About

Welcome to the Planet Repair Institute – a living, breathing node for Neighborhood Repair, embedded in the neighborhood of Sellwood, Portland OR!

The Planet Repair Institute is more than just a demonstration site – it’s also our home.   As our home, we see the Planet Repair Institute as more than just a place where we return to at the end of the day to eat, sleep and excrete our bodily fluids, so as to ensure our punctual return to drudgery early the following morning.

Our home is a living entity that pulsates, throbs, energizes, thrives, takes in, and feeds back like a living organ in the greater life form that is our neighborhood.  Our home is the source of our sustenace, and nourishes the community around us, just as that community nourishes us.

We employ tools of permaculture, natural building and placemaking to create ecological and social relationships that are cyclical, interconnected, symbiotic, and life-affirming. The energetic outputs of our house feeds our gardens, our landscapes, and our communities, which then feed us.  We are currently engaged in projects to correct the inefficient, wasteful, and resource intensive structures of our house in order to create a home that is built from natural, local and living materials, and powered by captured energies that pass naturally through our landscape.

Similarly, we are linking our resources and energetic flows with those of our neighbors in order to build a resilient and connected human community. We envision a neighborhood that is a rich ecology, with each aspect filling a niche where it can thrive, while sustaining, supporting, and strengthening the whole.  As such, we are developing new forms of economy where we can exchange and share the assets and resources that each of us already have in the neighborhood in order to make each of us stronger and derive prosperity from our collective abundance. We use the tools of placemaking and block repair to create spaces where our neighbors can reclaim the commons and remediate the collective disfunction that has been imposed on our cities by the colonization of the grid.

We call ourselves Planet Repair, not because it is our ambition to reshape the planet according to any prescribed theoretical model, but because we believe that the repair of the planet has to happen by repairing one home, one block, and one neighborhood at a time.  We strive to be a conduit for the germination of this kind of change in our neighborhood, and to cross pollination with the inspiration of other localized projects in order to rebuild a healthy thriving and interconnected planet.

We love you world!

Thanks for visiting,

PR

Mark Lakeman

When I was born I resembled a little bear, I had such a shock of black hair. I
grew up into a really good person, though I may leave a trail of messes behind
me, sometimes. I could always express myself, and have moved through various
ways of creative expression until my medium has become mostly social. I
absolutely love being alive, it’s all an adventure, even what is horrible.

Dork Bio # 1
Super Duper Code Name: Hachton
Normal Name: Agent Apple
Age: 52!
Hometown: Sellwood
Sidekick: Sarah Frances Michaelson (if I can be her Sidekick too)
Friendliness Factor: (ClosetLy in love with all my friends)
Superpowers: Able to do anything that that I want to, even fly!
Weakness: Frances, and sugar
Super Hero Aspires To: Relax more
Personal Statement: I enjoy flossing frequently and pooing in a bucket.
Random Fact: I have no actual brain. I run entirely on gastronomic and procreational drives.

Yay!

ML

Sarah Heath

Dork Bio # 2
Super Duper Code Name: Heeeeeeeef!
Normal Name: Sarah Heath
Age: 23
Hometown: White City, Or
Sidekick: Decked out blue klean kanteen. Hydration. Mmmmhmmm.
Friendliness Factor: 99.3%
Superpowers: Spreading laughter and exploring existence!
Weakness: Turmoil when inside amidst sunshiny days.
Arch Nemesis: The Queen of Clutter (My dark side!).
Super Hero Aspires To: Learn to play multiple instruments.
Personal Statement: Hello there Friends! Thanks for visiting the site and I hope that it inspires you and fills you with excitement! A bit more about me … I’m super fortunate to have landed here in Sellwood and become a member and homesteader at the Planet Repair Institute! Besides working on all of the awesomeness that goes on here, I fill my time with books (children’s included), riding my bike, thinking about and working on ideas for films, cooking and eating food, hanging out with kids, playing games, playing Ultimate Frisbee, and being generally crafty! You can usually find me up in a tree or sitting in a field, most of the time without shoes on.
I love the textures and colors and smells of things. I love being alive! How grand it is that we are living! Let us go forth with joy and peace in our hearts! Yippeee!
Random Fact: My name is the same as Sarah Palin’s maiden name. First, middle, and last.
… I know.

 Mighk Simpson

 

 

Jane Morris

Dork Bio # 5
Super Duper Code Name: Jane Ger Moose
Normal Name: Jane Gray
Age: 22
Hometown: Centreville, Virginia
Sidekick: Jake, my trusty steed
Friendliness Factor: to infinity and beyond
Superpowers: Letter-writing! Ka-pow!
Weakness: Just can’t bring myself to say no to a good time.
Arch Nemesis: Fruit that falls before I can pick it!
Super Hero Aspires To: fly, of course. Or come to life in dream world.
Personal Statement: The wonderful thing about mooses, is mooses are wonderful people.