Charles/Simha 7/2/2014

Been two months since last meeting - Charles took a PDC at Antigonish - 75 acre site (mothers land) which limited projects - 20 students. Teacher - Graham Colder - ownes P3 Permaculture - registered out of Montreal - teaches in Nova Scotia and Montreal - only teaches PDCs for his living. 

Charles on PDC - Was real cold - stayed in a tent trailer, did learn a lot, though it was a party every night. Good to hook up with people in the Area - most everyone was from NB and NS - trying to organize a permablitz - had some people from the course on his land - clearing up trees - Land is so thick taking down one tree can be a 2 hour job - gets caught on other trees. Getting well guy back on site - 5 try to get permanent water source. Doesn’t have time right now for advisory work. Hasn’t touch base with anyone in Gaia U since he has been back, needs to but there is so much going on, hard to keep up - is on board of community center - volunteering. Enjoying summer spending a lot of time outside. 

Standing up to new situation it will make a good op lots of expansion and contraction - I had to go through this challenging time for a reason - getting lessons - permaculture pattern language - understanding what a permaculture designer is. They did touch on all the Permaculture flower petals yet most of the work they did was on land-based - Charles talked Graham saying that it would be cool to do a PDC on each petal one at a time. Why did we spend 90% of time on land-based petal? If they are all equally important...

Is caught between yr1 and yr2 - he does this process anyway creating projects - WHy Gaia U. He does it anyway - has to “through it into the Gaia U blender” - feedback is light - for the amount of investment we are putting in we should be getting more out of it. 

I spoke about wanting group guilds working together and Gaia Radio calls building a knowledge commons database for Gaia U. Charles said that the Advisory training did talk about group guilds idea - possible new requirements of, one project per year with community and another project where they team up with other Gaia U associates - looks like they will move in this direction? Is it growing pains of the Gaia U lack of function we were speaking about … Charles asked question about Holocracy and Governance of Gaia U. never got replies. 

- Simha’s Accelerated Program page - http://portfolios.gaiauniversity.org/view/view.php?t=DCXtNpdQj9qBATfEWaZK

Transition town is going to be for a larger area than just Charles town - going to include a lot more and make it a lot more interesting and diverse.

Grahma Colder - PDC teacher (interview) is going to be at Quebec Convergence - will be building the shower system. 

Charles went up north and gave another talks on transition towns - friend set it up paid for gas and hotel room. It has gotten a lot easier to do these talks, was difficult in the beginning has really pushed those edge and is finding that it might be his Niche! 

my Cell number - 802-363-4245

Charles notes:

Notes from Charles:

Simha’s been moving a bit...  Moved to a community/institute (MetaEarth) this year.  Had made arrangements to become residents and help create an ecoVillage, not to be working all the time on other projects.  It turned out that he was working 6 days per week on daily chores and other tasks.  This was not the arrangement that was expected.  Tried to make other arrangements with owners for other types of work/exchange, like teaching, etc…  This type of work was not recognized very well and tensions started to surface with the owners.

The course that the teaching was for sounded very interesting (ecoVillage design), but there was nothing organised past the syllabus.  There was no curriculum ready or anything.  Simha offered to host a few of the sessions and also offer a daily session on design.  A growing divergent view of where the course was going between Simha and one of the owners was getting more and more difficult to navigate.  The feedback from the students was terrific, but not so much from the owner.

Also had an oven workshop with a mentor friend and was able to download and sound everything with him.  Finally decided that they would not stay any longer.  It was not a good fit.  It was very difficult to communicate with them.  

Still working on LIPD.  Thinking this experience at MetaEarth could be OP2.  Planning for OP3 – to work with PC teachers and gather their experiences and teaching experience, tips, language, patterns…  teachers in action…

Was accepted in the accelerated program!!!

I don’t like Reggae, I love it!  http://youtu.be/t_xkT-T-KF0