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quotamour, I ended up finding this clip of the school that I briefly went to school at (before this clip) and later taught at right around the time of this clip. This was also around the time of the back-to-the-land movement. Mother Earth News was a popular magazine among the youth as were the Whole Earth Catalogs and Coevolution Quarterly (later Whole Earth Review).
In the UK, they had Undercurrents magazine and published the book Radical Technology from those efforts. The Farallones Institute was going in California and RAIN Magazine was happening in Oregon. Among many other such alternative society, technology and agriculture activities.
This was the Social Ecology Program of Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont (later the independent Institute for Social Ecology). You'll see an old American-style water pumper, solar heated greenhouses, a dome covered fish pond (as I recall), a stand alone fiberglass fish tank with algae eating tilapia fish inhabiting it (ala the work at the New Alchemy Institute on Cape Cod, MA about the same time) and a recycled Jacobs wind-electric from the 1940s or so on a 70 foot converted crane segment that served as a tower.
The white three-downwind (no tail) wind turbine was an 1500 Enertech unit. This was the first wind-electric to connect to the grid with a simple induction motor used as a generator. The last clip, I think, was shot in front of the Vermont State Capital in Montpelier. It was also a Jacobs wind-electric and but the logo on the tail was from North Wind Power Company which was a pioneering wind manufacturer in Vermont (now diversified and called Northern Power Systems).
The other wind nerdy thing about that setup was that it was mounted on an octahedron tower probably build by a fellow named Wally Thompson then in New Hampshire. The octahedron tower was probably inspired or invented by triangle fanatic and geodesic dome advocate, R. Buckminster Fuller. They were clean looking towers with only three connections per level but where the tubes were smashed and bent to make the connections you ended up with fatigue cracking. Not much redundancy in the design either and that was a bad combination. Wally ended up moving to California and getting involved in the early wind farms and the octahedron tower was a thing of the past.
I remember climbing that tower. It gave a fantastic view of the valley it was located in and I found out about the "death grip" you develop as a tower climber using that now ill-advised way of tower climbing. (These days you should have a full body harness and be attached constantly to the tower as you move much more slowly up it.)
The documentary this clip is from is called "Karl Hess: Toward Liberty" and got the 1980 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.
The following photos are taken from the Social Ecology history page. I've added some extra comments.
The ad from the first summer program in 1974. The summer before I came along as a student.
Cate Farm at Goddard College as viewed from the hill where the Jacobs wind-electric in the video clip was located. In this case you could see, from left to right, the barn where we held classes, the back of the solar greenhouse in the film, the old farm house, the fish pond dome, a and sailwing water pump made using sail cloth blades.
Later I was an instructor there and you can see me in this group photo from one of the classes in the 1980s. I was the tall bearded fellow with thinning hair, the fourth head from the left in the rear. I'm pretty sure that was the summer at the Vershire School.
My first experience at Goddard and Social Ecology was as a student back in 1975. Here's a blurb on that wild summer that I ended up cutting short, in great part, because I knew as much as my instructors. What did attract me however was the "who's who" laundry list of speakers they'd brought in and the fact of a massive response in terms of students. It seemed like there were almost 200 students that summer and they were really stretched to handle that number. One reason I think they gave me a very nice refund when I left after two weeks. Basically just paid for food and housing. So that was a bargain.
Why I Wanted Peter Van Dresser's 1973 Lifestyle! Interview [Which Follows This Introduction] - Mother Earth News - Sep/Oct 1975
"As most readers of this publication should know (thanks to full-page ads placed in MOTHER NOS. 31, 32, and 33), Goddard College up in Plainfield, Vermont hosted a program on 'alternative energy and agriculture' during the summer of 1975.
And, sandwiched in among the heavyweights (the Murray Bookchins, Karl Hesses, Wilson Clarks, and Steve Baers), the editor-publisher of this magazine [John Shuttlesworth] was invited to attend the three-month gathering for a week as one of the "visiting faculty". Apparently someone wanted to measure the real movers and shakers against a farm boy from Indiana so that, by contrast, everyone would know how important all those other guys really are.
At any rate, whenever I'm invited to speak at one of these shindigs, I always seem to come home with more insight than I took. This trip was no exception.
Because as much as I've helped to promote wholistic ways of living and the so-called 'alternative' energy sources . . . and as much as I approve of Goddard's experiments with aquaculture, wind generators, solar collectors, low energy construction, bio-dynamics, methane tanks, etc . . . . and as much as I liked, admired, and respected almost everyone I met during my week in the program . . . and as much as I intend to continue trying to modify our society so that it can be operated by a gentler technology . . . that Goddard program rubbed my nose—and rubbed it hard—in some unpleasant facts of fife.
In short, I came away from Vermont with a bone-deep feel that even we 'enlightened ecologists' are still far too much a part of the problem instead of the solution. That we're more interested in rearranging the external trappings of our lives instead of really making basic changes in the way we live. That we find it much easier to tinker with solar collectors and windplants than to teach ourselves to exist without the gadgets that such 'alternative' energy devices are designed to operate. That we still prefer to point fingers at other people's 'stupid' electric toothbrushes . . . while donning the headsets of our own stereo systems.
It was this feeling which led me—on Wednesday, July 2—to open my class with these words:
Although I am as guilty as anyone of promoting solar collectors, windplants, and methane generators, I do have grape doubts about the environmental movement's present 'white man's eco-technology' approach to solving the world's current problems . . . problems which are largely with us because of earlier white man "solutions" to the world's problems. 'Solutions' such as the Industrial Revolution . . . which—if we're honest—we must admit that our plastic-and-aluminum solar collectors, copper-wound windplants, and stainless-steel methane generators are part of rather than an alternative to."
Yes. Very different times indeed. Reagan got elected in 1980, the non-conserving conservatives took over and now here we are. :)
quotamour, I ended up finding this clip of the school that I briefly went to school at (before this clip) and later taught at right around the time of this clip. This was also around the time of the back-to-the-land movement. Mother Earth News was a popular magazine among the youth as were the Whole Earth Catalogs and Coevolution Quarterly (later Whole Earth Review). In the UK, they had Undercurrents magazine and published the book Radical Technology from those efforts. The Farallones Institute was going in California and RAIN Magazine was happening in Oregon. Among many other such alternative society, technology and agriculture activities.
This was the Social Ecology Program of Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont (later the independent Institute for Social Ecology). You'll see an old American-style water pumper, solar heated greenhouses, a dome covered fish pond (as I recall), a stand alone fiberglass fish tank with algae eating tilapia fish inhabiting it (ala the work at the New Alchemy Institute on Cape Cod, MA about the same time) and a recycled Jacobs wind-electric from the 1940s or so on a 70 foot converted crane segment that served as a tower.
The white three-downwind (no tail) wind turbine was an 1500 Enertech unit. This was the first wind-electric to connect to the grid with a simple induction motor used as a generator. The last clip, I think, was shot in front of the Vermont State Capital in Montpelier. It was also a Jacobs wind-electric and but the logo on the tail was from North Wind Power Company which was a pioneering wind manufacturer in Vermont (now diversified and called Northern Power Systems).
The other wind nerdy thing about that setup was that it was mounted on an octahedron tower probably build by a fellow named Wally Thompson then in New Hampshire. The octahedron tower was probably inspired or invented by triangle fanatic and geodesic dome advocate, R. Buckminster Fuller. They were clean looking towers with only three connections per level but where the tubes were smashed and bent to make the connections you ended up with fatigue cracking. Not much redundancy in the design either and that was a bad combination. Wally ended up moving to California and getting involved in the early wind farms and the octahedron tower was a thing of the past.
I remember climbing that tower. It gave a fantastic view of the valley it was located in and I found out about the "death grip" you develop as a tower climber using that now ill-advised way of tower climbing. (These days you should have a full body harness and be attached constantly to the tower as you move much more slowly up it.)
The documentary this clip is from is called "Karl Hess: Toward Liberty" and got the 1980 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.
The following photos are taken from the Social Ecology history page. I've added some extra comments.
The ad from the first summer program in 1974. The summer before I came along as a student.
Cate Farm at Goddard College as viewed from the hill where the Jacobs wind-electric in the video clip was located. In this case you could see, from left to right, the barn where we held classes, the back of the solar greenhouse in the film, the old farm house, the fish pond dome, a and sailwing water pump made using sail cloth blades.
Later I was an instructor there and you can see me in this group photo from one of the classes in the 1980s. I was the tall bearded fellow with thinning hair, the fourth head from the left in the rear. I'm pretty sure that was the summer at the Vershire School.
My first experience at Goddard and Social Ecology was as a student back in 1975. Here's a blurb on that wild summer that I ended up cutting short, in great part, because I knew as much as my instructors. What did attract me however was the "who's who" laundry list of speakers they'd brought in and the fact of a massive response in terms of students. It seemed like there were almost 200 students that summer and they were really stretched to handle that number. One reason I think they gave me a very nice refund when I left after two weeks. Basically just paid for food and housing. So that was a bargain.
Why I Wanted Peter Van Dresser's 1973 Lifestyle! Interview [Which Follows This Introduction] - Mother Earth News - Sep/Oct 1975
"As most readers of this publication should know (thanks to full-page ads placed in MOTHER NOS. 31, 32, and 33), Goddard College up in Plainfield, Vermont hosted a program on 'alternative energy and agriculture' during the summer of 1975.
And, sandwiched in among the heavyweights (the Murray Bookchins, Karl Hesses, Wilson Clarks, and Steve Baers), the editor-publisher of this magazine [John Shuttlesworth] was invited to attend the three-month gathering for a week as one of the "visiting faculty". Apparently someone wanted to measure the real movers and shakers against a farm boy from Indiana so that, by contrast, everyone would know how important all those other guys really are.
At any rate, whenever I'm invited to speak at one of these shindigs, I always seem to come home with more insight than I took. This trip was no exception.
Because as much as I've helped to promote wholistic ways of living and the so-called 'alternative' energy sources . . . and as much as I approve of Goddard's experiments with aquaculture, wind generators, solar collectors, low energy construction, bio-dynamics, methane tanks, etc . . . . and as much as I liked, admired, and respected almost everyone I met during my week in the program . . . and as much as I intend to continue trying to modify our society so that it can be operated by a gentler technology . . . that Goddard program rubbed my nose—and rubbed it hard—in some unpleasant facts of fife.
In short, I came away from Vermont with a bone-deep feel that even we 'enlightened ecologists' are still far too much a part of the problem instead of the solution. That we're more interested in rearranging the external trappings of our lives instead of really making basic changes in the way we live. That we find it much easier to tinker with solar collectors and windplants than to teach ourselves to exist without the gadgets that such 'alternative' energy devices are designed to operate. That we still prefer to point fingers at other people's 'stupid' electric toothbrushes . . . while donning the headsets of our own stereo systems.
It was this feeling which led me—on Wednesday, July 2—to open my class with these words:
Although I am as guilty as anyone of promoting solar collectors, windplants, and methane generators, I do have grape doubts about the environmental movement's present 'white man's eco-technology' approach to solving the world's current problems . . . problems which are largely with us because of earlier white man "solutions" to the world's problems. 'Solutions' such as the Industrial Revolution . . . which—if we're honest—we must admit that our plastic-and-aluminum solar collectors, copper-wound windplants, and stainless-steel methane generators are part of rather than an alternative to."
Yes. Very different times indeed. Reagan got elected in 1980, the non-conserving conservatives took over and now here we are. :)
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-04 07:55 pm (UTC)Interesting! I enjoyed the clip.
The "non-conserving conservatives" - !
Incidentally, my MFA chair and mentor, the poet Norman Dubie, went to Goddard. He grew up in Vermont. He's still here in Tempe... and I still meet with him from time to time...
no subject
Date: 2008-11-04 08:14 pm (UTC)