Photo of Wednesday, December 18: Water Shortage?

San Diego roofs and streets are rainwater collection devices, and currently most of that water is drained away rather than stored for later use. That need not be. By improving the design of our streets, houses, lives, etc--we'd probably not need desal or piped water from NorCal.

Back in September Brad Lancaster gave a presentation on rainwater harvesting right here in San Diego!

I encourage you to share your own photos here about how San Diego or Tijuana urban design could be improved. Ask me how.

rough SD Permaculture update

Mike T. is planning to visit in December and will be presenting on permaculture to his brother's high school class. He asked if I knew of any great pc demo sites in the area. Besides the wonderful new farm at city college, I don't--but tried to answer any way. Posting from my phone. [bad links fixed with computer]

--

The only new sites I've become aware of since you left: the city college urban farm: a must-see: http://www.sdcity.edu/esc , and girosol.org [http://www.girasolbaja.org/] (? Look up giro sol. I tried contacting them, got no reply. The workshop leaders were from Portland, if it happened). Missed the permacultureconvergence.org (socal ? See links from quailsprings if that's wrong), but heard there are now efforts to organize an sd-tj permaculture gathering this year. Marcia Boruta may be more in the know. She got Brad Lancaster here. . .

Deer park monastery would be another site, progressing fast: monks were at Brad's talk--brother stream and brother vu(?) (rain).

Then there are the other pieces: edible sd mag (haven't seen it, ediblesandiego.com ), the new city heights farmers market, chollas & 54th garden (groundbreaking 10/21).

Alias b's house is in a wonderful spot, nicest I've experienced in sd in fact (camped there), and a very good example of cobbling things together and figuring out problems: grey water, chickens, compost tea bubbler, banana basin (whatever it's called). Showing a great return on 3-4 months effort (~same time as city college farm).

AB's also had to deal with social challenges of pc. . . partner not as into all the experimentation and change. . .but that may be having a happier resolution.

and the restaurant side: the linkery, the local food plate I heard one was putting together.

and you may have seen it: looks like Ellee's getting FNL in gear for another conference.

Julie O's work on the 6th and Quince garden, balboa park.

and who knows what all's been going on with "north coastal food not lawns"--check with rachel of the solana center.

and I just heard of (searching for volunteer ops on americorps.org) a socal city repair variant: aclaparks.org

it's great you'll be here to shake things up. Josh R ( quakingaspenpermaculture.blogspot.com ) is another permie who returns here in december.

may post parts of this to various of the blogs I started. . .

peace,

Colin

BarCamp San Diego 3; The evolving network and whole-system health

Saturday	Sunday

I had been thinking I needed to write a post-mortem for this blog--this site was intended to demo technology, and it has. I've moved on from obsessively hacking at it however. Recently I've just been posting at Colin's Forest Blog.

Well, Bar Camp this past weekend pushed me to post here again. Let me list the reasons:

• Bar Camp is intensely collaborative (a main intent of this--the SDTJDPH--web space).
• I met Jed Sundwall(T)--who's put up a google map of places to find & eat local food. I've added this map to our map channels. Jed helped get Jay Porter of the Linkery to show up at Bar Camp -- a main reason I decided to head out there for the weekend. Jed also has helped make a documentary on cilantro. And he gardens.
  
• I met Rachel -- who informed me about a group of San Diegans who, from what she told me, are quite serious in helping there be affordable, sustainable, land trust housing for community-minded San Diegans.
  
• I met Robin--a proclaimed non-techhie interested in social justice activism.
• The empowerthyself crew was there--from Santa Barbara, LA, and some other CA town.
• But our local indymedia/ hacklab wasn't really there--except through Rachel!
• Eric Bidwell(T) was there--updating us on his mayoral campaign.
• Ian Miller--another SDFNL participant (more active than I am) and California Rare Fruit Growers participant & gardener was there.
• There was interest in many of the sessions I posted to the board:
• Barcamp in the forest - well attended, appreciated
  
• Net philosophy / visioning / Sci-fi / Transhumanism -- Where do networked identities lead? What examples do you have already? Participants shared their past awareness-changing experiences with the net + future visions; well attended, appreciated.
• Morning Exercises - Integral Transformative Practice Kata: easy yoga, tai chi, qi gung at 8am brought out Jay, who did some qi gung while I followed my routine, as we looked out over the bit of canyon.
• There was a lot of interest in Carfree cities / Carfree living, but I wasn't sure how to best manage this and I tend to get a little crazy / emotionally involved. . .
• Meditation (Walking & Sitting) + what is it about? Peace? Creation vs. Reproduction? didn't get any takers. Nor did the Plant Walk. But it was nice to get out of the office­ building and do some sitting and relaxing.
• Permaculture: what is it? (hacking the landscape?) didn't draw a soul--though many of the first-day attendees mentioned interest in this, and both Jay and Jed wanted to look more into this concept. To be fair, I hardly touched a computer the whole weekend, so my presentations were nothing special, except where they benefited from a good round-robin type sharing--when I managed to set it up well with some good questions. No slideshows, photos, or video here. I was too busy enjoying being with people to want to look at a screen.
  
• Presentations I was able to get to and enjoyed:
• Jay Porter on the Pre-industral / slow-food vision behind the Linkery and what they've accomplished so far.
• Jeff's (Jeffrey Johnson of Pictearth) presentation on unmanned aerial vehicles + imaging.
• David Horn (and at raconteuring, [T] ) on location based services. LBSs use info about one's location, often through GPS, cell phone tower location, or manual entry. Some sites mentioned:
• Fire Eagle
• Bright Kite (see their post on Re-democratizing the third place)
• Dodgeball
  
• Twinkle
• Navizon
• Hacking the mind (I forgot who did this--but it had a good audience & good things came up)
• Andy Mesa - (T) on the iPhone
• iLiberty, iNdependence, iPownage -- all utilities for jailbreaking (allowing third-party apps) and unlocking (allow use with other mobile providers)
• He uses a prepaid plan with TMobile--$20 for unlimited data $20 for 1000 min / month (is this accurate?) + tmobile hotspot wifi access
• Phring (use iphone as phone over ip)
• A carfree discussion enthusiast-- and had many great stories to share on Portland
• He informed me that SD is on google transit. . . I guess it has been for a while. But it doesn't integrate with North County Transit.
  
• Richard Hilton on Lucid Dreaming
• Nikolaj Baer on python and pygame . . . & pyglet.
  
• He showed a quick demo where tilting his laptop would roll a circle (ball) around his screen and bounce against the sides of an n-gon. Different segments of the polygon made different tones when hit. Very simple code attaching into 2-d physics libraries (pymonk?), plus the alsa/timidity synth, cat-ing the tilt sensor device (had to add kernel module for that).
• He rode his bike the first day from PB. A long ride. Once upon a time he was a major gear(bike)head.
  
• People I met:
• Byron Cook - an extreme outdoors guy--S&R (search and rescue), ultra-endurance, the whole nine yards (but not primitive / origin skills & food growing). Mentioned golite if you don't want to take the time to sew up Jardine's stuff.
• Nathan Hubbard - (T) - blog - liked the philosophy session
  
• Jbruin(T) (Jennifer Van Grove) twitter maestra
  
• Patrick Crowley - (T) , barcamp organizer & green hummer creator.
• Brynn Marie Evans. She shook my hand. Asked if I used twitter. Clarity!
  
• Lisa Brewster - (T) her diet & technomad pages
• I saw Alex Kawas / emp(T).
  
• I saw Dan Tentler / viss(T) -- here's his more detailed post on BCSD3.
• nice: lightbending
• his bcsd3 photos
  
• A promoter of lovejourney.us (?) was there--we were both in the "hacking the mind" session. More interesting to me was a guy in that session who knew of nearly everything I had to add: Wilber, Cohen, wie.org, Theory U/ Otto Scharmer, etc. I neglected to talk further with that guy or find out who he is. [I'm guessing this was Sean Voisen.]
  
• Jay Bushman(T) - (creator of a twitter adaptation of Melville's "Benito Cereno" ) - was the guy up doing Qi Gung. . . He has a helpful post just up from a cool mag (looks like the mag articles get posted in their blog--nice).
  

[Well that's about 6 hours of Internetting. What's left to explore?]

I'm in the dark about many things at this event. Twitter in particular. . . Here's the

• pre-BCSD tweme (#barcampsd)
  
• in-process BCSD tweme (#bcsd) (it's shorter--that's all)
• and one more (#bcsd3)
• And here's an account used by bcsd organizers to announce stuff.
  

#Nom = food (not sure why. Natural Organic Matter??)

[I'm hoplessly lost in netland--back to now taking a look at some other people who I noticed and only now have their names/online ids:]

• Garret Lisi - blog - (T) He has his own wikipedia page. . . and is currently famous for a unifying theory (physics). His girlfriend, CrystalJean(T), mentioned Michael E. Arth during part of my attempt to guide a carfree cities & living discussion. . . here's the tweet about Arth visiting!
• Hike the geek san diego
• an international network of rational adventurers . . . creating, living, and sharing the good life (origin in San Diego 1996!)
  
• Enrique Gutierrez -- nrek(T)
  
• sociosophy
• Well, I'm not sure who Enrique was. . . I think I confused him with Dante Lanznaster.
  
• Glenn Zucman (artboy CSLUB art prof) artboyusa(T)
  
• Woody(T) helped us all.
  
• June's handshaking session. . . physical human handshaking, and I pestered her about a didactic Western European prescriptive approach. Joonspoon(T). Gaelic?

[Alright. The Internetting is petering out. . . I'm up to 12 hours at this point. Nearly. . .
The free connection failed. . . as a result I got out and got some exercise, and was compelled to walk to campus this morning. So now this is the second day of fiddling with this post. What's left?]

A lot more can be said. The contrasts between this gathering and the Feral Visions Against Civilization 2007 in location and feel. . . I could address that.

I camped in the canyon. . . the scrap of canyon left.

Here's the bird's eye view of the location. University City--very Le Corbusian. I thought the bird's eye view would bring it out, but street view may be better. Looking south toward the building:
Every office monolith surrounded by an asphalt sea or harboring a parking tower. A new monolith and tower combo was nearly completed in the adjacent lot. The garage lights are on all night.

Overall, what was going on at barcamp?

Here's one vague way to look at it: The physical and social technologies there are developing the wiring and self-organization of a global organism. And there should be some new, emergent qualities of this network of consciousness/spirit/interest/motivation.

Notable is the intrinsic motivation apparent in this type of gathering.

Participants are not paid to be there. It is an economy based on curiosity, interest, and ability to inspire rather than potential for $$ profit or fear of some force.

Twitter in particular and the sessions organized around it show how this group is figuring out the wiring, flow, and organization of the sending of signals throughout this networked entity.

Some were attempting to address the overwhelming amount of tweets and other content coming in.

Others are exercising the location-sensing capability of mobile devices--and considering what this makes possible.

The iceberg of data-flows below the surface of an in-person encounter: I become aware of someone's presence. Looking into the twittering of the conference--or just the list of registrants--I find connections to data flows and can explore more contact.

I notice the compelling connection with the networked entity--as, for example, in the sending and receiving of tweets on a mobile device.

To click a link and see a recent short statement of another's focus of attention--that is easy to digest--is compelling.

Contact.

Newness.

Expanding awareness?

It is easy to follow what is closest to our current state and stretches us just a little? Creating the background familiarity enables deeper, more changing communication later on?

In considering who I might twitter-follow--Thich Nhat Hanh?--I found the mindfulness chimes of innertwitter. Ken Wilber has an account, but no tweets.

But twittering is participative?

There's no johnheron twitter account. . .

Barcamp seethes. They are creating.

An element of creation is withdrawal for reflection.

The balance between jumping in the flow of barcamp,

between compulsively exploring the new links/flows/personalities/patterns/concepts/realms,

and withdrawing to care for body and independent perspective.

The jumping of attention & immediate reaction & creation vs. single-pointed mind or expansive all-awareness.

I'm done exploring this

I'll let this go.

Bringing consciousness into matter

The Aurobindian view on what is occurring?

My challenge is

reconciling the somewhat body-destructive behavior of working with the computer/mobile devices all day with how compelling it can be to do so.

It may come down to seeking connection and not having healthier sources close at hand.

I can't ignore the barcampers--

Some of them handle the tech well, and are thriving & healthy.

I find the outdoor gatherings more healthful and nourishing. More body, life, ecosystem awareness there.

Both styles of community are converging. Green anarchists, permaculturists, & others use the tech the barcampers mature. Barcampers seek personal, social, and ecosystem health.

--

Garret Lisi's Science Hostel + Ongoing barcamp in the forest . . .

We may be challenged by a large amount of differentiation. We have lives & landscapes of dis-integration that we're learning to consciously re-integrate-- using & incorporating evolving capabilities.

As a result we have what can be overwhelming gatherings, bingeing, drinking from a fire hydrant.

I can learn to drink what I can handle as well as to integrate in moderation more of the elements I usually lack into an ongoing life.

I can spend more time in the state of no lack/great awareness/great care.

Peace.

The gods of streets renaissance blogging are a little closer to San Diego

Welcome, Streetsblog LA. (Thanks to carfreeusa)

So how can we get someone in San Diego to write about planning for: streets as public places, carfree living, carfree transit, and proximity all the time like Streetsblog (NYC) and Damien Newton (LA)?

Here's the links for background on Damien and the LA Streetsblog:

• LA Streetsblog intro post
• Street Heat intro post (Damien's previous blog)
• The framing is key, and here's how the original Streets Renaissance project introduces itself:
  

Streets are more than just car corridors; they are valuable civic spaces, resources, which must be wisely allocated. The New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign is building the movement to re-imagine our streets as lively public places.

[no mention of "carfree" of course--so I've probably already spoiled this venue. The strategy seems to be: encourage people to re-imagine, re-design, while advocating & providing data for reducing car use and leave it at that.]

If anyone from WALKSanDiego or SDCBC wants to give this a shot, the SD/TJ Design, Plant, Harvest blog was meant to be a demo space for this kind of discourse, if not the actual thing.

Here's a proposal: that someone (WALKSD?) start a pedestrian advocacy email list allowing discussion of streets and an announcement of the kind of walking tours / audits / re-designs that it does.

Eventually, we can combine the efforts of WALKSD, SDCBC, and other groups such as SD Food Not Lawns which seek to transform our public spaces to be more life-enhancing, and come up with complete street redesigns and reconstructions. We can tear up the middle of vastly overpaved streets such as Streamview Dr (just one example of many), plant orchards and gardens, bike lanes, crosswalks, water-harvesting curb cuts, traffic-calming curb-extensions, and so on.

Does that sound like fun? We could continue this conversation at sdtjdph. SDCityRepair is another possibility-- I'd love it if someone with a bit more savvy and leadership experience would take this up.

We'll figure this out eventually!

looking forward / looking back (for the week)

A Meeting about Collaborative Technology such as this blog

Most important regarding the existence of this blog is the upcoming tech meeting on Sunday, the 20th. This meeting was made possible by collaborators at the SD Food Not Lawns Meeting this past Wednesday.

If you are interested in this blog or in similar technology that could help residents of SD/TJ who are dedicated to caring for the commons to collaborate, please be there.

We'll probably have another meeting to help people learn how to contribute to the maps, calendars, and blog later on, depending on what we discuss at the meeting.

In other news, activities related to "design, plant, harvest" have blossomed for me since the last post. In addition, I'm aware I need to be getting on to planting the real garden, not the Internet garden, so this site could be left somewhat fallow for a while--and I hope the seeds I've planted here may lead to some growth (contribute! post! volunteer to be an editor!) until I can tend to it again.

A visitor from Idaho

Don, a guy who has (in the past) grown all his food for one year and who has 1200 lbs of squash he grew (and gallons and gallons of dried fruit, and all sorts of other stored crops) in storage on his property in Idaho has come to visit. I wander around with him and we collect fruit and greens and I get to learn a bit from his curiosity about the plants that grow here--many unfamiliar to him.

A Popping Calendar

If you haven't taken a look at the event calendar for a while, do--see how overfull it has suddenly become. I think this is mostly due to Mariah's work on the SDFNL event calendar and foodcalendar.org, but it has also been dependent on Marc with the SD Sustainability Meetup, and JoAnn with the SD Community Farms and Gardens Meetup, and many others adding their various events.

Film Screenings

JoAnn Cofrancesco figured out how to be able to show films at the San Diego Public Libraries. I hope to get some films screened at the College/Rolando library soon. See Hopedance if you need ideas of films to screen.

Native Gardens

Saturday there was a class on growing native plant gardens. This was put on by Alrie Middlebrook of the California Native Garden Foundation. She gave a powerpoint lecture for the first half of the day and in the afternoon guided a tour around the North Park neighborhood. We visited a few houses with native plant gardens and a neglected native garden in Balboa Park at Albany and Morley Field Drive.

I wanted to attend this because of a video I hope to screen that was created by Joshua Byrne and Gardening Australia. Josh converts a suburban home in a climate somewhat similar to ours into a permaculture homestead. Among the elements he adds is a "native verge"-- he plants the strip between the sidewalk and the streets with plants native to Perth, Australia.

Adding to my interest, Don and I found a verge we can plant that is not far from City Farmer's Nursery. We may get to planting it on Friday. The woman whose verge it is was at City Farmer's asking about astroturf. . .

Tree Pruning

And on Sunday, Paul and Matt of SD Food Not Lawns led a tree pruning workshop at Candy Vanderhoff's house. Trees in this case were limited to stonefruit type trees: primarily peach, plum, apple--all trees that are dormant at this time of year.

Here's the finished product:


It was great fun! (we spent almost the whole time on one tree and had great food to eat.) I hope someone else who was there might want to write more.

Mission Trails and the Garden Plan

So, I've left Don at Mission Trails for the day and I'm headed home to meditate on the garden plan for the future.

City Repair

Marc and Candy and Julia D. and others are bringing City Repair to San Diego. This is wonderful. The first meeting is tomorrow evening. Tuesday, 1/15.

Where this may be headed

I want to reinvigorate the College/Rolando/El Cerrito-Area Gardeners, a group I helped start early last year. I hope to use what I learn at the workshops I have to travel to to share what I learn with the people in my neighborhood. Maybe I'll eventually work as a sort of ecological landscaper in the neighborhood.

Don and I have been doing a lot of biking around the past few days. It's time to stay put for a while.

Garden Goals

Don's arrival and his bringing of great food (squash he grew, onions he grew, cooked, and dried, grape juice concentrate--a paste--from grapes he grew--a tingly taste of vitality--, bread we baked, jujube's we found. . .) and Mariah's great mix of CSA vegetables she cooked up for the FNL meeting reminded me of how good it is to . . .

I'm not sure what I'm getting at. Something about good food and squash.

The goal is to grow 365 squashes. So I don't run out.

And to get some perennial pepper plants growing.

And to begin the planning from the in-your-dreams perspective of having total control and unlimited resources to modify the property. Then to scale it down. And to attempt to integrate more of the permaculture-type systems: rainwater collection, for one. I'm off to do that now!

Yes! Magazine

Don brought with him a copy of the most recent Yes! Magazine.

It is a wonderful thing.

(Maybe the kind of randomness that follows isn't good for this kind of blog--if we ever get some editors, we can re-consider this)

Here are some notes I took from that issue:

paecon.net
rprogress.org
unsubscribe-me.org

The Commons Rising -- Tomales Bay Institute (google) (onthecommons.org)

p 19. "The best antidote to the fear, helplessness, and isolation that drives people into apathy is community and joy." Gelder, Pibel.

"The leadership of ordinary people" is what is needed now.

The Start Now Farm in Bremerton, Washington. (google) (they grow food on their roof and city lot--enough for themselves and to sell at a farmers' market)

The Church of Stop Shopping (google)

WSF2008.net

vfp.org


squatting:
bussana.com & geocities.com/squattersguide & sftu.org/hnj.html & wikipedia.org/wiki/squatting

rockwoodleadership.org

"walk-out challenge" (google)

Girlsforachange.org

Pete Seeger, Clearwater (wikipedia)

Newfarm.org

--
and I've updated my links page.


If I run out of non-computer things to do, I'll come back here and look at them.

Jamul project

[In the long run, I'm not sure this sort of thing will be posted to
this blog--but maybe it would be. In the next week or so I'll be
writing up a more complete proposal about where this blog could go.]

This opportunity was posted on the sdpg list,
and Marc Bailey managed to arrange it so I could ride out there with him.

It is in effect a paid local permaculture internship (I don't know how
many more could be paid at this point, but it couldn't hurt to call
Josh), and one of the most wonderful opportunities I've had in San
Diego.

Marc and I both got to use a bobcat excavator yesterday to dig swales!

Josh is great.

Peace,
Colin

"plant your water before you plant your plants" (Brad Lancaster?) -- a saying I learned.

-------------
Hey Folks,

My name is Josh Robinson and I live in Flagstaff,
Arizona where I own a permaculture based landscape
design company called Eden on Earth
www.EdenOnEarthLandscaping.com
I will be visiting San Diego for a couple of weeks
during the holidays where I will be doing some
permaculture landscaping at my folks home and I am
looking for some helping hands. The site is in Jamul
which is in east county. The project is removing a
lawn and replacing it with an edible and water
harvesting landscape. This is PAID work and a great
way for people to get some hands-on experience
learning permaculture. The pay will be somewhere
between $10-15/hour. Work will begin somewhere around
December 26th and last a week or so. I have extensive
experience installing both passive and active
rainwater harvesting systems in drylands environments
so you will learn much while making a bit of cash.

Please contact me asap if you or someone else you know
is interested in this job.

Thanks,
Josh Robinson
928-853-9716
rolling_stone123 at yahoo.com
www.EdenOnEarthLandscaping.com

PS. I am also interested to see some permaculture
sites that other people are working on in the area so
please contact me about that as well.