I am a retired science writer and editor, responsible for many years for a magazine that Johns Hopkins University sends to all its alumni. I have also gardened for most of my life.

Permaculture intrigued me the moment I heard about it, maybe four or five years ago, because I was concerned about the Fate of the World and permaculture sounded like the answer, or at least a huge portion of the answer. After I got my certificate, I KNEW permaculture was the answer.

I use the portions of permaculture that apply to a garden whose gardener no longer gets up and down with ease, and I introduced some neighbors and the Sufi Farm of Peace in Warfordshire, PA to permaculture. Most of my time, though, goes to an organization I'm part of to recruit the one-billion-plus grandparents of the world to save the planet. Why grandparents? We're everywhere, speak the languages, know the people, have some wisdom, often have spare time, means, and influence—and we love those children VERY much, in a special, protective kind of way. So we're motivated, and we know that 20 years go by like a fingersnap, in a way no younger person can. Who else is there to grab the tiller? Not governments, that's for sure. I did of course blog about permaculture at the time I took the certificate course, but am now writing about it at more length for the current website—Callingallgrandparents.org—as a reason for hope. In future posts I plan to tie in agroforestry, biochar, carbon farming, and systematic use of fungi (a la Paul Stamets), all of which overlap with permaculture but cover less ground. However, because they arose independently, they offer some resources I don't see used in the permaculture universe.

I was thinking to post some biochar links as an update on wpn (which is WONDERFUL), since I'd recently seen a comment from a permaculture person bowled over by biochar and wondering could villagers make it in their very own stoves? The answer is yes, several such stoves have been developed and tested in developing nations, and in general the stoves hold great promise to renew soil, save forest, and generate lots of local food and local income, and I had some examples to point to. However, your mechanic turned the posting away. It was a suspicious number of links, I guess. If you want any of that material, I could easily patch it back together.