Back into Foreclosure

I was very depleted after five years of so much effort to manifest the Home of the Future. I took a break. Last week I decided to come off break. I made a list of pros and cons regarding making the effort to keep this project going in this incarnation, and what actions I would need to take in order to sustain it.

The pros outnumber and outweigh the cons.

As if to reward me for pulling my head out of my navel, I got a Notice of Trustee Sale taped to my front door yesterday. The timeline is super short; December 13th. I'll call the bank and see what's up.

I'm in a pretty good mood about it. I really feel God's love and support. The "right" thing is going to be the thing that happens. The right thing is already happening. I'm feeling His presence within me. With Him as my center, my heart, my shelter, my shield, whatever happens out in the world cannot undo me.

Showing Up and Saying Yes

When really tough things happen and hard choices must be made, my Silver Lining Powers run up to full power. I hear the Word of God and choose to act on what is revealed.

Last time we were in a tough spot about shelter, there was very little awareness in the world about "going green." Transition Towns were still in the future. Urban Permaculture didn't exist. The chance to buy this house came up and I heard the Call to buy it.

I was in great fear, for it was a big loan. The house needed work. My family perceived that the timing was bad, with Xena in her final quarter for her degree and both kids trying to wrap up a school year.

I showed up to the challenge of buying the house and said "Yes." I felt the fear and did it anyway.

What I did not do was take the time to hear what my family was saying. Well, I heard them, but I ignored them, for the most part. I was on a Holy Mission to buy the house because It's For Your Own Good.

So in great clumsiness and with minimal regard for my family I plunged forward. I wrote all those experiences in this blog. Against the backdrop of finding housemates, paying a big mortgage and building a gray water system I learned the terrible costs I was asking my family to pay; Xena had to go to school an extra year after dropping a class that then wasn't offered until three quarters later, for example.

I have seen the tremendous benefits that living here in community have given my family and me. From common meals to other kids to play with or be annoyed by, from co-parenting to playing music together, from shared vacations to help with homework living here has been incredibly enriching.

But it is also true that I shoved it down their throats.

With my Silver Lining Powers.

Now, in the beginning stages of short-selling the house, I have a real opportunity to make amends. This time I hear God's Call and it is to Listen. I am listening to my wife's fears. I am listening to my son's anger. I am feeling how their emotions affect me.

Then I ask questions to learn what the greatest good they can imagine would be for them. Right now it is all about having choices and not being railroaded. So even as I feel transformative power take hold of me I make absolutely sure that I am honoring their place in the journey as well.

This time, in our search for shelter and security, I am aiming for us all to get what we want.

Not sleeping

I'm not sleeping much.

I've a rash that itches and pinches by turns.

After more than three years of amazing experiences growing the Home of the Future, my family simply cannot afford the loan payments. We were in the loan modification program for six months and were finally denied (just after the banks paid all the bail-out money back).

So we are short-selling the house. No guarantees there either; many banks are getting in to the real estate business by foreclosing and holding properties, in some cases even renting them back to the homeowner for about the cost of the mortgage payment.

Wacky times.

I have mad coping skills: yoga, Netflix Instant Watch®, breathing, receiving chiropractic, meditating, hiking, or driving down the freeway screaming for a few minutes. None of these are sufficient to overcome the multiple stressors in my life right now.

Short selling the house is just one source of stress. But it's pretty much the final straw.

I am being powerfully supported by the community. Even Karl and Nini came over to help clean up the place so we could show it. Friends are helping and family is supportive. My mom wishes there was something she could do, so she prays.

I am so full of grace and prayer that sleep is almost not necessary. Some nights I get two hours; some nights four. and I might be a bit groggy during the day but I'm moderately functional. Then as I lie down the fluids shift and the itching starts.

We are receiving a huge amount of interest in the home. I am receiving constant whisperings from God that He loves me and will provide for me and my family's needs. His power and steadfastness are being demonstrated over and again. I have every confidence that His plan is grander and better than anything I can develop. My job is to show up and say yes.

I do wish He'd do something about this rash so it was easier for me to sleep, though.

A House in Transition

In typical Bob fashion, I am casting a possible negative as a positive.

My housemates are moving out. What I imagine happened is that a former housemate "poached" my current housemates. She's avoiding me, so I haven't asked her.

What is in fact happening is that Karl, Nini, Liz, and Renee have found a home to share together on the other side of town. Karl tells me it's a big gorgeous house, not requiring the amount of work this house requires, but having a large south facing backyard ready for planting.

It sounds great.

The new landlord called me while checking referrals. The thought did cross my mind to tell her that these were terrible renters; perhaps then she'd turn them down and I could keep them! But I didn't do that. I told her the truth, that they are great people and great tenants.

Years ago, before I even started this blog, one of my goals was to forge a community that spawned other communities. Here it is! A houseful of people who have lived together under this roof, now going off to be their own collective, propagating the dream, and bringing it to a new neighborhood! Yay! Amazing! As I described this vision to people years ago, they all looked at me askance... yet now this is exactly what is happening.

I really enjoyed getting to know these folks. I'm daunted at the prospect of finding new good folks. The word is already out a little, and people who are looking for bargain basement living costs have already begun emailing, "I have $300 a month I can spend, do you have room for me and my kids?"

I really wish you well, people who need to find out how to get by on even less than I have. I don't know how you'll do it. However, I'll be looking specifically for housemates who are on the Abundance train. I've got to take care of my own basics before I can be of any help to others. I've got to keep building my connections within community so I have the support to do the bigger works as they are asked of me.

Long Delayed

When we moved in three years ago, Mariposa Grove members danced with joy: "Take down your fence! Become part of our community!"

"Great!" we said. "What does being a member of the community mean?"

"We don't know, but it's part of our mission, to be a community center. We'll figure it out later!"

Cut to today. It's SO much later. I haven't blogged in three months as I drive all over the state getting trained on my new job, and it's been a about a year since the "Bridge Committee" got tasked with figuring out the thorny issues facing opening the existing HOA into a larger collective.

Today we retreated.

I was on the Bridge Committee, but I shirked my responsibilities. What I notice now, is that I was unable to successfully represent myself in committee. The mission felt to be: "Let's find a way to charge for the common house." I identified some assumptions and called philosophies of power/ownership/equity into question, but I allowed myself to get steamrollered to an extent.

Today, the remaining committee members presented the work we'd done. We still don't have a methodology for distributing costs. But other voices in the community listened to the proposals, acknowledged the immense effort that went in to getting us even this far, and frequently noticed assumptions and questioned those.

One of our community works in a co-op as well as living here in our cooperative. "At Rainbow Grocery, it's clear: we are either members or on the membership track. That's not an option here."

Another noted: "Renters will not have the same opportunity of ownership, so will we ask them to be paying the same amount as an owner?"

A direction appeared to coalesce from the work of today, so that's huge and good. We also did a very good job being with each other. There was only one segment that got ugly as some talked over and above others. A few minutes later we acknowledged that wasn't how we wanted to behave, and we were respectful and engaged the rest of the time.

Sure there were some near meltdowns and soem tension, but we are handling a really difficult task: how to convert a a closed system into an extensible one. We are dealing with money, with property, with liability, with privacy and with beliefs around generosity and community.

It's cutting edge stuff; other cohousing communities are closed, or new developments. Ours is one of the few retrofits, and perhaps the only one that combines affordable housing with market rate housing.

I give us a big "A+" for today.

Now I'm going out dancing.

In the Flow: Reuniting People and Restoring Landscape

My amazing friend Bonita held a reunion of sorts at Mariposa Grove. Friends, former neighbors and teachers flowed through the community from early afternoon until late at night, celebrating her and the connections we had with her and through her and with each other. I first met her when she lived here and I took the permaculture training class. She left to pursue her own goals more fully a few months after we moved in. She knows the space as it was, when fewer permie principles had manifested in the intentional community. She is... a priestess, an incarnation of the divine, a full and present participant in the dance of life. I grow and become a better person by simply being around her.

She and her partner are planning the water system for their homestead, so she was curious about ours.

"We've directed rain from my roof and the neighbor's into this trough," I said, indicating the french drain we built. "It flows to this catch basin filled with drain rock. The catch basin is about 3 feet deep. When it fills, there's an overflow channel to carry water below ground level to the edge of the property. In the dry season, we have a diverter valve at the laundry so we can drain our gray water into the basin."



"What's the purpose of the catch basin?" She asked.

"We want to recharge the ground water aquifer. The water table is pretty high here, but the bay is very close, too. Salination is probably not a problem, but it might be someday. We've identified that the back of this property used to be a shallow stream. Water flows downhill towards us not only from the immediate neighbor's roof, but the two properties beyond are hardscaped; we get a whole lot of water running over the ground. So by digging this french drain at the edge of our property, and directing the water towards its historic location I feel like I'm helping restore something that was lost. During a recent storm, I calculated that the entire drain system will catch and store at least 500 gallons before it overflows."

"Wow, that sounds like a lot of water!" she said. "What happens to water you don't capture?"

"Ha! This is where what you taught me really comes in: I spent a year watching the land, getting to know it. Come here, look at where the overflow leads." We walked to the other side of the yard. "In the heaviest storms, water bubbles up out of the drain and then under the fence. But see? This neighbor has hardscape too, and their sidewalk is sort of culvert shaped. The water flows down to the street instead of pooling around their foundation."

She said, "This sounds like a really great solution!" She smiled (I love her smile). "What I really appreciate is that you considered what was happening both upstream and downstream."

I preened a little inside. "Well, you all taught me 'There is no away.'"

After Dinner of Lemon Chicken Soup

Diane and I made a very tasty lemon chicken soup for common meal tonight. I'm sensitized to seasonality now; the fact that our lemon tree is producing an overwhelming amount of fruit and we have chicken that needs to be cooked at the same time makes me wonder about other dishes that have become year round favorites. Lemon juice pairs nicely with chicken fat; what other pairings have become part of our 365 day homogenous diet, that might have had been part of a seasonal diet?

Our yard provided a fair amount of dinner tonight. What an amazing climate we have, that in February our yard provided chicken, lemons, thyme, parsley, chard and mustard greens. I really enjoy cooking for everyone, and it's even more fun when an unfamiliar recipe is received so warmly.

Tomorrow we're processing our honey (finally) and Karl and I will work on more trenching and drainage. We had a bit of flooding again, but for some reason no one seems very fussed about it. Karl's grey water/rain storage system is working really well. Water ran off the roofs and through the french drain to the edge of the yard where you could see it percolating up and then spilling over into the overflow channel to the street.

I wish I could find my camera. Karl and Aaron made a beautiful trellis for peas and beans in one of the raised beds. I'd love to share it with you.

A Good Work Party

What a fun day. Not only did we accomplish many tasks, but we had great fun getting them done (or not getting them done and just being together). Last night I ditched the bonfire and walked with Liz and Karl to a pub and saw a decent band, danced a little, and on the way home enjoyed Liz's rant about going out versus staying home by the fire. I can't share it with you, sorry. Rolling in to bed at 2 am, Xena asked me, "Don't you have a work party tomorrow?" Yes I do, but Karl is foreman, and he's out late too, so it'll all be good. I woke up still giggling about what Liz said.

Task one is to clear the driveway for 4 cubic yards of drain gravel. Xena ordered it while I was at Home Depot scratching my head over parts for the heating project. The vegie-oil bus had to move. Betsy and Jori are pros at getting that thing down our makeshift ramps, now.

Yes, Jori is a staff member. Our only staff member. 'Cause he's got the shirt.

Falling rock. Nicholas successfully avoided getting buried. We paid the guy with our ATM number and lemons.

Then we had to put the pile where we wanted it.

Liz and Christine got busy in the kitchen (make sure you use every pot, pan and knife, ladies!) getting dinner ready . Nini fed us lunch and kept us hydrated. Other people kept children busy or out of the way, helped move the furnace, lit pilot lights, shoved furniture around, re-varnished a weather-beaten door,and what all else I don't really know. I wasn't in charge at that level. I finally get to be the vision guy and the skilled labor guy, and leave the job of coordinating to people who excel at it.

"No foolin', we grew potatoes this big when I was a kid. In the planter box outside the kitchen window. Call my mom, she'll tell you."

"So is a hole twice this size, twice as heavy?"

We dug a sort of cistern, lined it with geotextile and later filled it with rock. It'll fill with water that used to run into Karl and Nini's and saturate the soil here, helping nourish the plum and willow. Eventually we'll tap into it and feed the raised beds.

Worms can be a girl's best pet.

Aaron keeps his hands from getting crushed as Karl loads in drain rock.

I cut holes in walls. I also answered questions, but mostly I left managing to Karl and Xena. They were brilliant. I've got an air return almost all the way to the furnace. Tomorrow, heat in the downstairs!

Giles and a neighbor planted raspberries. It's fun to go wilding and forage berries in the world, but it's also fun to grow them yourself if you are lucky enough to have a strip of soil with concrete on both sides. The berries will be forced to behave. I hope.

After dinner we sat in the living room and fed anyone under twelve rootbeer floats. I took a great pic of Liz with the cat, dog, three little girls and two adults all snuggled up together, but the camera ate the picture. I remember seeing it, but now it's gone. Odd. We watched "Schooled," a well-intentioned dram-entary about Free Schools; partway through Christine exclaimed, "Now I understand Aaron!" None of us is sure what she meant by that, but we all thought it was tremendously funny.

Then to settle our own selves we watched Super Troopers.

Many Hands

I noticed today that I finally (finally!) feel like I'm part of a community. This community. Today I don't feel like I'm at the apex of "Who's in charge around here" (otherwise known as Who Can I Complain To) nor at the nadir of "Who wants to go play?" (or Who Other Than Bob Wants to Go to San Francisco and Party All Night). An avalanche of small things added up and I simply toggled.

Xena and Betsy laughing in the kitchen.
Karl and Aaron taking on constructing the first six feet of french drain.
Xena making two crockpot cook-ahead meals for the coming week.
Nicholas making cookies.
Little girls running underfoot.
Trying to get a haircut from Jess.
Jess and Betsy running around the lake together.
Nini showing off the markings Crafty Girl applied to her flesh "so the fairies will recognize me."
Having help to install toilets.
Sitting down to yet another delicious meal, this one cooked by Kevin.
Borrowing Karl's wonderful power tools without asking.
Tim asking how things were going.
Jori coming home early from work.
Betsy asking me to keep an eye on the bus as it aired out after she cleaned it.
Liz setting up movie night under the willow, and all I had to do was provide speakers.
Getting a "Hi, I haven't seen you in a while" hug from Christine.
Xena and Karl reviewing all the projects around here and discussing possible schedules.
Nini rubbing her pregnant belly.
Harvesting tomatoes with Karl. In November. And eating them.
Chickens scratching in the yard.
Karl and I talking about sharing cars . And bicycles.
Liz and Nini plotting how to have a Freedom School here.
Karl and Aaron reviewing the vegie oil settling tanks.
Aaron trading me a drinking-water quality barrel for a vegie-oil quality barrel.
Hanging out in Nini's café waiting for dinner to be ready.
Xena buying me beer.

Such a glorious life I am blessed with.

Flatware Musings

I wonder how many people would cherish a flatware drawer that had so many styles of table utensils? I wonder what it says about me that I do so cherish it? Utensils from our family and current housemates, past ones too, plasticware we've saved, ugly spoons and forks we've been given by presumably well-intentioned folks... all living comfortably jumbled together, non-judgmentally sharing space.

One of my jobs is to empty the dishwasher. I cannot fit all the utensils into the drawer. But I try. I think it's important, in some way.

First Rain of the 2008/2009 Season

We've worked out why Karl and Nini's bedroom floods. We can chalk it up to the previous owners, again, just like all the other inanities we've found so far. In this case, they installed a french drain... right up against the foundation.

Roof run-off, channeled through downspouts, emptied into the french drain, which would quickly fill and slowly release water into the joint between the footing and the slab. A high-water mark on the footing, outside, showed quite clearly where the top of the slab was, inside. The low point of the drain was at the corner of the house (the sump pump, 10 feet away, was uphill by about a foot). This was hiding under a 12" cap of good Bay Clay, making the problem invisible.

Karl and I started, and then Jori continued, digging it all out. It goes down a good 3 feet. We'll pour a little concrete skirt to drive the water lens well below the foundation, and then replace the french drain to be between the two houses and slope towards the sump pump.

I also rerouted the downspouts. We clearly haven't finished this project, yet the nearly 2" of rain that just dumped on us didn't get into Karl and Nini's space, so we've already made an improvement.

Sustainable parts of this job are we'll be reusing the drain rock, so the embodied energy is very low, and we're working by hand, and we're preserving the habitability of an existing asset. We will have a concrete pour, so that's not as good, but I am sure any CO2 release from the manufacture of the concrete is offset handsomely by not having to run heating fans on a wet carpet three or four times a year.

In the News

My community got featured on the local news, ABC7!

Watch the video by clicking on the thumbnail of my neighbor's house.

So you, want to, go to the show?

Life as we know it is changing forever as the pincers of Peak Oil and Global Climate Change close upon us. What to do?

Pay down your debt (you'll need the cash later)
Grow your own food
Get to know the neighbors (take down the fences, grow more food and borrow more tools)
Drive less
Have more parties
Learn to entertain without using fossil fuels

We've begun construction on Willow Stage, soon to be one of the premier backyard venues. Who knows what sorts of homegrown skits and nonsense we will get to watch? To act in? To direct? We will be inaugurating it during our all-night solstice party.

"The willow makes an amazing backdrop for the stage," says Betsy. "Like it already has curtains."

Caitlan's Zone 1 (or Zero)

In permaculture, Zones are numbered from 0 to 5, and can be thought of as a series of concentric rings moving out from a center point, where human activity and need for attention is most concentrated, to where there is no need for intervention at all. Zonation is a guide to for how much human input, or energy, is used within each tier. My friends and I have defined Zone 0 as care of self, so Zone 1 becomes your immediate environs.

Sectors are a way of considering a place's external energies: sun, wind, underlying geology, or in the case of urban permaculture, roads, neighborhoods, and municipal ordinances. These forces are mitigated or utilized, depending on what you're designing. By definition, you can't modify a sector (the sun is going to rise and set at a certain time each day no matter what), but you can modify the effects of sectors.

Caitlan's new home (zone 1) is in a mobile home park (small lot sector, HOA sector). The owner has made it one giant art project; the underlying geology of this fabricated home has been modified with hundreds and hundreds of mosaicked items, from bottle tops and hubcaps to broken tiles and cutlery and other artworks. "It's like living in an art car," she says.

Putting energy (time, materials, money) towards modifying the effects of sectors is a great way to improve the quality of life in your zone 1. Humans have been doing this for a long time. It's fun to see someone converting their dwelling into an art paradise. It's a great fit for Caitlan.

Permaculture vs Traditional

Steve asks me to "compare and contrast" permaculture housing versus a traditional neighborhood. On the face of it, this looks like a simple enough request; unfortunately, it's so full of assumptions as to make it unanswerable.

So, I'll muse a bit about the observations that drive that question, and see where I end up.

I've noticed a great hunger for community. Our father recognized this too, and built community wherever he went. As I move forward in this permaculture project, I see that I'm simply carrying his work forward. Steve cites several examples of "being community" in his neighborhood: sharing heavy equipment, caring for a widow, and so on. He and I have a huge gift in that we expect that neighbors should build these invisible structures.

Sharing resources and responsibility for each other is a big part of urban permaculture. It's one of the end products, but it's also one of the seeds. It can be planted in suburbia. It's just that suburbia is like rocky soil; with garage-door openers and mega-malls, getting to know your neighbors is a bit tougher. In a village model, there's more opportunity to become friends.

My friend Joe has an innate comprehension of "intimacy gradients." In urban permaculture design, there's a smooth gradient between fully private space and fully public space. Suburbia fails this dimension. The fully public space of the road butts right up to the fully private space of the home. Therefore humans invented garage-door openers. Now the car becomes a blended semi-private/semi-public space we drive right up into the fully private space. Face it: we ask an awful lot of our cars, as we over-featurize them with all the comforts of home... making them into mobile living rooms.

I could write of earth care, people care, and fair share, crenulation, small slow change, obtaining a yield, and so on, but much of it would be meaningless. Why? From our current "natural" state of constant stress, the words don't have anywhere to settle. If you're someone who works a stressful job, commutes on the freeway home, hits the door-opener and "escapes" from the world into the privacy of your home each evening, the idea that parking at the end of the street and walking past shared neighborhood spaces, spending a few minutes with a friend who is finishing up building a trellis for pole beans, could be even more relaxing than turning on the TV and going numb, probably sounds crazy. If you're in an elevated state of stress 24 hours a day, you really can't imagine what it's like to operate in another way. Your mind is addicted to the thrum of stress chemicals. You need a brain-washing, of the most beneficial kind.

That's why demonstration projects are so critical. What is the "optimal" size for an urban permaculture neighborhood? It's a fractal dimension. It's not reducible. A demonstration project should be large enough that we can glimpse all the parts: some earth care, some people care, some fair share. The optimal size is therefore a gradient, a fluid, evolving "space" that blends from the private, internal work of "zone zero" self-care, through to the observed but untouched "zone five" of natural wilderness.

A "traditional" (meaning, culmination of 50's style thinking) neighborhood is popping up here in central Alameda. A whole slew of energy-efficient homes are getting built. Big boxes in tiny yards, fences all over the place, streets out front and alleys out back, it's one of the ugliest things you've ever seen. Asked what kind of homes should be built out on the naval base, the highly conservative Alamedans overwhelmingly rejected that model, in favor of something with more diversity, more "village" like. This brings me hope that people are finally tiring of this style of development.

Want to be part of the future?

Over Thanksgiving, at our friend's home in Citrus Heights, I pondered the "X" factor that makes community out of individuals. I've realized it's far too complex a thing to quantify, but I can see that there are some basic tools that allow it to blossom: eating together, talking about shared values, demonstrating shared values, tolerance around when someone has a way of expressing his or her values that doesn't match 100% or even 70%... the list goes on, but in practice it's really simple. Get people together, give them something to do, and let them sort themselves out.

At our home, I'm about to implement a series of workshops and seminars designed to help those who are curious about living in community, to determine if they are ready, willing, and able to form their own villages. The success of the beekeeping workshop is encouraging. It's time to have a sit-down with the house members and make sure I hear all the concerns about becoming a destination, a learning resource, before I really launch in. But if all goes well, we could be hosting a natural-building apprenticeship as early as January!

I'll be contacting (and hopefully attracting!) people who have been interested in this experiment, and even might be part of the way along an experiment of their own, to see who wants to participate. This is it, folks, the thing I've been working towards for a while: initiating the process for others to self-select into core communities so we can take our pooled resources and continue retrofitting suburbia (and urbia) into eco-villages.

This is a fun, fun ride. More will be revealed.

Fire-proof homes

Some climate scientists are wondering if the current firestorms in Southern California are the natural consequence of what could be a shift in the regional climate cycle. If the new pattern is several wet years followed by several dry years, then there will be lots of material to burn, and every three years or so we'll have these monstrous destructive episodes, as as areas that were saved last time go up this time.

Will we keep rebuilding with stick-framed housing?

Rebuilding with earth, as Nader Khalili teaches with his Super-Adobe, would result in homes that were fire-proof. As well creating less need for air-conditioning, construction with less embodied energy, homes that were more unique, spaces that fit the human scale...


The list of benefits is tremendous. One of which is that my brother the firefighter and paramedic could get more sleep.

Kachina Katrina

Julia Roll came over and helped introduce Kachina to the bees. It was raining, so they didn't do much. She might come back to help harvest some honey. Sorry about the crappy picture; my camera has started acting up.

Kachina moved in about two months ago. She's been super flexible with her living arrangement. The back room of her studio is the community storage, which sort of sucks for her, but we've got plans to solve that.

She's just now getting her space set up so it works well for her. She's got that fun/funky design sense you might expect from a twenty-something who spent some time working with Portland's City Repair project. She vanished into the bowels of Urban Ore last weekend and came back with this gorgeous wall cabinet. Her friend Danny installed it. He will also help us put a new door on her studio. She really needs one; the current door is drafty, and it makes her room cold, and she gets cranky when she's cold.

Other than that, she's amazing, a bright spirit with powerful networking talents. She works for the Urban Alliance for Sustainability. She's my helpmate for planning the seminar series that I've been dreaming of having at the Home of the Future for the past two years.

She's also my number one cheerleader when we are at an event. I often find myself being grabbed and planted in front of someone while Kachina says, "Have you met my friend Bob? He's got a community, shared housing project where he's doing urban permaculture. You guys should talk."

New Green Refi Loan Product

Want to "green" your house, but you've been waiting for the perfect loan? Jenny Shore writes:

"I'm looking for a beta client for a green refi. I'll be ready to do this late August. The refi will include cash out to do some green retrofit that will reduce the energy bill by at least 25% from the baseline that will be established prior to the refi. The level of support to do the retrofitting and manage energy usage over time will be unprecedented!

This will require a minimum FICO of 680 and it will need to be an income documented loan (vs. stated).

I'm looking for a good beta client to do this with. This will be one of the first 2 or 3 loans that this lender will do prior to launching the full beta program."

Any one interested contact her directly at 510-652-7900 or jenny@alternativemortgagesources.com

Bay Area Permaculture Convergence, 2007

What do you get when the leaders of permaculture all gather? Silly events such as the Mulch Pile Race! Two teams filled wheelbarrows with steaming wood chips and raced them up the hill. The race was too close to call (although I thought one team deserved some credit for shear style). They moved two or three cubic yards of matter in 15 minutes.

On the more serious side, there were talks and discussions and roundtables with Richard Register, Starhawk, Brock Dolman, Penny Livingston-Stark, Nik Bertoulis, Trathen Heckman, Kat Steele, Christopher Shein, Erin Fisher... and other luminaries as well, to buttonhole and share creative brain space with, such as Raines Cohen and Benjamin Fahrer. I participated in sessions about the amazing successes occuring in Latin America, from reducing infant mortality in Sao Paolo by treating blackwater with circles of banana trees to food abundance through urban farming in Cuba. I learned that a current focus is getting the tools and techniques of permaculture "popularized," out into the hands of the people who really need and want it, but scarcely know the questions to ask to escape their consumptive lifestyle.

I also discovered that my project is truly at the forefront ofthis effort and there is vast cosmic desire and energy pushing it forward. I've developed a set of strategies to bring permaculture to people who are in the middle third of the economic strata. Certainly not the only way to bring this technology to people, but definitely a way to do it so that it impacts them directly, positively, and in a way that saves them money while making money for the permie workers.