The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope. -Wendell Berry

Reaching back to the past can sometimes uncover surprising patterns. Echoes of earlier practices are seen in present day works done by the ALTER Project, at the Robert A. Macoskey Center, and within the MS3 Program.

CONNECTION BETWEEN PRESENT AND PAST COMMUNITIES

CLAIR GERLACH FARM   1889 COMMUNITY BUILDING    EARLY CLASSES

Connection Between Present and Past Communities

... Dawn, enterprise, new opportunities, initiative and courageous voyaging pertain both as Slippery Rock University completes its 99th year of service and looks forward to its Centennial in 1989. While the Alternator completes only its first issue, and anticipates its second, there is a remarkable sense in which the ALTER Project is a modern expression of the best of Slippery Rock University's past: a new shoot from a very old root. Did you know, for instance, that Slippery Rock University began ninety-nine years ago as an excercise in Permaculture Design launched independently by the citizens of Slippery Rock Borough as an attempt to provide qualified teachers for public schools in western Pennsylvania? They raised the money, bought the land, built the first building, hired the faculty, and recruited the students without any help from the state whatsoever. Since most of the students were poor in material wealth, a way had to be found for them to support their study while contributing to the common enterprise. A self-sufficient community was the answer. Since the land purchased for the school was a farm, it continued to be operated by the students and staff. They raised, prepared and preserved their own food; ran their own dairy and beef herds, handled their own cleaning and maintenence needs, and even mined their own coal from a hillside now covered with a string of dormitories. Wherever possible, they took care of themselves and each other while preparing to offer service to the wider community. That's what Permaculture Design is all about, and that's what the ALTER Project is about. In this, as well as ither aspects of Slippery Rock University's life we have come full circle 'round with momentum enough to launch us into the next century of service... (Robert A. Macoskey, The Alternator, January, 1988)

Clair Gerlach Farm

1889 Community Building

This excerpt from The SRS Historian, Fall, 1969 shows the "team effort" approach in 1889 when The Slippery Rock Normal School (later to be called Slippery Rock University) was created. About one hundred years later, the same community spririt was present in the creation of the ALTER Project, the Robert A. Macoskey Center, and the MS3 Program.

Early Classes