From: Cary Robyn Area: Magical Plants To: Phil Pope 13 Apr 94 06:45:18 Subject: Book & Rom Sent UpdReq Just got a quarterly mailing from Loompanics Unlimited mail order exotic books (P.O. Box 1197, Port Townsend, WA 98368 USA) which features a new item you might not have encountered there: "Psychedelic Shamanism: The Cultivation, Preparation and Shamanic Use of Psychotropic Plants" (c) 1994 by Jim DeKorne,author of "The Hydroponic Hot House." 163 pages, illustrated,indexed, softcover 8 1/2" x 11". Order Number 85182, $19.95 + USA postage $4.00 + foreign $2.40. Haven't seen it yet, and the retail price is higher than I'd prefer, but the summary of contents includes many interesting topics. Let me know if you hear anything about the outcome of Captain Rom's hearing this week, what his overall plans are in light of that outcome, and whether any of the organizations and agencies I wrote to on his behalf have responded directly via your electronic or postal address instead of mine. I had started assembling a summary account of his background and the events surrounding the ransacking of Toadworks Studio from the voluminous materials he has sent me, but it will take at least several more days of continuous work to complete that. Unless I hear that his lawsuit is still being pursued and that this summary would be useful to him in the immediate future,I will be turning my attention to preparing the Quilt of Visions mailing and completing the long-delayed next section of the Seed Crystal prototext for the rest of April. Rom: I think you should approach this in three stages. First, take some time to recuperate physically and clear all this tension from your system. Phil said your Dole is valid anywhere in Australia but only provides minimal income. Maybe look into yurts, which are inexpensive to build, portable and (from what I have seen of Kashra's at Starwood) can make for very pleasant small lodgings during the warmer seasons of the year. Once your health has stabilized, take some programming or consulting jobs that will give you more money to play with than mere survival. I should have desktop publishing and DVE gear within a year or two, so if your budget remains tight, aim primarily for being able to acquire quality raw footage with one of the next Hi8 camcorders and shoot 35mm slides, knowing that we can edit the material here then. You are (1) already in Australia (2) already familiar with the scene there and in NZ. Few people here are. Those in-the-know here would like to be. It would cost a lot of money and take a lot of effort to put me or anyone else here in the position you are already in, in that regard. So, I'd say that one of the most useful things you could do is to document as many relevant projects, places and events there as you can. Most annual events don't seem to change much from year to year once they settle into a groove. Thus, try to hit all the big events in Oz once and map a course through any significant solar architecture, communes, permaculture homesteads, murals on food co-ops, bohemian districts like Nimbin, etc. And see if you run into anyone else along the way who has already collected a good archive of material in this genre and might be willing to join the team. Jason and I did a pretty thorough job with Tasmania in 1989, so it is mostly the mainland and NZ that need coverage (though Tasmania is worth seeing and a five year update would be nice should you feel the call and find yourself with the resources to go there). By then, Seed Crystal should definitely be finished and we can talk about collaborating on a Cyberhippy show that can tour the college campus & festival circuit, and publishing your material in a sequel. For a while, I've been puzzling about what is the best format for Seed Crystal. There is enough material here for several books. Originally, I was hoping to call the first one "Seed Crystal 1990" and, if publishing that yielded enough new connections with other nuclei units generating similar orginal material, turn it into an "annual report"/"yearbook" of the Nineties Counterculture. (I don't want to have my life swallowed by the time demands of publishing a regular magazine or even a quarterly, neither do I think the world needs more on the newsstands, but with most events from May through September here, an annual yearbook format seems like a good unexplored niche for us.) Problem is, it has been hard getting enough original architectural illustrations for the Eco-Futuristic Village presentation alone, and that has kept the whole thing on hold. Maybe a 5,4,3,2,1 countdown to the new millenium if Seed Crystal is (c) 1995 and you generate a lot of similar material on the scene Down Under. By 1997, we are likely to have found someone who has done the same for Europe and have enough miscellaneous submissions to keep it going. You never quantified the estimated retail cost and investment requirements of your photovoltaic cells. Would they still be competitive in the mid and late 1990s marketplace ...or do they serve only as evidence that you were a decade or two ahead of your time back in 1977 and therefore might have the talent to make comparable significant breakthroughs in another endeavor today? If the former, let's get a desktop published,illustrated prospectus in the hands of potential Sixties Entrepreneur investors (Real Goods, Ben & Jerry's, Anita Roddick,Richard Branson, Ted Turner, etc.) By the way, did I already send you the Dean Kamen article from the February 14, 1993 issue of the NY Times? Not predominantly Hippie Countercultural, but definitely an intellectual kindred spirit who made it big. I suppose there is a certain irony to that line about your vision for Toadworks involving audience participation by members of the local community in avant-garde theatrical art forms. Well, win or lose, you certainly got that! Watch out with that Monkey's Paw, will you? 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718