[FLPERMACULTURE] Hello from Portland

[Joshua Dolan]

Hello'all

Greetings from the sometimes sunny northwest.  Grace
and I have been staying for the past week and a half
at the Portland Permaculture Institute, an urban
permaculture teaching center, small intentional
community, working farm and csa.  We've been
worktrading for room and board during our stay,
helping with the busy harvest season and preparing
garden beds for winter cover.  It has been a warm and
fun experience and the folks here have been truely
accepting even though we are only members of the
community for a short while.

Portland has been an interesting and exciting place to
visit and study from the sustainability perspective. 
The first and most noticible sustainability effort
lies in Portland's amazing mass transit system,
Trimet.  With a streetcar downtown, a light rail
system which in some places has its own streets, and a
bus system that is frequent and goes all over, the
integration of this system creates easy access for
anyone who uses it.  The roads are still clogged and
busy, though, so I guess the system isn't perfect. 
People are still attached to their individuality and
personal freedom personified by the auto I guess.

Portland is also known as the birthplace of the City
Repair Project.  We went looking for some sites one
day and saw an intersection repair known as Sunnyside
Piazza.  It was interesting but empty of people.  I
guess we should have stopped by after work.  Saw the
T-horse as well.  It's a mobile tea house with
gossomer canopy that rides on the back of a tiny
little pick-up.  

Portland also has a Buy Local campaign.  I
participated heavily in the local economy during my
stay here.  Portland has more micro breweries than
anywhere else.  The food was great too and quite a
diverse range of flavors and tastes.  There's like 20
different farmer's markets here as well.  Many many
coffee houses here, although nothing quite like
Gimmee!.  Stumptown comes the closest as far as
quality and ambiance.  I was surprised at how many
coffee houses serve beer here.  You can even have a
beer while you wait to have your hair cut!  I think if
Ithaca had a place like that, there woudn't be so many
scragely hippies.

All in all, I see that even the self proclaimed "most
sustainable city in the country" has issues,
especially relating to the automobile.  Visiting here
from our little city, I see where we need improvement
and what we are already doing well.  I would like to
reinvigerate earlier dialogs we have had on this list
about what makes for a sustainable city.  What are
your ideas?  What are some projects going on in Ithaca
that you fell best exemplify the ecological city? 
What would you like to see in the future?

I for one would like to focus my attention on
pedestrian and bicyclist's rights.  As many of you
know too well, it's just not safe for people to share
the road with cars and it's really a civil rights
issue beacuse don't pedestrians pay taxes too?  

Well thats it for me.  Tune in next time as I extole
the virtues and vices of the Bay Area.

Josh 

"Vast tasks, calling for all the courage, discipline, dedication, and ingenuity commonly associated with war, will have to be carried out if the majority of humankind are to survive and enjoy a tolerable future"   ---Robert Hart

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