Brian's Bio Song

California Rare Fruit Growers

The California Rare Fruit Growers is an inspiring organization that over the past three years has played a pivotal role in the Fruit Tree Tour. The organization is an eclectic group of hobbyists, backyard growers, government and university researchers, nurserymen and commercial growers that focus on growing fruit varieties that are not commonly grown commercially. They have been instrumental in diversifying the fruit varieties that Common Vision plants at the schools and extending the number of months that students can pick fruit from trees in their schoolyard.

This year Common Vision will be working hand-in-hand with several members of the Rare Fruit Growers to make possible the Fruit Tree Tour Nursery Rroject. The goal of the project is to grow 1000 trees a year that will provide schools from San Diego to Sacramento with fruiting trees that have delicious fruit of numerous varieties to harvest in ALL months of the school season. Stay tuned for more as this project develops!

Here are some of the key Rare Fruit Growers who have made a substantial contribution to the project to date:

Steven Spangler of the San Diego CRFG chapter and owner of Exotica Nursery has provided Fruit Tree Tour with an incredible mix of banana, tropical cherry, guava, fig, and cherimoya varieties that have been planted at schools throughout LA.

Each year Jerry Price also of the San Diego chapter has provided a workshop each year for the crew on tree care and planting and has been Common Vision’s go-to guy on all of our tree care questions.

Joe Sabol of the Central Coast CRFG chapter has run a High School Grafting Program where every spring he teaches students at 30 schools across the central coast to graft there own apple trees. This program has helped over 10,000 students to graft trees since 1998. This year he will be running a workshop for the Fruit Tree Tour crew to increase the crew’s grafting and teaching capacity for the Roots-to-Fruits Program.

Mark Alpert of the Mendocino CRFG chapter donated over fifty pineapple guava seedlings and hundreds of Jujube (Chinese dates) seeds last year which are growing in Santa Barbara area currently waiting patiently until they are old enough to go to school with the Fruit Tree Tour.


John Valenzuela currently of the Bay Area CRFG Chapter has been a key guide in the development of the Fruit Tree Tour Nursery Project plan. As an elder in the permaculture (sustainable design) movement, John is always suggesting innovative ways to do the least work for the most gain and to make the best use of local resources.

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There's a new bus coming...

On a rainy Monday in Ukiah your beloved alternative energy specialist is about to do something some of you may deem insane. Today, I committed to picking up a bus that I have never seen or driven. You may try to stop me with your phone calls and emails but the fat is in the fire. Stay tuned for updates from the conversion shop.

Vaya con Dios,

Biodiesel Outreach Tour (2002)

In the first years of this great decade, “biodiesel” was by no means a well known fuel option. Common Vision’s beloved founder Blair Philips searched far and wide to find someone to teach the organization how to make this mythical vegetable oil fuel. In the far reaches of the Big Island of Hawaii he found he found just this mad scientist and brought this information back to the mainland. Common Vision built a reactor out of a 55 gallon drum, three cinder blocks, a propane cook stove, and an old trolling boat motor and got to work engaging the alchemy of biofuel.

In 2002, Common traveled across America, teaching community workshops on how to brew Bio-diesel from recycled vegetable oil and create local biodiesel Co-ops in 20 cities including Los Angeles, Phoenix, Detroit, and New York City. With a volunteer crew of 10 and a mobile Biodiesel refinery, Common Vision brewed over 1500 gallons of Biodiesel fueling the entire 7,000+ mile journey.

The 2002 Biodiesel Outreach tour taught thousands of people about making biodiesel, the necessity of reducing fossil fuel consumption, and successfully left several local biodiesel Co-ops in its wake. Among the successful inspiration-seeds planted on this tour include Blue Ridge Biofuels (http://www.blueridgebiofuels.com) in Asheville, NC, one of the nation’s larger biofuel cooperatives today.

Pranav on Drum Group 2008

My name is Pranav, and I am one of the Common Vision Fruit Tree Tour Drum Circle facilitators. As a lover of drums and drumming, it is a honor for me to serve the youth as a teacher of drumming concepts and techniques this year on Fruit Tree Tour. I thank all of the West African drum masters who have touched my life as a drummer, and also Common Vision's legendary drumming crew of this year and of yesteryear.

The Drum Group involves up to 50 students learning to play music together with Common Vision's 50 donated djembe drums. The drum group focuses on community building, respect, interconnectedness, positivity, and, of course, rhythm. Common Vision's West African style djembe drums have been on-board for almost five years and live within an amazing “drum tetris” in the under-storage compartments of BamBoomBox bus. Every day that we have the Drum Circle rotations, these drums are brought out from under the bus and into the schoolyard or community center where we are working and used as teaching tools.

With games and rhythm lessons, students learn to play together while creating a unified song on the drums. In addition to the drumming patterns involved in West African traditional music there are also dances and singing parts. Dancing to the rhythms is also taught at many of the groups. When it's at its best, the drumming and dancing comes together at the end of the session to create a group celebration that is unifying, fun and exciting.

Our facilitators teach, but are also students of west African drum and dance. The drumming techniques that are taught and the process of playing the drums with one another help to demonstrate many of Common Vision's key concepts. Respect is the first key concept that students are introduced to, this is done before they can touch the drums. We emphasize the importance of caring for the drums and of actively listening and paying attention to the facilitators while we are speaking or drumming. Listening is a crucial aspect of playing music and is also a crucial form of respect that we ask of the students so that they will be able to get the most out of the drum circle.

Community, interconnectedness, and cooperation are all involved when djembe drums and rhythms are played in unison by a large group of people, often accompanied by dancing and singing. Positivity is emphasized by the joy of the students as they get to play these instruments, and the encouragement that we offer as facilitators to come together as one “band”. This form of unification creates sweet sounding music and an atmosphere of group celebration.

We usually start off with a drum & dance demonstration and introductions. We introduce ourselves and the drums that we are bringing to the group. These are djembe drums, which are a west African style of hand drums, made with goat skin and wood. There are also a set of 3 dunun drums, which are traditionally played to accompany the djembes. The dununs are played with sticks by our facilitators and are made from thicker cow skins.

Many games and exercises can be used during the session depending on time, space and the age of the students. Typically, we start by teaching the proper postures and positions of the body and hands. Then the “break” is explained and used as a way to communicate to the group with a particular drum phrase when to all stop drumming at the same moment. This break can then be used as a signal to stop together after students “let loose” on the drums.

The heartbeat rhythm is utilized as another drum exercise. It is a rhythm that all people share within our bodies showing that we all have something in common. We use the heartbeat in order to practice the techniques of bass, tone and slaps, which are how we describe the three basic djembe drum sounds.

After the more simple introductory sections, we move towards more advanced drumming and oftentimes dancing too. Call & response on the drum is the most fun drum game for me. I am always amazed at how good children can be at repeating the complex rhythms that I play for them. In the game, students copy drum patterns and gestures from the lead djembe drummer while the dundun drums are used to play an accompanying rhythm and keep the beat.

After this we will generally start teaching traditional west African style djembe rhythms and dances. The rhythms of the songs “Fanga”, “Yankadi”, and/or “Kuku” are usually taught, which have fun and simple traditional djembe parts originating in West Africa. The students sometimes have the option to learn the dance moves for the songs being played, and then can come back to the drum circle for an amazing dance party.

Overall, the Fruit Tree Tour drum circle offers a great opportunity for youth to get an introduction to West African style drumming and dancing, while also teaching the key concepts of health, respect, interconnectedness, community, cooperation, and positivity. Its a lot of fun to be a part of the drum circle at schools, partially because I love drumming, but mainly because of the joy and knowledge that it brings to the children who get to participate.

T-shirt Design Contest

Fruit Tree Tour 2008 is coming soon! Common Vision would love your help in designing a new 2008 crew T-shirt for our volunteers and supporting friends. Details are below this brief look at the history of the Common Vision logo.

When Zak Human of Woven Media completed the direction and production of the Common Vision documentary “Planting the Vision,” he surprised the whole staff with his amazing graphic design talent. He designed the art work on the DVD sleeve including the “Every Leaf is Our Flag” emblem and the cartoon image of the beloved Lioness, Common Vision’s eldest bus.

Thanks Pranav and Zak and all those who support the Vision and the artwork that represents it.

So who’s next? 2008 will be the fifth annual Fruit Tree Tour bringing at least another 1000 fruit trees, rhythm after rhythm, and high vibes eco-hip-hop to California’s youth. Your ideas and (especially) your artwork would be greatly appreciated! CV will feature the selected design and artist on Benefit tour as well as in the first on tour issue of Harvest Rhythm. Fruit Tree Tour crew will plant a tree in honor of you or the friend of your choice. And of course, a 100% organic cotton/hemp shirt for the artist!

Illustrate the Vision! Submit all entries to info@commonvision.org by October 28th. For those artist friends that do not have computer access, please send drawings to P.O. Box 2012 Willits, CA 95490. For the computer artists in the house, please use high resolution! If you are interested and can feel the creativity flowing already, email info@commonvision.org for the tech specs. Any design submitted will be accepted by Common Vision for free use and alterations to suit printing and world wide distribution!