Woodworking Class
Ashland School of Environmental Technology
The name “Isis” is the name that Gaia is known by in stories of ancient Egypt. But Isis is her Greek name. When the Greeks wrote about Egypt they wrote in their language and used their names. The name that the Egyptians knew her by was Aset.
Ashland School of Environmental Technology, (ASET) was started in 2002 as a platform to give students the opportunity to have hands on experience working on projects that could result in technologies that would allow humanity to live more harmoniously with the land.
Our first project, the Strawjet Technology, won the Invention of the Year award in a contest sponsored by Time Magazine, the History Channel, and the Inventors Hall of Fame.
In years past, ASET had a curriculum where students participated in a variety of research projects at our facility in Talent, Oregon.
The first year of operations at our new location in Costa Rica has proven to be remarkably effective. There are no heating or cooling bills, rent is a small fraction of what it was before. Interns grow and gather most of their own food. The climate allows us to have interns live on the premises with minimal accommodations; something that was not possible in Oregon.
Our location is an attractive element in and of itself. The nature park setting gives students numerous opportunities for entertainment outside of class activities.
The live-in arrangement allows for an immersion experience not possible in an academic environment. When we had students at out facility in Talent OR, all of the activities had to be planned out ahead of time. Now activities come in every shape and size, from gardening lessons from an old-timer cowboy neighbor to baking bread for dinner. The exposure to new thoughts and ideas forms a seamless whole.
Living in a fragile and endangered tropical wilderness means that the environmental challenges of the world are all around us. The monkeys are not on a computer screen, they are in the trees overhead. Disposal options for waste and trash that are ubiquitous in the modern world, are non-existent here. We come up with our own solutions.
We can take on this project because we are a research and learning establishment. We are responsible to expand the understanding of the technology and inform others of what we have discovered. We are not waiting to succeed someday. Success comes daily with each new development, each letter, or article written. When we complete our quarter scale Railplane model at the Garden Village School of Sacred Earth Technology, we will celebrate that success. But there is no need to hold our breath until then.