Permaculture and the Financial Meltdown of 2008

I recently attended a two week permaculture design intensive, at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Centernear Sebastopol, CA. Over nine hours of class every day for two weeks including a design project with a randomly assigned group of the students, the class was no vacation! But it was magical. For starters, OAEC is a permaculture paradise. Operated for over 15 years as an active permaculture farm and community, there are incredible gardens and edible landscapes all over. With ecologically designed structures interspersed over the ample grounds, including a few light straw structures, cob benches and aerating fountains, the place is a showcase for how elegant and functional permaculture can be. And the place is populated by an incredible and vibrant group of teachers and educators. Their passion for transformation is palpable. And then there were the classes: Having not been in such an intensive learning environment for many  years, I literally drank in the knowledge that was amply communicated to us. Incredible classes on the foundations of permaculture, community and communication as well as a huge assortment of permaculture technologies including landscaping, key line, swales as well as energy efficiency in building design and farming practices. Truly information overload of the best sort. And did I mention my fellow students? We were truly blessed with such a warm, motivated and incredibly fun group of students ranging from 17 years old to over 60. A diverse and incredibly well matched group, I fell in love with all of them.

And literally in the middle of our course, the foundation of our so called free market economy collapsed! I can’t think of a better place to have been than on a permaculture farm! News of the 700 billion dollar bailout was met with swale design and harvesting from organic gardens and the possibility of living a sustainable life. It was a truly breathtaking contrast. And it has since put me into a place of examining the life I am living: I am part of an industrialized world, loving the conveniences and ease of our lives. Yet recognizing that at some level our lives our ultimately unsustainable. And questioning the choices I am making constantly, recognizing my disconnection from community, from the earth. I know that these times are a blessing, giving us all the opportunity for reevaluating our lives, and hopefully, soon, being able to make the right decisions for a more sustainable future.

From the Sublime to the Mundane – Hope Springs Eternal

The Light Just Seems to Have a Different Patina

Ever since the morning of Wednesday, November 5th, the sun seems to shine with a brighter patina in the morning.  On Tuesday, November 4th, I picked up Sandra at the airport, she had just returned on Northwest Air from 4 days of door-to-door canvasing in Columbus, OH.  At 6:31 PM, Pacific time, on our way to the home of dear friends to watch the results, NPR announced OH for Obama. Sandra cried with joy. The knowledge that her efforts and those of everyone involved in the campaign had paid off was both emotional and overwhelming. A the light of a new dawn was rising across America.

The reality of the next morning came in with the new light, Sandra heading to the office, the kids off to school.  As she walked out the door, she handed me a copy of “World Traveler”, Northwest Airlines Magazine and said, “take a look at this article on Green Travel“.  The article is about EcoTravel and featured locations worldwide and companies like REI Adventures.  Interestingly, at the end of the article is a side bar on how to “Go Green with NWA” introducing their carbon offset program with The Nature Conservancy.

We should probably develop our own carbon offset program with our affiliated non-for profit conservation project, Rainforest2Reef. 

Air travel will be severely impacted by issues such as Peak Oil and Carbon Offsetting and we look forward to being part of the solution.  Tomorrow offers us hope, hope that we can change things for the better, change as large as the first African-American President or as small as the individual sacrifices we will need to make in our daily life to make this change work for all of us.  It is a new dawn in America and around the world.

Unplugged and Loving It

In the Escapes Section of The New York Times, September 12, 2008, Steve Bailey writes in the article entitled, “Unplugged“, “Many people say that they want their weekend place to be a refuge from the modern world, a place to disconnect and reconnect.” Wow. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.  While many folks ask us how we can create a place that is luxury and not have “a TV in every room”, the answer is simple, luxury is not about granite counter tops and gold plated fixtures, nor is it about TV’s, mini-bars and hairdryers in every room, luxury is about really disconnecting and reconnecting. Luxury is about creating an environment that allows you to disconnect and reconnect with grace.

Steve goes on in the article to state, “But a little tech subtraction can add up to the weekend experience you really want, creating a sense of togetherness in what might some might consider a poorly equipped vacation house.”   We have owned and operated another property, Casa Viva, for about 7 years. We have watched guests go through a process of detoxing from the need to be connected all the time.  You see them pacing, as if they have forget something or something has forgotten them.  Then eventually they sit, still, for a moment or maybe longer and they peer out farther than the distance between them and a screen (either in their hand or on a desk) and they see nature. They see the iguana basking in the sun of a nearby rock, the pelicans diving for fish in the shore just beyond, the fisherman tossing his net out to sea, and the moment grabs them and they reconnect.  Mr. Bailey, thank you for confirming our basic assumptions behind the design of Playa Viva.

Turtles on a Comeback for ‘08

As usual in the beginning of the month, I got the monthly statistics from the team at the Turtle Sanctuary, La Tortuga Feliz, in Playa Viva, Juluchuca, Mexico.  As of this month, the sanctuary is running 40% above the number of turtles released same time last year. While this large increase probably won’t be sustained as we head into the high season over the last 4 months of the year, it is still a good indication that the work of the all volunteer staff is effective.  With over 200,000 turtles released last year, this bodes well for a large number of turtles to be released in ‘08.  We hope you can join us for this truly transformation experience when Playa Viva opens in early ‘09.  Below is a photo of a baby leatherback turtle taken during one of our visits back in March. 

Dry Season

 

It’s the dry season here at Playa Viva but this place is so full of life and water that its still green in many areas. One good aspect about the dry season is that with less foliage you can see more wildlife because of less greenery to camouflage the animals.  During last weeks visit on site, we saw a family of coati, an iguana, what looked like a Harris Hawk and many other animals.  Playa Viva is teaming with life even in the dry season.

When Joanna Wins, We All Win!

Greetings Playa Viva-ites!

We happily announce the winner of the first Playa Viva / Ocean Champions Win-A-Trip-To-Playa-Viva campaign. Congratulations Joanna Kelly of West Hollywood, CA!

Joanna, a devoted champion of ocean health, has given tirelessly on behalf of the oceans and its wildlife. She writes her Congressional Representatives, she donates time and money to ocean conservation, she even invites friends to join both the Playa Viva and Ocean Champions community. Now that’s what we call a true conservation champion!

Have fun, Joanna!

If any of you are feeling just a little jealous of Joanna — check out our campaign currently running with our pals at eConcious Market. Sign up, become a member at eConsiousMarket.com- (you’ll amazed at the cool stuff they’ve got), and qualify to win a trip!

Better Play, Better Kids

Continuing with the theme of “Nature Deficit Dissorder” and “Where have all the children gone“, this story aired on NPR this morning, “Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills“.   Key to the story is the concept that we over-regulate our kids, that play has moved from being activity based to being object based, the object being a toy, a video-game and that their time is overly supervised and regulated by adults due to concerns about safety. The story states, “for most of human history what children did when they played was roam in packs large or small, more or less unsupervised, and engage in freewheeling imaginative play.”  This is how I grew up mostly and this is how I want my children to grow up. This is the type of environment we want to create for our children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters. This is what we mean by “Everyone Needs Wild Places“. We need places to let our (inner) child roam in packs engaging in freewheeling imaginative play within the right environment for that type of activity to flourish.

I encourage you to read or listen to this story. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514

This must be the place!

Entirely different vibe here. Leaving SFO- ‘homeland security’ had found a place to reside in the back of my neck. You know, that spot just between the shoulder blades. Bye-bye USA… hello MEXICO!!!

From the moment I land in Zihuantanejo/Ixtapa (ZIH) Airport I felt my breathing change. My shoulders were slowly leaving my ears. Hey! Everyone is smiling. What’s up with that? That lovely warm breeze. Okay. This feels more like it.

Being a surfer from Norcal, it’s hard to imagine paddling out without my full 4.3 neoprene body girdle. Even though I’m here to ‘work’ and check out the progress of the Playa Viva site, it would be a lie to tell you I had anything else but surfing on my mind. It didn’t get any easier to wrap my brain around work at baggage claim. (grin!)

Peak Season

We just got the monthly stats in from the turtle sanctuary, Tortuga Feliz, at Playa Viva.  This is definitely peak season.  The team reported for Sept: 714 new nests, 67,451 turtle eggs (avg of 95 eggs per nest) and 29,723 turtles released. In October, the numbers are off the charts: 439 nests, 41,574 eggs and 64,787 turtles released. These are incredible numbers. The work of this group of all volunteers should be highly commended. We hope to help find additional funds to support their activities. The leaders of the Tortuga Feliz told us they believe they are either the largest or second largest turtle sanctuary in all of Mexico. 

We just visited the site on Oct 26th and released 2722 turtles. We were told that over 4000 turtles were released the day before. Joining us were new Playa Viva team member Sadie Kaufman,  Catherine Krantz (Editor of local magazine “Another Day in Paradise“), Real Estate Agent Tim Sullivan (from Ixtapa Real Estate) and Brian and Kristen Furano (from The Grain Collective).

We hope you can join us in supporting and visiting the Tortuga Feliz.

First Impressions

How do you start a blog about a project as deep as Playa Viva? Just like every other achievement great and small, with a first step.  Rather than try to describe Playa Viva, or give a first impression, I’ll just leave it up to the members of the Playa Viva team to each give you their own point of view through this blg, like a single refraction on a diamond facet, and by joining each of these slivers together, you can get a complete view into the whole.  Thank you, David Leventhal, Principal, Playa Viva.