Subject: Re: Khiza'a Permaculture Centre in Gaza Strip

From: Scott Pittman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 09:44:10 -0700 (PDT)

At 10:38 AM 7/22/99 EDT, [email-masked] wrote:
>
>In a message dated 7/22/99 11:05:19 AM, [email-masked] writes:
>
><<
>One method I really liked is filling the dividing/walking spaces 
>between raised crop beds with muclh, all the way to the cropline 
>along the sides of the beds. >>
>
>Of course this was pirated from the New Alchemy Institute.
>
>Dan Hemenway
>
Which was pirated from Ruth Stout, which was pirated from .....

Scott Pittman

Permaculture Institute, USA
PO Box 3702, Pojoaque, NM 87501  US
phone 505.455.0270

*********
Ingenio Patet Campus

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 13:50:29 EDT

In a message dated 7/22/99 5:45:39 PM, [email-masked] writes:

<<Which was pirated from Ruth Stout, which was pirated from .....

Scott Pittman

phone 505.455.0270>>

Yes neither Bill nor New Alchemy were good at saying where they learn things. 
 they like to take the credit

Dan

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 13:56:16 EDT

In a message dated 7/22/99 5:49:09 PM, [email-masked] writes:

<<What's your take on building and maintaining raised beds (for any crop)?>>

That's all detailed in a 24 page (or something like that) article on variious 
methods in the soil's issue of our journal (THE INTERNATIONAL PERMACULTURE 
SOLUTIONS JOURNAL).   Only one method I claim to have worked out, and credit 
is given for the inspirations (including Bill) for that method, of the many 
described.   That's already a very compressed form for that amount of 
material and I can't see trying th encapsilulate the abridged.   However the 
short answer is that raised beds have their place.  

I never read of Ruth Stout filling asiles with mulch, by the way.  Which of 
her books describes that.   I know that she documented mulch techniques and 
Bill does give her some credit sometimes, to be fair about it.

Dan

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From: Scott Pittman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 10:24:25 -0700 (PDT)

> they like to take the credit
I think you are being a little harsh in the case of Bill, I don't have any
connection with New Alchemy, and he doesn't deserve bashing given his
contributions to pc and the world.  I think that if you check his writings
and his public statements he is very good at attribution.  Bill's ego isn't
that enmeshed in rideing on other's accomplishments, his ego has other fish
to fry.

I also remember my grandmother's wise statement, "He who tootith not his own
horn, the same shall not be tootith.

Scott
Scott Pittman

*********
Ingenio Patet Campus

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 14:14:58 EDT

In a message dated 7/23/99 6:27:33 PM, [email-masked] writes:

<<>Dan

Scott>>

Scott:
	No one doubts that permaculture would be virtually unknown without 
Bill's contributions.  But his zeal for giving credit seems, to put it as 
gently as possible, erratic.   You disagree.  It may be well to leave it at 
that.  As I said to you once before,  all of us have our little wrinkles.  
Bill is no closer to perfection than anyone else.   He has surely done more 
good than the vast majority of people, speaking of outcomes here only.  

	The work with mulch was done at New Alchemy and reported before Bill 
came to the USA.  I think it was by Coleen Armstrong but it could have been 
Hilde Maingay or another woman whose name slips my mind--Susan ...  ah, I've 
got it, Susan Irving or Irvin.  My guess is that it was Colleen.   The 
version attributed to Bill leaves out a few critical details.   Bill visited 
New Alchemy Institute a number of times in the early 1980s during which time 
he secured the forwarded to Permaculture II by Earle Barnhart, then the tree 
crops guy at New Alchemy.  Earl was married to Hilde, John Quinney, who took 
the same course with Bill that I did, married Colleen.  And I think that 
Susan eventually got hitched to Bill MacLarney, who wrote the warmwater 
aquaculture book and helped to found New Alchemy South, now known as ANAI, in 
Costa Rica.   This was probably the greatest eugenics project selecting for 
environmentalist that the world has known.  :-)   

Lighten up.   

Dan  

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From: "Lee Flier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 14:31:30 -0400

Dan wrote:

> they like to take the credit.

Geez.  Or maybe they just don't care WHO gets the credit, seeing as they
felt it was important simply for the information to be disseminated.

I don't see Bill claiming anywhere that he personally invented most of the
specific techniques he teaches, anyway.  Most of us who've spent a lot of
time studying anything understand that we've gotten just about everything we
know from those who came before, and we may or may not know or remember the
specific places from whence the ideas came.

--Lee
***********************************
Lee A. Flier
[email-masked]
Atlanta and Ellijay, Georgia
http://lflier.home.mindspring.com

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