Peter Berg
Learning to Partner With a Life-Place is the outline of a first year bioregional curriculum. It was first published June 12, 2004 as Dispatch #1 from Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador. On a fog-wet spring morning in San Francisco, our unusual urban group climbed to the top of a rock promontory midway along a canyon trail to get a clear view of the standout feature in […]
Brian TeinertField Project Manager Planet Drum Foundation January 5, 2004 Reneé Portanova will undoubtedly be a great member of our team. We have been in contact and I am looking forward to her arrival in Bahia on January 19th. I am excited about Natalie Pollard coming as well. At the moment, we have 3 volunteers lined up for February (Natalie, Renee, and Debbie.) We also […]
Peter Berg and Elise Braaten collaborated on a neighborhood oriented educational curriculum that will be launched June 2004 by Planet Drum Foundation in Bahia de Caraquez. Objective: To develop and carry out a bioregional education program for children and adults. It is oriented toward accomplishing ongoing projects that feature lessons, workshops and exercises based upon relationships between specific bioregional features and human economic, social and […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador There are now six revegetation sites strung like beads on the river-facing eroded hillsides leading into Bahia de Caraquez. One within sight above the vivero(greenhouse) at Universidad Catolica is fully planted and has thus far survived the summer drought. It can serve as a walk-through demonstration of the generalprocess and a specific model of controlling land subsidence on the face of a downhill swale. Nearby is […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador When I first heard “pique y pasa” (pronounced pee-kee pah-sah) it was used in a traditional way to describe how to go about buying something when there were different items of all kinds offered. Not a single-minded hunting trip for just one thing or at best a few things where the range of possibilities is finite and it’s a matter of how […]
Bahia de caraquez, Ecuador Of all the differences between living here and in San Francisco there is one that creates a paramount necessity. It is the millimeter close proximity of organisms that use the human body for their own purposes and other natural effects. This slim space eventually becomes a factor in most activities if not a near obsession. There is a hospital quality about […]
Bahia de Carquez, Ecuador It has been nearly five years since the Ecological City Declaration in Bahia de Caraquez and there have been many developments and changes. These have overwhelmingly been for the better and are too great in number to describe fully in a short space. One major difference is that the mutual exuberant feeling of hopeful optimism that prevailed on February 23, 1999 […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador From a video music blaring shore side restaurant on the Rio Chone, the ancient vision of a dugout canoe with two men standing and throwing circular nets in the distance. It’s an accomplished skill for only one person to sit still in these narrow, shallow draft boats without upsetting their knife-edge balance. A large diesel engine ferry powers across the river […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador The main stage of the ambitious project to revegetate six kilometers of eroded hillsides directly facing Rio Chone on the road into Bahia de Caraquez with native plants of the tropical dry forest has begun. The list of bioregional criteria met by doing this is impressive. These hills are continuous with the metropolitan area and thus part of the ecological city […]
(Summary of talk at Universidad Espiritu Santi, Campus Sambopondon, 7PM February 21, 2003.) Introduction Along with all of the technological advances of our time like computer and space technology, the most significant cultural change for our species in the last 15,000 years is taking place in this decade. Homo sapiens is becoming an urban species. In less than 5 years 50% of all the people on our […]