy it. As is true of most books that state what should be obvious, this may be way ahead of its time, like his 2003 book THE PARTY’S OVER, which I read in 2007. It’s what kicked my blissful ignorance out of my comfy bed… the wake-up call that showed me the inevitability of this whole Permaculture jazz.
Word to the skeptical: I don’t get a dime from book sales on this one. Word to the super skeptical: If it sells well with the help of the movie, then yeah, I guess it makes me look fancy and I’ll continue to work. Yippee! But I’d recommend it anyway even if I had nothing to do with it).
Goldridge RCD just asked me to make a film about the dismantling of the Camp Meeker dam in Northern California. Since its construction, it has stopped the natural flow of the creek, thus the flow of the ecosystem there.
Here’s a video I made that may relate to this one, not only in content, but in the style as well.
Click on HQ — the regular quality sucks on this vid.
Through much fortitude, it will soon come down.
Here’s how (from an e-mail):
If this is the first time you are hearing about the project, it has two primary objectives:
1. To eliminate all known fish barriers along the mainstem of Dutch Bill Creek, and
2. To provide the community with a new and hopefully well-utilized pedestrian walkway that spans the creek.
These objectives will be accomplished in the following ways:
1. Remove the instream summer dam below the Post Office;
Retrofit the culvert under Market Street with baffles;
Install a series of boulder weirs downstream of the Market Street culvert; and
Replace an important community connector (footbridge) between Camp Meeker proper and the community recreation site.
Also, check out the work of Derek Jensen. This guy does not mince much, especially when it comes to his thoughts about our illegal responsibilities we have as the crash approaches.
People are always saying the tragedy of climate change is that those who contribute the least to the problem — the poor — are punished the hardest. There is truth to this; third-world, small-scale farmers whose fields experience climate changes too strong to adapt to don’t have industrial agriculture’s luxury of abundant surplus to cover their margin of error, or mass pesticide correction (fossil fuel use) to control the infestation of new pests that thrive in the new weather, or abundant water supplies that can be taken from the nearest neighborhood in short periods of dryness.
But with just one of these advantages taken away — through peak oil, erosion, severe drought or the like — the playing field will be evened. Those who educate themselves to adapt to a lifestyle of lower-energy inputs for higher gains are those who will thrive. Backyard farmers will benefit, while Food For Less and Wal-Mart devotees may be scratching their heads and rubbing their bellies.
Last week, I drove into West Oakland, California to meet with Patrick O’Connor of City Slicker Farms, an organization that works mainly with low-income families to increase “food self-sufficiency in West Oakland by creating organic, sustainable, high-yield urban farms and back-yard gardens.” CitySlickerFarms.org With curly hair, humility and heart, Patrick told me the vision he sees unfolding. Lower-income families taking responsibility for their own food. Unlike other programs he’s seen, he notes that the tendency of residents to maintain their gardens is high. Of course, all the cliches of the confidence building, community bonding, consciousness breakthroughs and other cb’s ring true.
They’re not doing this because their clients can’t afford food — they’re doing this because everyone should be eating local and learning to garden on some scale; their clients just happen to be unable to afford it.
We need more City Slicker Farms. Start slicking, or help someone else slick by getting in their yard and showing them this here video.
As a filmmaker, organizer and fellow citizen of Earth, I am thrilled to be a part of Permaculture TV.
Not only is it a chance to help educate all the Permies out there, but more importantly, we will bring Permaculture to those outside “Permie culture”.
While I am proud to be part of the Permaculture community involved in the sustainability movement, I’d be lying if I said I originally came to it from the honorable yearning to respect my role in the ecological system in the holy land of Gaia.
No. I came to it because, after seeing videos like these that freaked me out about peak oil, I sought answers.
While crass to some, it’s undeniable that there are billions more people who want to watch a video with a scantily-clad woman gyrating than people who want to watch a video about respecting the Mother Earth. Considering these same viewers are the same people who are contributing to the destruction of our ecosystem(s), we need to find ways to wake them up, then get them started on the healing path asap. Call it cynical, call it Zen… we believe it’s critical.
This is not to say it’s time to compromise the efforts we need to make to thrive in this new world; the Earth can’t afford that compromise. We are simply saying that a Permaculturalist has a responsibility to recognize that his/her ecosystem is not in a bubble. Water, soil, air and climate are affected by actions of everyone… far outside your watershed.
The current Permaculture subculture can’t do it alone. If the sustainability subculture doesn’t reach 6.8 billion members soon, or at least access the real “deciders” who can mandate the change we need, much of Permaculturalists’ efforts may be for naught.
We need videos with Muppets to draw in the under-8 crowd.
We need videos about new flying cars to draw in the overly-optimistic yuppie demo.
We need videos with screaming, blood and beer to draw in the Metalheads that party in the apartment below me.
Here’s one from Green Ambassadors, that preaches outside the choir.
And we’re looking for even bolder.
So we need you — yes, literally you — to think about sub-groups you know of and get some videos made that are geared to reach those people.
Thanks for joining us. I look forward to learning and sharing with you.
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