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[GWL]: Integral Urban House

>Nan,
>It changed my life as well.  I give full credit to that book for getting me
>interested in gardening and homesteading.  Some years later I had a chance
>to visit the Olkowskis and Sheila Daar at BIRC in Berkeley.  Later I had
>Sheila on the Today Show with me around the beneficial insect topic.  But
>that house was special; you must have loved it.  I modeled my own home on it
>when I wrote Self Sufficient Suburban Garden, my first book for Rodale.  At
>that time there were at least 12 or more integral house projects around the
>country and I visited ten of them; great fun to see all the different
>approaches to self sufficiency; then the gas prices went down.
>
>Jeff

Indeed I did love the  Integral Urban House.  It was like a utopian
dream for a young person.  Many aspects of every  home and every
garden I have had since then have been based on the
House -- though I've never been motivated to install a composting
toilet or skin my rabbits and eat them!

I was working on an article on "environmentally appropriate
gardening" recently (I know that is an awful term, but that was the
title assigned).  Of course, it took me back to those days.
Initially, I felt a bit depressed, saddened by the fact that so much
of what we worked to promote has been lost.  But as I worked on the
article, it occurred to me that it has not been lost as much as it
has actually become part of  the mainstream.  For example, think
about the huge number of cities and towns that not only do curbside
recycling, but also greenwaste recycling, promote irrigation with
reclaimed water, etc.  "Sustainable" is now the term of choice not
just for agriculture, but for growth, public policy, etc.    It may
not be happening the way I had envisioned, nor at the pace we had
hoped for, but much of it is happening.

My folks always talked about the 30 year cycles.  Guess I'm old
enough now to see it for myself!

Nan

PS Jeff, did you ever visit the other Farallones site, the wonderful
research facility in Marin County?
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Nan Sterman		Minds Over Matter

205 Cole Ranch Road
Olivenhain, CA 92024		760.634.2902 (voice)
nsterman@mindsovermatter.com	760.634.2957 (fax)
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-- 
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Nan Sterman			PlantSoup

205 Cole Ranch Road
Olivenhain, CA 92024		760.634.2902 (voice)
nsterman@PlantSoup.Com		760.634.2957 (fax)
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