I seem to remember we picked it up at his studio in Kinsale back in the early 1990’s. Beautiful moody landscape and street photography.

We also had the best Seafood Chowder ever at a pub by the beach.¹

Since then all Seafood Chowders have been measured against the “Kinsale Scale”. Most come up wanting.

Very slowly burning, the big forest tree
stands in the slight hollow of the snow melted around it by the mild, long
heat of its being and its will to be
root, trunk, branch, leaf, and know
earth dark, sun light, wind touch, bird song.

Rootless and restless and warmblooded, we
blaze in the flare that blinds us to that slow,
tall, fraternal fire of life as strong
now as in the seedling two centuries ago.

via Maria Popover at Brain Pickings

I am sure its a labour of love for most of the gallery owners as the market is not large and the work required to mount a successful exhibition is signifcant.

• Chinaclay
• Kerrie Lowe
• Sabbia

If in the mood to travel further afield, the galley at the Sturt College in Mittagong always has an eclectic mix of work in particular furniture and ceramics.

The movie, Inhabit was recently released. Its availble from Vimeo and also through the Yekra project, an innovative distribution channel that enables media creators to sell their product without having to deal with the traditional players.

Humanity is more than ever threatened by its own actions; we hear a lot about the need to minimize footprints and to reduce our impact. But what if our footprints were beneficial? What if we could meet human needs while increasing the health and well-being of our planet? This is the premise behind permaculture: a design process based on the replication of patterns found in nature. INHABIT explores the many environmental issues facing us today and examines solutions that are being applied using the ecological design lens of permaculture. Focused mostly on the Northeastern and Midwestern regions of the United States, Inhabit provides an intimate look at permaculture peoples and practices ranging from rural, suburban, and urban landscapes.

The first thing that strikes you about the movie are the beauty of the opening scenes, its apparent from the start that the movie will have high production values.

Its engaging and interesting throughout. I particularly enjoyed seeing the homesteads and gardens and hearing from people like Ben Falk and Eric Tonismeier whose books I have found to be valuable and inspiring resources.

Its well worth the $10 to see mature examples of permaculature designs in both rural and urban settings.

Mingeikan

Also known as the Japan Folk Crafts Museum. Soetsu Yanagi¹ created this museum to display his collection of mingei items (daily necessities made by common people using local materials)It displays a collection of mingei pottery, textiles and lacquer ware. Feature exhibitions are also held regularly. During our visit the main gallery was showing “KANTHA and SASHIKO - Needle Works from Bengal and Tohoku”.

It’s not obvious that the gallery is open, you need to check the opening hours and then open the wooden sliding doors to enter the beautiful open entrance area. It’s well worth going on a day when you can also visit Yanagi’s house (in 2014 this is open every second & third Wednesday and Saturdays).

Toguri Museum of Art

A private collection housed in building designed by Toguri, we were privileged to see an extensive selection of Inari ware, featuring a theme designs with water themes “COOLNESS….Ko-Inari ware with Design of Water”.

After making your way from Shibuya station (a 10 minute walk once you have your bearings), take seat in the lounge to observe the garden before making your way through the upstairs galleries.

Something that stands out is the advanced age of some of the artists who are still practising. Chair maker Dallas Bump is 94 and fiddle maker Violet Hensley was still making well into her 90's.

Other artists that particularly interested me were

• Potters - Jim Larkin, Winston Taylor & Peter Lippincott
• Woodworkers - Doug Stowe, Larry Williams & Robyn Horn

The award of "Living Treasure" echos the Japanese tradition of designating important figures in the crafts and arts as Living National Treasures. Several other countries have also adopted the nomination including Australia, although the Aus list is short on crafts people, favouring sports people, politicians, actors, writers and business magnates. Craft Australia has created its own Living Treasures list, adding one person each year since 2005.

A recent reminder of the strong Australian links with Japanese ceramics occurred with the visit of Euan Craig to give a very successful workshop at the National Arts Centre in Sydney. In the 90's Euan was an apprentice of the Japanese National Living Treasure Tatsuzo Shimaoka.

I think this is part of why I am attracted to the web design world and the app builders. I started my career as a programmer and still regard this as a core skill however it doesn't feature in my professional life a great deal.

New influences

1. Treehouse
2. Offscreen magazine
3. Execute

Matt Gemmell wrote about Makers and Takers in a typically strong fashion a couple of years ago. Its really good piece (his blog is always a stimulating read).

"People who make things, or Makers, contribute something to the universe... There's another type of person - I call these people Takers... Choose someone you admire... What are you creating?"

— Matt Gemmell, Makers and Takers

The link above is to a transcript of Stephen Wolframs SXSW talk, a mind boggling run down of the incredible computational power that his firm of rolling out.

The potential to harness these capabilities into new types of software is enormous.

Worth reading right through for a glimpse of the future.

The course continues to stimulate us and our enthusiasm for the material remains strong. Even on evenings when we were tired from a busy day the prospect of some "Geoff time" was appealing and we had little trouble keeping up the momentum and staying more or less in line with the proposed course outline.

The course is well structured and its clear that Geoff has given it many times. His great depth of experience serves to ground the potentially abstract materials and to "keep it real". For me the only time this focus was lost was in the final section "Creating an Alternative Society". Geoff still had plenty of relevant experience to relate however the videos for this section felt looser and had a more rambling character than the bulk of the course. For students at the end of an intense two weeks this is probably a relief as Geoff kicks back and the amount of material being relayed eases off.

Random notes

• As we start on the practical exercise, studying maps and design options on paper and then taking that onto a plot of land has been revealing and exciting

• We didn't make extensive use of the forums however whenever we had a question we could usually find someone else had already asked it. My wife and I watched all the video's together and effectively formed a small team, this was very valuable as we continued to discuss the course content beyond the time spent "in lectures".

• The regular uploads of videos with answers to participants questions are excellent and provided an opportunity for him to reinforce core concepts

• The course included a DVD set with all of the lectures plus the full set of DVD's previously created by Geoff. So far we have watched a few of these and I can see they will be a very valuable resource

• While being very positive about the online course, I can see that the regular on the ground practical work integrated into the learning experience of an onsite course along with a gifted teacher and located at a well developed demonstration site would have many benefits. The quality of the teacher, the depth of their experience and their ability to communicate this would be a key factor in deciding which course to take

• Key learning - the mainframe design. The course has transformed the way we view landscape and has us spotting dam sites and swale opportunities everywhere. Walking around the site we are using for our practical assignment, a place we had visited many times before, revealed a completely new landscape potential to us. Geoff says the course will permanently change the way you view the world and I believe he is right.

NB: Another great benefit is that the course text, Bill Mollisons' Permaculture Designers Guide which I had previously found heavy going, has undergone a sort of decoding and now reveals itself as and incredible useful manual which supports the course content with additional depth and paths to study.

It features Tom Ellis who started building mandolins from his rural workshop in late 1970’s. Tom has recently relaunched his instrument line in collaboration with Pava one his co-workers.

The video was produced by the Fretboard Journal a very high quality magazine that features stories and photo’s about guitars, players and makers.

There were elements of classic internet marketing1 wrapped around the promotion of the course that had me a little worried, those concerns have proven groundless and I can understand that using the marketing approaches that work makes sense when your goal is to get this material out to the widest audience and in a sustainable way.

As a taster, check out this video Absolute in Abundance, they will want your email address however if you are at all interested in this stuff you will get a steady stream of really good links and content as a result.

I would highly recommend that anyone who has been interested in doing a PDC but not found the time or the right teacher consider taking one of Geoff’s courses.

Meanwhile, check out the many videos and resources that are freely available at the Permaculture Research Institute. The links to several excellent related documentaries can also be found here. The site is an aggregator of several of my favourite authors including George Monbiot who has a new book - Feral - A manifesto for rewilding the world.

Surfers interested in Permaculture should enjoy with Geoff about the links between surfing and permaculture.

Although these videos are obviously produced to promote the artists ahead of upcoming exhibitions at Goldmark, they are in themselves a tremendous service to the ceramics community. The gentle pace and broad scope allow the viewer to be transported into the rhythm of these artists lives.

Watch on YouTube

I discovered Jon's music while searching for recordings by one his collaborators on this album Tom McConville. We saw Tom play at the Marine Theatre in Lyme Regis during our last visit to England in October 2011. It was fun night with a small enthusiastic crowd of locals and the odd traveller. His playing adds haunting depth to some of the albums best songs.

Tom McConville & David Newey at the Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis, October 2011

Get the Album from iTunes

Our local Megapodes are known as Bush (or Brush) Turkey's and can destroy a productive vege path in seconds.

"Some decisions appear to be relatively straight forward until you take a step back and look at the entire > picture with a fresh perspective. You may notice that there are a variety of factors that actually impact > a choice or decision that you did not notice before."

— Creative Market, Models for decision making

The post also features a nice mind map example from Learning Fundamentals focused on personal actions for reducing climate change impacts.

I find the iPad an ideal tool for mind mapping especially with the power of iThoughtsHD.

I blogged previously about my own experiences with this disorder - fortunately, my case is less severe than the authors'.