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,

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!

Sarah Heath

Dork Bio # 2
Super Duper Code Name: Heeeeeeeef!
Normal Name: Sarah Heath
Age: 25
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.

Sarah Bellum

Dork Bio # 3
Grateful to be here, even if I haven’t a clue, of where life is going, I smile because I’m alive with YOU.

Super Duper Code Name: Syrup & Butter

Normal Name: SB
Age: 24

Hometown: Portland, OR

Sidekick: My beloved bicycle, Miss Mary jane Wind

Friendliness Factor: ❤
Superpowers: an infinite supply of faerie dust
Weakness: cookies!
Super Hero Aspires To: learn more skills and share with others
Personal Statement: “Don’t cry because its over, Smile because it happened.”- Dr. Suess
Random Fact: I just farted…

Matthew Voedisch

Dork Bio # 4
When I was 27 I made a switch from working with dogs to children. Currently its middle schoolers that have me doin’ the ol’ rope-a-dope and I’m hoping that they tire out quickly so I can manage a quick counter that will give them a leg up as they venture into the world as teenagers.

Super Duper Code Name: Voeflo
Normal Name: Matty or Mattatack
Age: 33
Hometown: Grandview Heights, OH
Sidekick: My bike, George, who’d take me to the moon if I asked him
Friendliness Factor: I have a great problem of laughing at social subtleties witty or not
Superpowers: Freak ability to catch anything thrown at me
Weakness: The frigin snooze button
Super Hero Aspires To: Exercise creativity through art, music and humor
Personal Statement: Life is overwhelmingly beautiful as it is difficult and I love and embrace all of the moments I get to share in that with others
Random Fact: My right thumb is stubby and he also celebrates his uniqueness as the world thumb wrestling champion of all time.

Frances Lakeman Michaelson

Dork Bio # 5

I was born and raised on the banks of the mighty Mississippi River, where I did then wander for the entirety of my earlier life until coming to Portland. My family is huge like an army, and they are all beloved. They have sent me from that place to have a beneficial effect in this Portland place, and Planet Repair is where I have taken my stand. Mark Lakeman carries my bags.
Super Duper Code Name: Captain Blueberry!
Normal Name: Goof Sphere
Age: 27 +!
Hometown: Minneapolis, MN
Sidekick: Mark Michaelson Lakeman
Friendliness Factor: If you have a dog, I most likely like you already.
Superpowers: Lightning bolts come flying out of my hands at all hours, taking various delightful forms.
Weakness: Chocolate & dogs
Super Hero Aspires To: Sleep in more!
Personal Statement: Everything is ultimately personal!
Random Fact: When they ran my genetic sample, they seriously found that my family began as ducks.

Moss Kane

Dork Bio # 6

I grew up in the mysterious and holy place of the Shasta mountain, a place I do not own and yet feel gratitude to have basked in its presence as a young girl and woman. I traveled farther up into the bioregion to become one in the clan of hipsters, but instead found myself with the radicals, witches, mystics, and permaculture nerds. Here I am!

Super Duper Code Name: Mossorama
Normal Name: Moss Kane
Age: 24
Hometown: Mt. Shasta, CA
Sidekick: My tea straw
Friendliness Factor: For sure, unless I went to bed after 11:30 PM.
Superpowers: Ability to be transform the world with magic, if I so choose to believe…
Super Hero Aspires To: to help usher in the age of inter-relatedeness and compassion!

Weakness: Cheez-its
Personal Statement: Let’s all be each others mamas and nurture one another!
Random Fact: I’ve got Puritanical blood!

9 Comments »

9 Responses

on January 6, 2011 at 3:33 pm | Reply Lyn Barclay

This is very impressive and I would love to hear more – please keep me updated.
on May 30, 2011 at 9:00 pm | Reply Reza Antoszewska

Hi –
I just found your site – I live in SE Portland – working on developing a small urban farm here – I’d love to see what you all are doing- and particularly to learn clay straw for wall insulation- it is a project I hope to get going by fall. Looks like you have a great place evolving.
on February 13, 2012 at 12:22 am | Reply delvin solkinson

epic work!! super inspiring reflections for people of this beautiful planet – thanks for being so incredibly awesome, us permie elves up here in BC will follow your work with interest and anticipation
on October 28, 2012 at 6:46 am | Reply cari

Planet repair is beyond awesome. Hoping to spend more time there doing Permaculture 2013 workshop…so how about you post the dates so I can start ‘anticipating’
on June 4, 2013 at 1:11 pm | Reply Juan Carlos Rodriguez

Thank you for sharing, its quite wonderful what you guys are doing. I commend and applaud you. It reminds me of the “Polis”, the essence of our western civilization. Who’s backbone was the community comprised of people and agriculture. Can you share more about your agricultural methodologies?
on June 8, 2015 at 1:29 pm | Reply Boris Leonov

My friends and are are inspired to do something like this with out lives in Seattle. Can we come visit you goofy kids this summer, please?
on September 4, 2017 at 11:41 am | Reply billie

anything I can check out the weekend of sept 8 and 9th, 2017 as I will be visiting your fair city.
on July 14, 2019 at 9:50 pm | Reply Rev. Luke A Shootingstar

I’m curious about how and when we can achieve lift off with a collaborative publication (probably a live online interactive journal seems best) for Planetary Repair…I know it’s long term goal stuff however, it’s also the stuff legends are made of.

>winks<
- on April 17, 2021 at 6:55 pm | Reply Evan
  
  I love this idea and would love to help if you still have energy for this project! I have data analysis and visualization skills, and writing experience too. Getting the information out there is the first step, let’s do it!