Page 20 RAIN November 1976 HEALTH Continued that could be a good solution for many families. The results, success stories are encouraging: hopefully we're getting back to a time where birthing can be family-centered and treated as a healthy, natural function wherever it happens. NAPSAC is a network of parents and professionals dedicated to this cause. Contact them for information on-how to find helpful professionals in your area or where to learn midwife skills. And consider attending their 2nd conference, March 11-13, 1977, in Chicago. Write for details. (LdeM) {LEARNING ) Taking Off, by Jennifer Eis and Don Ward, 1975,$5.95 from: Center for'Alternatives In/To Higher Education 1118 S. Harrison Road East Lansing, MI 48823 In the past several years a great number of colleges and universities have set up living/learning centers where students can arrange work/study programs in all manner of areas-usually non-academic. The choices range from assisting in a day care center to working in a migrant camp or living with a family in Denmark. The first half of the book is the story of the setting up of one such center at Michigan University. It contains some thoughtful observations about such things as group process and filing systems that would be useful to any sort of non-traditional organization. The second half is a very thorough listing of programs and contacts all over the world for a wide variety of apprentice, exchange and internship programs. A useful guide for anybody wanting to burst out of the standard academic pattern to experiential learning. (LdeM) No More Public School: A Manual for Innovators, by Hal Bennett, 1972, $2.95 from: The Bookworks 1409 Fifth St. Berkeley, CA 94710 I'm more and more convinced that I will not be able to put a child of mine into public school, so I wonder about finding or starting a good alternative. This book gives one ideas, possibilities and courage-particularly for a small endeavor (5-10, 15 kids). He describes it best him.self: 'iThis book tdls how to take your child out of public school and how to educate him at home yourself. It tells how 'to put your own school together, which means legalities, curriculum and business stuff and minding · the store once you've started. It tells · about solutions for when you're in trouble ... but it does not flirt with dreams for an easy Utopia." (LdeM) Perceived Needs flow do we teach people new things and new ways when they have holes in their mental models-when they are not receptive? "A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intel- . lectually or morally, as animals conceive at 'certain seasons their own.kind only. We hear and apprehend only what we already half know. If there is something which does not concern me, which is out of my line, which by experience or by genius my attention is not drawn to, however novel and remarkable it may be, if it is spoken, we hear it not, if it is written, we read it not, or if we read it, it does not detain us.·..." -H. D. Thoreau, "] ournal" January 5, 1860 (Trudy Johnson-Lenz) Sixth Annual Composting & Waste Recycling Conference Proceedings, May 11-14, 1976, Portland, Oregon, in Compost Science, July-August 1976 (Part One) and Sept.-Oct. 1976 (Part Two), $1 each from: Compost Science Rodale Press Emmaus, PA 18049 Part One includes the Ore Pla,n, for neighborhood recyding via source separation, the "sewerless society," the Farallones composting privy; Part Two - includes reports on the Oregon Bottle Bill, compost toilets, municipal composting and leaf banking, land application of sewage sludge as well as the usual abstracts of useful publications. (LJ) LC Science Tracer Bullet: Organic Fuels (TB 74-6), free from: National Referral Center Science & Technology Division Library of Congress Washington, DC 20540 A guide to the literature on the technology and ec~nomic feasibility of con-, verting organic materials such as garbage, animal wastes, sewage sludge and waste paper to oil, gas and other fuels. The NRC can also suppLy, if asked, a computer printout of information resources relative to bioconversion for methane gas production. (LJ) Windpower Testimony, by Lee Johnson of RAIN and Ecotope Group, at Pebble Springs Nuclear Plant Hearings, ask for free reprint no. 136 from: Senator Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) U.S. Senate Washington, DC 20510 Sen. Gravel entered this information, designed for use by other nuclear power intervenors, in the Sept. 21, 1976, Congressional Record. It contains the most useful points of argument to mention · when suggesting the use of large windelectric systems, with extensive references to support them. If you're pressed for time, most large public and university libraries get the Record. (LJ) "The Trouble at Plum Brook," by Bill Ward, in Windustries, Vol. 1, No. 1, Autumn 1976, $10 to individuals, $15 to institutions, for 4 isstJes per year ($2.50 single copy) from: · Great Plains Windustries, Inc. Box 126 Lawrence, KS 66044 Excellent article on how NASA designed the nation's ~mly existing large wind generator so ineptly that it is now shut down after only 57 hours of operation. Should be read by all Americans and especially all windpower enthusiasts. This well-researched story cover? how NASA experts came up with "a machine whose blades (fatigue-susceptible aluminum) and hub (fixed, no coning) and tower (lattice type, with stairs) are not only mismatched with each other, they are pe~fectly mismatched," despite the fact that they had the experience of the Smith-Putnam and the HutterAllgaier machines to go on. Mr. Ward suggests that a competition among private industry followed by a guaranteed number ofsales and low interest loans, such as used to build hydro-electric dams in the Pacific Northwest and the Tennessee Valley, would be a better and faster solution than the ERDA/ NASA "demonstration series" approach. (LJ)
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