News Notes – Autumn 2009

Many Earthaven members and friends walked the last plant walk with herbalist Frank Cook at the Summer Permaculture Gathering this past August 7th. In its sixteenth year (still on the Arthur Morgan School site in Celo—two years in a row a while back, we hosted it at Earthaven) there have been at last that many plant walks with Frank in this bioregion. And now we’ve unexpectedly said good-bye, since August 18^th when he succumbed to some unnamed (so far) opportunistic infection. Memorials must have been going on everywhere—redmoonsong saw an obit for Frank in the Washington Post!—there have been accolades and remembered stories and the positive aspects of sharing grief community style. Frank’s was a long, lanky link to the biosphere of the whole planet, as he walked and sampled the bounty on the paths that cross a million cultures’ lives, then brought together in an ambling rap as lyrical as a hip-hop opera, the simple, empowering, self-revealing gifts of planet Earth. He was daring, thoughtful, and…our brother.