The Golden Triangle
By Jami Scholl | June 14, 2011 | 4:46 am | Comments (0) | 
Jami at APA Conference
After I completed a presentation for the State Master Gardener Conference in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, on Saturday, I sat down next to Ricky, the director of the conference, and asked for feedback. I received it later that day when he told me I needed to be myself. What? I was myself, and I felt that I was my BEST self for the day I was there. He went on to say that I will be famous one day and that I should think about how the keynote speaker, Mark “Coach” Smallwood, the new Executive Director of the Rodale Institute, gave his presentation.
After returning home with bone weary tiredness I yet again watched Brene Brown’s TEDx talk about the Power of Vulnerability. I critiqued myself as much as I could without a video of myself… and I thought about how typical Permaculture talks and classes proceed – heavily academic, speaking more to the mind than the heart. Permaculture, as with many other things in life, analyze, quantify, in order to be understood, but this is not the way to touch people. In another TEDx talk by Simon Sinek about how great leaders inspire action, he says that people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. This is great reinforcement to Chris Guillebeau’s download “279 Days to Overnight Success” which states that you must tell people WHY you are doing what you are doing, and to continue to tell your readership why.
This is the reason why I do what I do:
We need to prepare for the Golden Triangle of Unstable Economy, Peak Oil and Global Warming. According to my own personal ethics I have a responsibility to help you prepare for these changes. Through many culminating experiences and tools that I have honed I can assist you in the preparation for a more food secure future, which includes growing food from soil to table, care and butchering of poultry, working with others to change urban agriculture laws, working with neighbourhood covenants and restrictions, all with the lens of generations of gardeners and truck farmers in my family and with the tools of Permaculture.
Based upon my research (and built upon the shoulders of others) we have a great challenge to meet environmentally, physically, economically and psychologically. This video will give you an overview of the connections we need to have of the bigger picture to prepare our families and communities: http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-06-11-the-most-powerful-climate-video-youll-see-a
Why a Triangle? These three issues form a triangle much like the Bermuda Triangle – Scary. Uncertain.
Garden before leaving for WDS.
Why Golden? These points also create a frame from which great things can happen. “The problem is the solution” is a Permaculture mantra and can be illustrated by this film, The Five Obstructions by Lars von Trier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYrNwO7-AVI
So back to the question of how to be myself when I present. Tell my story, with facts and information that can inspire and empower each individual who takes the time to listen and understand. From my own experience with depression and the feelings of hopelessness in the face of such a large challenge, I have learned that solutions exist, and some of this is about acceptance and adaption to these changes which are already occurring.
The Golden Triangle is about acceptance that the future is not what we had assumed it would be, adaption in the face of uncertainty, about preparation to be food and water secure. I can help you. I call it Foodscaping.
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