I am starting the Smith Mill Creek School. I helped to start the Asheville Permaculture Guild, as well the first attempt at Transition Town Asheville, starting in December 2006.

I learned about permaculture in 1998 from the magazine HopeDance, by Bob Banner (San Luis Obispo, CA). I was very intrigued by the way he blended big picture and local issues of ecology, peace and psychology.

I majored in history in college, and that's influenced the way I approach situations-- by asking how they emerged. I studied the West German Green Party onsite in Bremen in the mid-eighties (and learned German to do so).

My strength is not in my gardening or green building skills, but in political activism, and a focus on trying to act locally in light of large global realities around military/peace issues, the ecocrisis, global poverty & governance.