Thread

Sad to learn that Carol Sanford died. I don't yet know when she died. : : : : : : : I read it in Didi Pershouse's most recent e-mailout. (Find her on Substack). "Climate on the planet is influenced by many living processes in land, sea, and sky. Humans have influenced nearly all of these processes, as you know from my previous posts. However, certain regions have been changed so radically by human projects, that the effects are compounding and cascading. If we focus our efforts on these places as “trigger points” (or what the late Carol Sanford called “nodal interventions,”) we could have a far greater effect, as we work to restore a living climate." —Didi Pershouse : : : : : : : Author, teacher, contrarian, entrepreneur, corporate/business leader. https://carolsanford.com/ https://substack.com/@carolsanford : : : : : : : I remember the late Dan Palmer, host of Making Permaculture Stronger podcast, having interviewed Carol numerous times. That may well be how i first came upon her. They got into the material quite deeply and it showed how ingrained into the culture the separation, objective and degenerative programming goes, how successful the mechanistic, quantitative world view has been delivered by the psychological operations. If anybody wants to explore the Carol Sanford x Making Permaculture Stronger nexus see: https://makingpermaculturestronger.net/?s=Carol+Sanford : : : : : : : A few keystones of Carol Sanford's i remember--partially presented as a beginning index--are the following: imaging, vs. imagining : : : : : : : feedback, the fallacy of only for machines it assumes a linear, reductionist, world-as-machine paradigm life, people, culture is much more "messy", complex, emergent Writing may not be part of one's job, but writing can improve thinking. Sanford writes about feedback much more deeply & eloquently in her book "No More Feedback". : : : : : : : When communicating, use "Earth", instead of "the earth". Problems with objectification. Again, this is very brute and butchered, read or hear her explain it. She is part Cherokee. : : : : : : : Questioning biomimicry. It's fallacy. I seem to remember part of it might be because we are already living, life, bio. : : : : : : : Fallacy of watershed. Sanford suggests lifeshed instead. It is problematic when you separate things. She breaks down the simplicity and fallacy of the parts and the whole mindset. As Bill Mollison (co-originator of permaculture) states below, it takes a real genius to comprehend where something--like a tree--begins and where it ends! "A tree is, broadly speaking, many biomass zones. These are the stem and crown (the visible tree), the detritus and humus (the tree at the soil surface boundary) and the roots and root associates (the underground tree). Like all living things, a tree has shed its weight many times over to earth and air, and has built much of the soil it stands in. Not only the crown, but also the roots, die and shed their wastes to earth. The living tree stands in a zone of decomposition, much of it transferred, reborn, transported, or reincarnated into grasses, bacteria, fungus, insect life, birds, and mammals. Many of these tree-lives 'belong with' the tree, and still function as part of it. When a blue jay, currawong, or squirrel buries an acorn (and usually recovers only 80% as a result of divine forgetfulness), it acts as the agent of the oak. When the squirrel or wallaby digs up the columella of the fungal tree root associates, guided to these by a garlic-like smell, they swallow the spores, activate them enzymatically, and deposit them again to invest the roots of another tree or sapling with its energy translator. The root fungi intercede with water, soil, and atmosphere to manufacture cell nutrients for the tree, while myriad insects carry out summer prunning, decompose the surplus leaves, and activate essential soil bacteria for the tree to use for nutrient flow. The rain of insect faeces may be crucial to forest and prairie health. What part of this assembly is the tree? Which is the body or entity of the system, and which the part? An Australian Aborigine might give them all the same 'skin name', so that a certain shrub, the fire that germinates the shrub, and the wallaby that feeds off it are all called waru, although each part also has its name. The Hawaiians name each part of the taro plant differently, from its child or shoot, to its nodes and 'umbilicus'. It is a clever person indeed who can separate the total body of the tree into mineral, plant, animal, detritus, and life! This separation is for simple minds; the tree can be understood only as its total entity which, like ours, reaches out into all things. Animals are the messengers of the tree, and trees the gardens of animals. Life depends upon life. All forces, all elements, all life forms are the biomass of the tree." —Bill Mollison Permaculture: A Designer's Manual, pp.138-139. : : : : : : : #CarolSanford #feedback #watershed #BillMollison #MakingPermacultureStronger #DanPalmer #permaculture #DidiPershouse #biomimicry #trees