Growing Smart Communities

Don't forget to check out the upcoming Cohousing Conference at the University of Maryland, it's called Cohousing: Growing Smart Communities.

http://www.midatlanticcohousing.org/conf/Conference.html

Making Another Version of Our Logo

I wanted to make a fun tee shirt logo. Here's what I came up with today. What do you think?

Back to school, after interminable closures due to the heavy snow falls. (what's school? who's my teacher? who are my students? what am I teaching them?) I can not fathom WHY we had so many days off. The emergency preparedness folks really fell down on this job. Makes one worried about our readiness for a more substantial emergency. But it was great hangin' in the Village. We had game nites, extra pot lucks, snow shoe and X country trailing and lotsa community building exercises in snow removal. Nary a squabble over parking spots, as I have heard is common in the big city, where you have to leave out your aluminum chair to preserve your spot. And then there were the mysterious flying saucers...they arrived on my front porch from an unknown source, addressed to my late husband. No clues. But they flew down the slick water retention facility sides without injury, with ease and wonderment. Thanks Universe.

And nobody called the News…..

Two different snowstorms within a week have brought almost 50" of snow to this area, shattering snowfall records that have endured for over 100 years. In between these two storms, a local news station ran a story of a neighborhood whose street had gone days without seeing a snowplow. However, that was not the "news". The "news" was that the neighbors had taken the bold step of actually speaking to one another and then working together to now only shovel out the street but then to also shovel one another's cars out of the snow.

My initial reaction was "so what" but then I very quickly realized that I was looking at this story from the perspective of a person who's been living in cohousing, and not from a "real world" perspective. In the "real world", neighbors cooperate often as a last resort, when things get really bad - like when there's a record snowfall and the authorities fail in their promise to serve and protect. But I don't live in the "real world" - I live in cohousing. In our neighborhood, neighbors worked together to clean the streets, parking areas, and our central pedestrian walkway. Neighbors worked together to shovel out one another's cars. They did all of this because that's what folks here do, that's why they live here. They have chosen cohousing as a way a life, a way of life where neighbors care , help out, and look out for one another. "News" on the "outside", routine par-for-the-course action here on the "inside". Must be why nobody called the news....

digging out and digging it

a very deep dig out has occurred, again. This image is way out of date, b/c this machine is on the fritz. The amazing master mechanic and mr fixit george had one machine fixed AGAIN today. otherwise Kubotu Ron was slogging away in the parking lot with the hired gun, front end loader. And it's parking musical cars, move it and lose it, your parking space, this is.