Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage

Goodbye to the Oil Man — Steve Chiasson

2011-07-16T12:39:00.000-07:00

I just wrote a check for $469.77 to the oil delivery man. This strikes me as hugely ironic. First of all, it’s the middle of July, for crying out loud! And secondly, we don’t even heat with oil! Well, maybe I should qualify that…

We heat primarily with wood, but use some oil in the “shoulder” seasons, when firing up the wood boiler (we have a forced hot water heating system) is hugely inefficient. Our domestic hot water is also connected to the same system, so we wind up using oil there as well when the wood boiler is inactive. On the whole, I’d guess that wood supplies probably 75% of our heating and hot water. And since the wood is cut right on our property, there’s no trucking involved and I get to make some choices about which particular trees are harvested. Let’s call it a “green-ish” or “sort-of-sustainable” approach to supplying our heating needs.

Still, there is that matter of the oil man. $469.77 for 127 gallons of fuel. My mom, who lives on a meager fixed income in a big drafty house, cringes when she hears the furnace fire up on those cold winter nights. Dollar bills fly out the window. Does anybody see this getting any better?

Images of plumes of oil billowing from a blown out well into the Gulf of Mexico and vast tracts of boreal forests in Canada being leveled to mine the tar sands of Alberta make it clear that the oil companies intend to extract every last drop, wherever it’s found, whatever the cost. There are even plans afoot to drill areas of the Arctic now made accessible by receding sea ice. Hello?!

When I look for places to lay the blame, I don’t have to look any further than the mirror. In my younger days, I was just naïve. Lately, it’s more a matter of lifestyle momentum — choices I’ve made (such as living ten miles from the nearest store) that dictate many of the terms of my “agreement” with the oil producers. Still, I have to believe that it’s never too late to make course corrections. And though I may not be able to cut that cord just yet, throwing my lot in with the other members of Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage is a significant step towards that goal.

I’ll live in a house that requires 90% less energy than a conventional home. I’ll be located just two miles from town. I’ll have much of my food supply growing just outside my door. I’ll be sharing a multitude of resources with my neighbors. I’ll be part of a group that has made sustainability a guiding principle, and not just a buzz-word. I’ll be making a difference in the world. And seeing a whole lot less of the oil man.

Cohousing as Art

2011-06-27T13:29:00.000-07:00

Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage is the featured "artist" for the month of July at the Belfast CoOp! Members have put together a show entitled "A Child's Day in Cohousing," a visual depiction of 24 hours in the life of a child reared in an intentional community. Such communities are designed so that generations mingle, grass replaces asphalt and neighbors watch out for each other's children as they roam the outdoors. Complementing this visual essay is a series of precocious photographic portraits of families in the Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage by one of its youngest members, 7-year-old Pia McKim-Gibson.

Friday, July 1st is the official "opening" of the show, accompanied by the CoOp's free monthly wine tasting. It should be a fantastic event to meet and mingle, enjoy some tasty snacks and see cohousing from a child's point of view.

We hope you will join us!

Who's in Charge? — Jon Ippolito

2011-06-08T04:19:00.000-07:00

"Who's in charge?" is a question that comes up occasionally when people ask me about Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised; in my life, I've had my share of bosses. Explicitly, or implicitly, I've handed over to landlords, CEOs, and presidents the power to decide for me what color my walls should be, which computer programs to use, and whether to go to war.

These days a lot of people seem to think such hierarchies are natural. Children have grown used to their parents telling them what they can and cannot do. Even tenured professors at my college expect a president to give them a vision and tell them how to achieve it.

But I don't think that's the way it has to be. Nature knows few hierarchies; geese switch off leading a migrating flock, while the behavior of bees, bacteria, and boletes emerges from a complicated set of interactions with no single creature leading the others. In soil, sand, and surf, networks abound. The largest creatures on the planet are not elephants or blue whales, but interconnected colonies of the Great Coral Reef or the subsoil mycelium that takes up 2000 acres in Oregon.

Nor does every successful human enterprise involve a powerful executive that others follow. The Wabanaki people of the northeast, whose ecovillages predate ours by millennia, shared power in a way that lessened the higher up the ladder: decisions of the tribal confederacy could be overruled at lower levels by the elders of a village, which could in turn be overruled by the clan mothers of a family. And today the single resource that is arguably the most concentrated repository of human knowledge ever, Wikipedia, is maintained almost entirely by volunteers with no bosses — by ordinary people like you and me.

No matter how natural it seems to me, the fact that Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage has chosen a self-developed, consensus-based model of governance has caught some people's attention lately. At the 2010 ESTIA conference "Ecovillages Redefined" on 22 October, Equity Member Joline Blais talked about this at a discussion she led on the role ecovillages might play in a sustainable future. Also presenting at the conference were Roger Kelly of the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Wales and Daniel Greenberg of Living Routes at the University of Massachusetts. Local luminaries featured at the conference included small farming advocate Mark Fulford, LongGreenHouse veteran gkisedtanamoogk, and Belfast Cohousing Equity Member Jeffrey Mabee.

Joline and I also presented on bottom-up governance at the William S. Cohen Forum on The Promise & Problems of Transparency on 12 November at the University of Maine. Representatives from the Maine governor's office and Senator Susan Collins spoke mostly about sunshine laws in the era of Wikileaks, worrying about how to reconcile the need for privacy with the danger that some leader will hide information that should be shared. In contrast, Joline presented Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage as an example of built-in transparency. When decisions are made by everyone sitting in a circle coming to consensus, everyone who needs to know automatically does, and all are invested in the process of decision-making.

Meeting cohousers

2011-05-16T08:32:00.000-07:00

We're on the road a lot these days, giving presentations in Portland, Boston and elsewhere about our project as we race towards breaking ground. Recently, we gave a talk about the project in the Portland Public Library. Many of the folks who came were already familiar with cohousing, and it was exciting to be amidst a group of people who were already committed to the idea of creating sustainable community.

We meet so many new friends (and neighbors) on these trips, and in the midst of all the troubles and woes in the world, it's exciting to meet people who are committed to improving their communities and the world around them. Everyone has different reasons for wanting to join cohousing - families looking for an old-fashioned neighborhood to raise their kids, older folks looking to find a community to age in place, the environmentally conscious trying to find a way to live more sustainably... the list goes on. This is one of the beauties of cohousing: a varied group of individuals and families coming together with intention to create something better than they had before.

If you'd like to come see us "on the road", you'll be able to find us in Salem, MA this Saturday, at the Living Green Festival. It looks like it'll be a great time, and who knows - you might bump into some new, like-minded friends!

A Cappella Voices — Sarah Smith

2011-04-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

Let me tell you one of the reasons why I want to live in cohousing, and especially cohousing on forty-two acres of rolling pasture land with areas of woods. Silence. Silence gently broken only by useful sounds: a tractor tilling, doors slamming behind laughing children, a tire swing or a hammock squeaking. And conversation. And music. My true hope is that the music we hear outside will be the music made by people and other creatures. And, I hope to have walkable spaces which even in the heat of a busy day will be so silent that my ears will ring and I will shake my head just to be sure I haven’t suddenly become deaf.

Let me share two quite different acoustic experiences I had recently near my home in the Salem, Massachusetts area.

For the first one, Bill and I traveled to the resonant Boston Symphony Hall for an extraordinary combined concert by The Del McCoury Band (bluegrass) and The Preservation Hall Jazz Band (Dixieland and Blues). It was a romping, rollicking, musical two hours, which had the sold-out crowd roaring and screaming for more. But the part that hit me the hardest was an a cappella moment. The words a cappella mean literally “in the manner of the chapel, ” but it refers specifically to voices without instrumental accompaniment. The four members of the Del McCoury Band stepped away from their microphones and stood in a curved group on the edge of the stage. The expected hush fell, which in a space like Symphony Hall is remarkable enough. Then, one voice at a time, they began a traditional gospel song. It was led by one voice on the simple verse, then joined by the other three voices at the chorus. It was so quiet that I could hear the entrance of each man on his part, then the tingling ecstasy as they met and swelled and tuned into the chord. I sat straight up in my chair in rigid listening pose, not wanting to miss a crumb of each musical moment. I didn’t. My hands burned with heat when I was finally convinced to stop clapping, whistling and hooting along with everyone else. So, you see, I love music — the more a cappella the better.

The second experience came a few weeks ago as I stood in the early morning with my dog on his first outing of the day. Nearby was a city yard, grassy and tucked behind the house next door, so that even in busy Salem it was relatively quiet. As I stood in reverie with the cold March air on my bare cheek and my ears exposed, the soft call of the mourning dove pierced my thoughts. Again, I stood in rigid silence, afraid to lose any part of the sound or the moment.

I have had similar experiences at my house in Waldoboro: standing intently on the river bank and craning my ear to the woods as the evening falls and hearing the enchanting rising song of the hermit thrush. Or the high cry of the slowly circling osprey, looking in vain for a fish for dinner. Or a robin caroling along after a summer thunderstorm.

For the most part, it’s hard for me to find silence a walkable distance from my house, since I can’t drive or even bicycle. I can take the commuter rail and subway to Symphony Hall, but it takes more than an hour, and it costs about $60. My dream is to be able to step out my door into the peaceful quiet of a Belfast summer morning and stand, silent and still, until once again a soul-piercing bit of a cappella music wafts to me on the breeze.

Trust and Let Go — Barbara Chiasson

2011-04-28T09:59:00.000-07:00

This cohousing project reminds me of the exercise I did back in college where you close your eyes and fall backwards and trust the group to catch you so you don’t crash to the floor. John Ryan, a consultant who has been a project manager/coordinator for several cohousing groups, has said that the success of a cohousing project depends on the ability of each member to trust and let go.

I took my first steps in that direction when I attended an open house, where I was warmly welcomed first by Anne, and then by Wendy. They were so patient and answered all of my questions. Later, I walked the land with Hans and Chuck and made a wreath with Elizabeth. What fun! I felt their excitement, and I decided to make my exploring member payment just as soon as I could get it in the mail… trust and let go.

I clearly remember the meeting when we decided that our houses weren’t going to be single-family homes — they were going to share walls and be duplexes and triplexes and quads. What a concept! Many of us lived in the woods or out of town, away from others; and the single-family model was what we were used to. But we also wanted increased energy efficiency, and a shared wall meant shared heat and less energy waste. After all, that is in our mission statement! OK, maybe we can let go of that single-family house concept… trust and let go.

Then there was the question of, “How do I best fit in with this group? What will be meaningful to me, and how can I best offer my skills and experience to the group? ” It’s a little like dating — how can I show them what I have to offer and how do I gain their trust? But we’re not talking about just one person, we’re talking about 45-50 people! I took a mad dash into facilitating (big meetings, lots of people, difficult decisions… Yikes!), and the process committee/conflict resolution team. You never know what will come up… trust and let go!

Since then it has been a journey of trusting and letting go and falling in love with the people of this project. At some point, I had a paradigm shift; I stopped worrying about whether my house had this or that, or even how much it might cost or what else I might have to give up. I found so much more when I found this project. Not only will I be living lightly on the earth in a beautiful, well thought out energy efficient house, but I also found my tribe of people. I feel like I can trust and let go, I know they have my back! Steve and I joke about being willing to live in a shack or a teepee if we can just live with this incredible, brave, amazing group of people that call themselves Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage… I’m trusting and I’m letting go!

Twelve Months in Waldo County — John Lightner

2011-04-20T07:37:00.000-07:00

I have sometimes been asked what my favorite time of year is. Truthfully, I don’t really have one. Every season, every month has something unique to offer. I can’t imagine sacrificing one month’s benefits to afford more of another’s. Here follows a list of some of my favorite events and activities in a Belfast calendar year.

January — New Year's Dip

This year, Pia Gibson lured me into participating in the New Year's Day plunge and I have to say that jumping into Penobscot Bay with a crowd of enthusiasts is a wonderful way to start the year.

February — Ski Touring

For me, February means cross country skiing. One of the reasons I moved to Belfast was to be able to ski out my back door and I haven’t been disappointed these last few winters. I know that skiing at our new home will be equally satisfying.

March — Maple Syrup Season

I have slowly been refining my technique and have recently been able to meet most of my family’s annual syrup requirements (which are considerable). The 2011 season has been astounding and I already have almost three gallons of syrup in my basement. All this from just a dozen taps in five trees. We will need to get busy planting sugar maples if we want to incorporate home boiled syrup into our diet at BC&E.

April — Spring run-off

Technically this starts in late March. Time to dust off the old canoe and get in the fray for the St. George and Passagassawakeag whitewater races. Hi water or low, sleet or sunshine these are great races to participate in or just to watch. If the competition isn’t your thing, it is equally great just to paddle these and a handful of other great runs around the county. I did just that last weekend and made a leisurely run down the St. George river in Searsmont. We were a party of two canoes, a raft and a handful of kayaks. The day was sunny but crisp and we took our time, basking in the sun when we could; bailing out the boats beneath the rapids. A much different experience from the race.

May — Planting Time

Ideally, I would have started some of this in April and perhaps even March if there is an early spring, but I seem to get most of my vegetable garden organized and planted in the month of May. Who would want to work in the garden without a black-fly net anyway? I do fantasize about there being a greenhouse in my life someday.

June — Sailboat Prep

We have quite a few sailors in our community and most of us put off our boat maintenance until just before we float. As far as work goes, there are few things more worthwhile than messing about in and under a boat (with apologies to Rat) in anticipation of launching. Often there are a few improvements or new gear to be installed. It remains to be seen if or how boat storage will be worked out at the Ecovillage, but I have hopes for a more communal atmosphere around sailboat prep once we move in.

July — The CoHo Cruise

The past two years we have put together a joint sailboat cruise involving Cohousing boats and friends. Penobscot Bay is famed as a sailboat cruising ground. The first year featured a memorable full moon reach across Penobscot Bay to our anchorage at Holbrook Island. We rafted up and had a five boat platform at our disposal. Kids had the run of the decks and the parents found a safe haven in the Gibson’s big catboat cockpit. We haven’t managed more than three days, but we aspire to longer adventures.

August

If you can’t figure out what to do in Maine in August without my advice…..

September — Around Islesboro Race

The first Saturday after Labor Day, the Northport Yacht Club (three miles from downtown Belfast) hosts an open race around Islesboro Island in the middle of Penobscot Bay. The starting gun goes off at 10:00 AM and, depending on the prevailing wind and general forecast, forty to fifty boats set out to sail around the island — twenty-eight miles as the crow flies. Most of the boats aren’t serious racers and there is a great informal atmosphere, but it is a race and many of the boats will take a shot at hoisting their spinnakers even if it is the only occasion all year they will take the chance. Last September’s race (2010) saw twenty-five knots of wind at the start with the race beginning downwind. The sight of forty mostly over-canvassed boats headed off down the bay was spectacular.

October — Bald Rock

Early October is usually peak foliage in Waldo County. Just driving around is wonderful enough, but with the bugs driven underground and lots of clear weather, it is a great month to do some hiking. This might lure me out of the county to nearby Acadia, but there are plenty of great short hikes within fifteen miles of Belfast. Bald Rock in Lincolnville marks the northern end of the Camden Hills and offers unbelievable views of Penobscot Bay in reward for just an hour of mild uphill work.

November — Winter Prep

Like June, November is a month that features a significant amount of prep work for the coming winter. For the last three years this has meant storm window installation and weather-proofing, catching up on my woodpile and moving it close to the house, putting chains and the plow blade on my tractor and finally putting the garden to bed. Looks like I will be able to forget about quite a bit of this in my new home, but I’m sure we will find plenty of other projects to occupy the time.

December — Pond Skating

Some winters on the Maine coast this season will last for several months, but with the relatively snowy winters of the last three years, the season has been a short one. Nevertheless, there are few activities more pleasurable than strapping on a pair hockey skates on a crisp December afternoon with a pond full of black ice in front of you. Throw in a dog or two, perhaps a pick up hockey game and maybe a home built ice boat and you have the makings for a memorable day. When the ice is really good you can skate for miles and miles along the shores of dozens of scenic ponds.

What's in a Name? — Allison Piper

2011-04-19T17:36:00.000-07:00

I am a greeter at most of our monthly Open Houses. It’s a great opportunity to meet prospective members and share my enthusiasm about Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage. One of my main duties is to answer questions about our upcoming community, a lot of which start with “Are you allowed to…” have dogs, have a garden, etc. Visitors ask basic questions about the parameters that we plan to live by. Some decisions have already been made, and I answer those questions to the best of my ability. But I really love it when someone asks a question about something we haven’t approached yet, since I get to answer, “Actually, we haven’t figured that out yet. We get to decide that together — it’s our community.”

One of the more interesting decisions we get to make is the name of our road. The City of Belfast isn’t going to pick it for us. That’s certainly not a decision I’ve ever had the opportunity to make before. In a recent general meeting, we brainstormed about all the things we want to consider when choosing a name for our home. It turns out though, when you really think about it, it’s not a super easy decision to make. In fact, it’s actually a pretty tall order. Here’s what we came up with. An optimal road name should meet all of the following criteria:

“Be easily pronounceable, short, convey a sense of place, convey hopes for the future, have a good musical sound, roll off the tongue, be mellifluous, be groovy but not too groovy, meet city approval, not be “cutsie,” have historic resonance, be grounded, not cliché, be something we want to remember or hold precious, have ecological resonance, not sound like just another subdivision.”

So we broke into subgroups and discussed some possibilities. It was actually an interesting exercise and revealed a lot about how different members process and make decisions. Some groups had more straightforward and linear thinkers, some had more creative or humorous personalities. When the groups came back together, here are some of the names we shared:

Dovetail Road, Shelterwood Road, Keene Road, South Hill Road, Seven Meadows, Treeline Road, Utopian Harmony Road, Right Way, Only Way, Left Way, Green Gold Way, Goosewing Road, Rascal Road, Little River Road, Gathering Way, Keene Farm Road, Fox Road, Coho road. Wild Wood, Buttermilk Hill, Chestnut Hill, Blackberry Hill, Sprout Road, Barberry Lane, Bittersweet Lane, Live Lightly Lane, La La Lane, Raspberry Lane, Back Farm Road, Back 40, Buckthorn Hill.

We had a little bit of discussion about the names, but mostly this was a first group pass intended to get our juices flowing. Shortly afterward we wrapped up the meeting and had our pre-Open House brunch potluck.

Even though I actually volunteered some of the names above (mostly the tongue-in-cheek humorous ones that blatantly flout some of the suggested criteria), none of them quite rang true for me. I joked that we could auction off the road name to the highest corporate sponsor. Imagine: ‘Odwalla Road’ or ‘Seventh Generation Road’. We could be rich! Rich!! My idea didn’t exactly fly. Though I do actually like the latter.

On our drive back to Boston, though, Lindsey and I made our typical pit stop in Portland. A sign caught my eye, and it occurred to me that it might be a perfect name: Legacy. Legacy Road. That really hit home for me — it encapsulates a lot of the reasons I am so excited to be a part of BC&E. The biggest one is that I am doing this for our future kids.

The least heavy reason we have joined this project is because we want our young kids to be able to run out the door and play as they will — in a safe, beautiful, car-free community. But there are other reasons as well. I am concerned, worried really about the path that we as a society are on both environmentally and socially. I am such a small part of this world, but I need to do something to reduce my environmental impact. I need to be around people who feel the same and are actively, consciously working for change. People with the skills and compassion that are going to be necessary when the consequences of the way our society has lived in the Industrial Age start really impacting our lives. I don’t want to live isolated from my neighbors and my family any more. I’ve been living that lifestyle for way too long. I need to start thinking in a real and meaningful way about how I want to leave this world. What will be our legacy to our children, to our grandchildren? What will be our legacy? Legacy. Legacy Road. I feel deeply in my heart that living as a part of this community is a big step in the right direction.

So that’s my best shot at a road name. What’s yours?

Brilliant Transformations — Elizabeth Garber

2011-04-16T09:03:00.000-07:00

Every year, we line up jars of brilliant dyes, have cartons of white eggs ready, light the candles and empower children, age four and up, to hold a pysanky tool, a wooden stick with a copper funnel, in the flame of a candle. The copper heats, scoops and melts beeswax for making patterns on eggs. How often does an adult ever say to a child, "I'm letting you play with fire and hot wax"!? The children paint the melting wax in patterns, circles, dots, waving lines, and names, and then dye color after color all over the egg. At the end we sit outside and rub paint thinner on the eggs to dissolve the wax, and the miracle of brilliant colors in lines and swirls emerges in the palms of each child.

This was our third year of decorating eggs together, and I intend to decorate eggs with our community until my final season. At age seven, Pia proudly told the younger ones she had been doing this since she was four. In the future, we may also gather in the Common House kitchen night after night to make complex traditional patterns on eggs!

Transforming white eggs into jewels of color and pattern is like the unfolding miracle of our cohousing community. We keep showing up, bringing our gifts of focus and generosity, faith and intention. We put our simple tools into the fire and set to work together. And look! All around us in our meetings and at the Open Houses, there is happiness, depth of connection, and a shared vision of creating home together.

Thank you all for making this community happen, day after day, poster by poster, and sharing with our friends. We are getting so close!!

with gratitude,
Elizabeth

The Belfast Poet Laureate — Elizabeth Garber

2011-04-05T14:29:00.000-07:00

If you read the local weekly paper carefully, you might see the following want ad that is posted every two years.

Help Wanted: Poet Laureate of Belfast. Qualifications: Be Belfastian, a clever, productive, thoughtful, colorful, and a well worded poet to express and convey a vision of Belfast. This is your chance to combine art with public service. Organize poetry activities. Be prepared to be stopped on the street to answer deep questions about poetry. Serve on the Steering Committee of the annual Belfast Poetry Festival. Maintain a welcoming atmosphere for both emerging and established poets. Be the “public poet” of Belfast, the Biggest Little Poetry Town in Maine.

Belfast takes Poetry seriously with an official post under the auspices of the Belfast City Council. You can find pins at the Chamber of Commerce that condense a great deal of Belfast history in one little phrase: From Poultry to Poetry. Belfast was once famous for the chicken feathers blowing through the streets, a chicken factory on the waterfront that dumped the guts in the bay, and the Broiler Festival with it’s own elected Broiler Queen. Now you can meet the reigning Poet Laureate at the Belfast Poetry Festival, two days in October for poetry and art collaborations and performances all over town. At Belfast’s New Year’s Eve celebration, a popular event is a poetry reading celebrating Belfast poets. Every two years a gold cape is placed on the shoulders of the newly chosen Poet Laureate. Throughout the year, you’ll find a variety of poetry readings and workshops, writing groups and an independent press printing books of poetry. Who knows what poetry you’ll be inspired to write when you move to Belfast!

The previous Three Poet Laureates (Linda Buckmaster, Karin Spitfire and Elizabeth Garber)
in their Church Street Festival Finery. The new Poet Laureate will be celebrated April 15.

Extending Families — Stephen Wallace

2011-04-04T18:21:00.000-07:00

Maya Angelou has said that it is important that we all broaden the concept of family.

That is really what cohousing is all about - the ultimate extended family all living close together. I have been exploring cohousing for over a year and had become convinced the caring and happy Belfast group was the best possible place for me and my four year old daughter Elisabeth (aka Scout). I truly believe in the old adage that it takes a village to raise a child. I believe being a single parent makes that concept especially important. I want Scout to live in a safe place where there are supportive and playful adults and other children of all ages as playmates. It is like a close-knit neighborhood on steroids. So for me this was perfect. However I kept encountering obstacles to making the commitment, and the final heart-breaker was one of temporary financial challenges.

Then Coleen, a very creative, think-outside-the-box Equity member came up with a brilliant solution, and Elizabeth called with an offer to house-share if I was interested. I gave it some thought, for about 5 minutes, and then realized the idea was not only the opening of another path to where I was supposed to be, but also perfect in a thousand other ways. This opportunity is simply a widening of the whole concept of cohousing. So, not just cohousing as a community of separate dwellings and a common house, but really living in cohousing.

Sharing the house itself means always having a friendly and supportive face to greet and listen and talk over the day. Sharing a home means continuing to practice consensus building in one's private spaces and modeling that for my daughter. Sharing a house means good company all the time, even when you don't feel like stepping outside. Sharing a house means practicing respect for the other person (and modeling that for my daughter). And finally, sharing a house means walking the walk and demonstrating what can be done in making real community happen.

Maya Angelou was right.

Making the Leap, Part 2 — Elizabeth Garber

2011-04-04T18:03:00.000-07:00

First I sold my beautiful home and left my settled life to begin a gypsy existence with my new roommate Coleen, who had also sold her house, to live in winter sublets and summer house-sits for a year or two. Why? Because we are holding a vision of moving into Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage. My twenty year old daughter says, “But Mom, you’re not being rational. You’re living like a twenty year old!” I laugh. I’m traveling lighter, discovering how few clothes, books, and things I need to feel at home.

As we get closer to breaking ground, I’ve been happily envisioning my future home, an adorable 500 square foot energy efficient home with a loft in a triplex. I made decisions on cabinet style, paint colors, and started designing a garden around the house. I thought I knew where I was going. A few weeks ago, a friend asked, “So is it all firmed up which is your new house?” I paused and shook my head, “This journey is filled with surprises, shifts and turns in the path. Who knows what might still change?”

Being part of Belfast Cohousing for over two years has changed me. As we envision, plan, and work together to move our vision into reality, it has become a spiritual exercise practice. I notice how it stretches my mind, loosens my expectations, strengthens my inner balance, and deepens my awareness of what is better for our community instead of thinking of myself first. I watch these shifts happen in my companions as we resolve dilemmas. But still I thought, once I moved into cohousing, at the end of the day I’d be going home to my cozy house. Until Coleen’s brilliant idea pushed me to think again.

At cohousing conferences, they say that cohousing's next step toward becoming more affordable is to have shared households. My son lives in a cooperative house in the Boston area, and with visionary zeal tells me that everyone should be house sharing. Coleen made that leap two months ago when she joined households with John and Denise and their two children, Audrey and Luke. They will be buying a three bedroom house and building on a two room suite on the ground floor for ‘Auntie’ Coleen. This will make it affordable for all of them. I listened to them making plans and wondered. “It’s been great having a roommate; do I really want to go back to living alone?” Then I’d talk myself back into it. I’m an introvert. I need quiet time alone. I need my own house for when my kids come home to visit (even though it’s only about 5 days a year) and someday there will be grandchildren.

Then two weeks ago, Coleen got off the phone from talking to a good friend, one of our Exploring Members. A thoughtful dad with a young daughter, he had a temporary obstacle that prevented him from being able to buy into Cohousing as we move toward breaking ground this Spring. He was devastated, because as an older dad he wanted to raise his daughter with all of us. Coleen looked at me and asked, “How about you buy a house with Stephen?” Without a pause, and with a strange clarity that felt like this was a path my life was meant to take, I said, “I could do that.” The rest has been effortless. Two weeks later, with financial paperwork done and house decisions made, we are proceeding as housemates buying a house in common.

But what happened in that split second, before I spoke? I didn’t think: why would I share a house with someone I hardly know? Why would I start living with a child after raising two children? I didn’t. It was a moment of surrender. I trusted a wisdom greater than my own thinking and planning, to follow a path that appeared. Stephen and I shared a commitment to living in this community, which gave us a common ground of connection. I trusted that was enough of a foundation to start. Of course, my daughter was dismayed! “This is not rational, mom! ” But I said, “Miriam, trust me on this one!”

Now, instead of planning a little nest for one, we are getting to know each other as we talk about cabinets he wants to build for “our” house. Now I’ll have an observant introvert to discuss things with when I come home. I’ll listen to him play his hand-built harpsichord with his daughter, who shares my name, while I cook dinner with produce from our community gardens. Greater richness is coming to my life than I ever imagined, through trust and faith in this amazing crazy Cohousing journey.

Coho Member Coleen to speak at the New England Aquarium!

2011-03-24T07:32:00.000-07:00

On Monday, March 28th, Belfast Cohousing member Coleen O'Connell will be speaking on ecological education at the New England Aquarium in Boston. It'll be an informative and interesting evening, so come join us!

Ecological Education: A New Code for Education
Instilling in children the confidence and capacities to tackle the complex issues that are hurtling toward them is Coleen O'Connell's mission. O'Connell is on the faculty of the Environmental Studies Divsion at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. She designed and has been the lead faculty member in the Ecological Teaching and Learning MS Program. This is a first of its kind program in the country
working with educators both formal and informal to make complex systems thinking and ecological principles the foundation of their teaching practices. As an ecological educator for the past 25 years she has traveled extensively with the Audubon Expedition Institute and Living Routes program exploring the elements of sustainable living. She has been active in the New England Environmental Education community and cofounded the Ravenwood Sustainability education program with colleagues on 170 acres in midcoast Maine. She is now on the Development team for the Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage being designed and about to break ground in Belfast, Maine.

Upcoming presentations in Boston, Portland

2011-03-22T08:19:00.000-07:00

We're excited to share our spring calendar with everyone - we have a lot of great events coming up, including several in the Boston area! We hope you'll join us for some meet & greet Q&As, our monthly Open House, and informational sessions on our project. Email for more information!

Thursday, March 31st, 7-9pm @ Cambridge Cohousing (Boston)
Tuesday, April 5th, 6:30-8:30 @ Greenward (Boston)
Thursday, April 21st, time/location TBA in Portland, ME
Tuesday, May 3rd, 7-9pm @ Life Alive Cafe (Boston)
Thursday, May 5th, 6-9pm @ On Centre in Jamaica Plan (Boston)

Spread the word, invite your friends, come along and learn more about cohousing, ecovillages and Belfast!

Prototype Home on cover of Maine Home + Design

2011-03-18T10:02:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen it already, this month's Maine Home + Design magazine has the prototype home for our cohousing project on the cover! Kudos go to GO Logic, the build/design team behind this passive house beauty.

"Imagine that, instead of building just a custom home for your family, you could build a custom neighborhood. Shoulder to shoulder with your future neighbors, you would come up with ideas and designs. Once it was built, you would have your own private home, but also access to shared resources, common spaces, and a supportive living environment. Imagine raising your children in this close-knit neighborhood, which comes with built-in playmates and backyard gardens in which they learn to grow vegetables and compost. “It takes a village,” after all, but what if the modern-day equivalent is “It takes an ecovillage”?"

- Passive Impressive, by Rebecca Falzano | Photography Trent Bell | Styling Meagan Gilpatrick

You can pick up a copy at the newsstands and it's also live on the Maine Home + Design website. Share it with your friends!

Enter the New Country — Coleen O’Connell

2011-03-08T15:02:00.000-08:00

Coleen helps Cat with her costume.

Recently Joline Blais, another BC&E member and I were having an engaged conversation on the phone about the stresses of the life we are living as we long for our vision of being together as a community on the property we own collectively in Belfast. Kids, two jobs, household tasks, wood heat, tough winter, isolated country living – no one around to take up the slack or lend a hand. Yet people live this way all over Maine- all over the world. In cohousing there is a solid vision, and we are slowly working our way toward it, and yet at times it is easy to get scared that it won’t really be what we hope it will be. Or we worry that it won’t happen and we pull back in fear.

Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage is a true social, ecological experiment that we are all planning together. Though there are over 130 built cohousing communities in America that have accomplished their mission, each developing community is still its own organism with its own personality. That would be true for us. The metaphor I shared with Joline that day on the telephone is one of having my foot on one bank of a rushing stream with the other foot on the other side – straddling the rushing water, hoping not to fall in, and trying to get up the momentum to jump to the other side. I want to be on the other side, working with a group of people to be an example of how to live elegantly, simply, off oil, raising food sustainably, having fun with one another, while the whole village raises our children. But the independent, isolated life I know is so familiar. Why would I throw my time and energy into a bunch of people I don’t know that well? How will we ever work it out together? Humans are so testy. Can we really do this? Will we really do the hard work of sustainability or will this all be green wash? I worry about these things.

The following reflection has soothed my worries on many occasions. I sent it to Joline after our phone conversation and her response was positive - that we all need this wisdom to get us through these difficult times in our earth history and to move into the world that is possible... the world that will sustain our children and their many ancestors to follow. The work of social transformation is not easy.

Enter the New Country

You have no idea of what the new country looks like. Still, you are very much at home, although not truly at peace, in the old country. You know the ways of the old country, its joys and pains, its happy and sad moments. You have spent most of your days there. Even though you know that you have not found there what your heart most desires, you remain quite attached to it. It has become part of your very bones. Now you have come to realize that you must leave it and enter the new country, where your Beloved dwells. You know that what helped and guided you in the old country no longer works, but what else do you have to go by? You are being asked to trust that you will find what you need in the new country. That requires the death of what has become so precious to you: influence, success, yes, even affection and praise.

Trust is so hard since you have nothing to fall back on. Still, trust is what is essential. The new country is where you are called to go and the only way to go there is naked and vulnerable.

It seems that you keep crossing and recrossing the border. For a while you experience a real joy in the new country. But then you feel afraid and start longing again for all you left behind, so you go back to the old country. To your dismay, you discover that the old country has lost its charm. Risk a few more steps into the new country, trusting that each time you enter it, you will feel more comfortable and be able to stay longer.

From The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey through Anguish to Freedom

by Henri J. M. Nouwen p. 21. NY: NY: Random House

Snow Days — Susie

2011-02-24T08:19:00.000-08:00

As a teacher, I love snow days - I get to sleep in, grade papers in my pajamas, watch television, shovel out the driveway at my leisure, and enjoy the winter wonderland without worrying about having to drive in it. The downside to snow days (aside from having to go to school later and later in June) is the isolation. Not driving means spending most of the day by myself, and it gets old. Luckily, since we live in town, I can trudge up to the co-op or the library if I get lonely, but most of my friends and future coho neighbors live out a ways and don't have that option. Even though it pales in comparison to face-to-face contact, at least the internet allows us to stay connected during those stormy afternoons.

The last snow day we had, a bunch of us were posting on facebook about the weather in our various towns. One mom asked for suggestions of activities to do with her toddlers while the storm raged outside, and several people were commenting on what we *could* be doing if our cohousing neighborhood - and common house - was built already. We daydreamed about craft activities and storytelling in front of the common house wood stove, snow fort building and snowshoeing on the land, finding easy babysitting for folks who still had to work or run errands, watching our kids sledding in the back field...

In honor of that exciting, wintry daydream (which may be a reality by next winter!), I'm sharing my recipe for hot cocoa - a perfect winter treat, to be made in a big pot sitting on a wood stove, or in smaller amounts to be shared among a few friends (or hoarded all for yourself). This uses a classic Maine sweetener - maple syrup - instead of cane sugar. Share it with your friends and neighbors, and perhaps this time next winter, you can stop by our common house and have a cup before going sledding or snow hiking with us.

Susie's Maple Hot Chocolate
Ingredients for 8-10 servings

1/2 C unsweetened cocoa powder 
1/4 tsp salt 
1 C hot water 
2 T butter or margarine (optional if you're aiming for vegan cocoa) 
1/3 - 1/2 C (real!) maple syrup - use more if you like it sweeter! 
3/4 tsp vanilla extract 
6-8 C milk or milk-equivalent (I use soymilk and it tastes great)

In a decently sized pot or saucepan with a wide bottom (easier for whisking), whisk the cocoa powder and salt together. Add the hot water and whisk until ingredients are combined, then add the butter, vanilla and the maple syrup. Whisk until smooth, with the burner on simmer. Add the milk, whisking until combined and fully warm.

Now comes an important step – the pre-taste-test. Taste a bit of it to see how sweet it is. You can always add more sugar or maple syrup if you want it sweeter, and more milk if you don’t. You can adjust the cocoa amount, too, if you want. It's very flexible. Just keep tasting until you have it the way you like it. If you’re going to double the recipe, just keep tasting it as you go to make sure proportions are right.

Garnish with marshmallow or whipped cream if that’s your thing, but it's good straight up with no distractions.

Enjoy!

A Valentine Blessing — Elizabeth Garber

2011-02-18T17:13:00.000-08:00

I realize what made our Valentines Open House so special yesterday was that we were so relaxed, like an extended family on a winter Sunday afternoon, hanging around the house. It wasn't an exciting hubbub where we were on our best behavior for guests, we were just comfortable, and our visiting families settled in with us. The musicians didn't perform for an event, they just gathered round and sang and played for each other. Their joy rippled throughout the room. A creative camaraderie grew around the scatter of lacy red heart doilies, glue sticks, cupid stickers, and ribbons. Our bonfire makers stoked the fire, the cocoa makers stirred the brew, and we were at home in good company.

What a perfect way for someone to see if this is how they might want to live.
What an affirmation that this is how we are choosing to live in community, already.
I thank each of you for what you brought to the day.

Blessings,
Elizabeth

Here is the quote that I put on my Valentines this year:

"Happiness is the result of inner maturity. It depends on us alone, and requires patient work, carried out from day to day. Happiness must be built, and this requires time and effort. In the long term, happiness and unhappiness are therefore a way of being, or a life skill." — Matthieu Ricard

Raking the Roof — Steve Chiasson

2011-02-08T17:22:00.000-08:00

When I moved to Maine back in the 70’s, I bought a place the realtor euphemistically called a “handyman’s special.” The price was right, and I considered myself something of a handyman, so I jumped right in. I learned much of what I know about building from remodeling (and sometimes rebuilding) that little house. That includes mistakes made…

As the snow began to pile up on my roof that first winter, I thought the icicles forming on the edge of the roof were pretty cool — a Currier & Ives print come to life. Then my kitchen ceiling started leaking. I was mystified until one of the old Mainers I worked with explained the physics of ice dams.

On any roof that’s inadequately insulated or ventilated, some heat from the house will escape through it. When there’s snow on the roof, that heat melts the layer of snow in contact with it, which then runs down the (warm-ish) roof until it reaches the eaves. At that point, being beyond the area of the roof where escaping heat keeps it liquefied, it re-freezes and forms a little dam made of ice.

Drop by drop, this dam thickens and works its way backward up the roof until it reaches a point where it can seep beneath the roofing material and make its way into the house. Depending on the pitch of the roof and how far the water has to go before reaching that point, you might wind up with an ice dam six to ten inches thick. Assuming you don’t want to climb up on the roof with a shovel, there are two ways of dealing with this: install electric de-icing cables on the edge of the roof (expensive and not very green), or get a roof rake.

A roof rake is basically a long pole with a plastic or metal scraper blade attached to the end. Instead of lifting and tossing the snow, as you would do with a shovel, you just muckle on to a clump with the scraper and use the pole to pull it off the edge of the roof. If your house isn’t too tall, you might be able to do this standing on the ground (safe). In my case, I get to do part of it standing on a ladder, and part of it standing on the roof of my woodshed (not safe). If you rake your roof immedialtely after the snow falls, you won’t have any problems. Wait a day, and you’ve got the start of a dam. Now, besides raking the roof, you’ve got to break the dam apart. I use a small hand axe, and try really hard not to chop holes in my roof.

In certain circumstances it can be a sort of meditative process. Most of the time it’s ulcer-inducing. And hard on the roof. Metal roofs are less problematic than shingles because they’re slipperier, and any ice dams that form are more likely to break loose on their own. Better still are roofs that are properly insulated and ventilated. You know you’re looking at such a roof when you see a load of snow atop it and no icicles whatsoever along the edges. It’s a beautiful thing.

When I drive by the prototype house on Crocker road and see fresh snow just sitting there like a white cap, I smile. I want a house like that. Hey, wait a sec… I’m getting a house like that! WAHOO! Want one? We’ve still got a few left. Otherwise, I’ve got an 18’ roof rake in pretty good shape that I’ll sell you, cheap…

Yoga! — Mary O'Herin

2011-02-08T17:06:00.000-08:00

My yoga studies started over twenty-six years ago, jeez maybe around thirty. My very first yoga class was at an urban studio in St. Louis near Washington University. It was bare bones zen grunge decor. I was the youngest person there and we took cold showers halfway through the asanas. When I ask myself what inspired me to first go to yoga class I think it may have been Lilias, the woman who did yoga on the PBS channel. Even though as teenager I made fun of her reflexively to bolster my own wobbly sense of social status as a young female primate, I simultaneously wondered if she got her courage to appear in tights and leotard on TV from doing yoga. I remember liking it immediately. It was weird, but it was also both challenging and phat in a sensory way. What I mean by that is that it absorbed me completely while I was doing it. And my body and brain were equally absorbed. No part of me felt left out just watching, or already anticipating what came next. It put me in the zone.

Over three decades my practice has lapsed many times, for months, even a year once or twice. But I kept returning because no other do-anywhere, solo activity so consistently gave me that indescribably sweet feeling of being at home again in my own body. A feeling similar to my experience as a kid of running and playing outside all day, finally coming inside fabulously relaxed and happy, full of sunshine, chlorophyll vapors and oxygen. I know few adults who can afford to spend several days a week climbing trees, playing kickball, wrestling in the grass, riding bicycles, etc. to their hearts' content. Yoga class 1+ times per week and 15 to 45 minutes on my own daily give me that feeling many days.

Although my body has gained flexibility over the years, that seems inconsequential beside the expanded sense of intimacy with my body and my mind. I am proprioceptively bigger: that means athletically introverted. Yoga practice also gives me a deeply cared for sense of well-being.

It is difficult to write about something that is necessarily experiential. Yoga must be experienced to be understood and then after 6 to 9 months of going to class with a teacher you like and trust, you realize one day that a little light has gone on somewhere. But where? In your mind? Your heart? Your no longer stiff hips? Your SOUL?! What?!! It is a very curious awareness of self, but at the same time not self. Because it is awareness of breath, empty space inside, and internal geography that feels more Micro-Intra-Galactic Wild than SELF. I have become more Mary O'Herin, the fiery, sensitive, spontaneous, watery nature. At the same time I have become less attached to being Mary as I sink deeper into the being I call myself. Just be-ing is the greatest expression of my true nature, knowing by feeling it that I am a tiny part of something much bigger: the Micro-Intra-Galactic Wilderness Alliance.

You see it starts to sound so, so... mystical and OUT there, but my experience and what I am trying to describe is distinctly clear and defined by measurable parameters of flesh and oxygen in gaseous and liquid form. I understand all the weird tricks yogis are known for: they were attempting to advertise the fantastic results of yoga. Advertising savvy is not a benefit of yoga, by the way. I do not think yoga is the only way to enter the Micro-Intra-Galactic wilderness within. There are many paths. A yogi from Chicago cited yoga as one of the Healing Salves which are loosely: singing, dancing, laughing, exercise (enjoyed), diet, nature, silence, and story-telling. His recommendation was to have some personal recipe of them all in one's life. That, my friend, is my best attempt for now to explain why I am so devoted to yoga. The word Yoga means union: the mind is calmed, the body is enlivened, and they meet one another in the spaciousness of the soul as their electro-magnetic currents blend smoothly. I added that last bit. Namaste! I bow to the Divine Flame within You.

Refuge From The Storm — Coleen O'Connell

2011-01-19T17:10:00.000-08:00

The snowstorm last week during the holidays, with advertised winds at 45 to 60 mph and 10-12 inches of snow, was a huge wake up call for me. Since I sold my house in November and moved to a rental in anticipation of breaking ground for cohousing, I realized I am now living in a house without a wood burning stove for the first time in 35 years. I started to stress. All alone in an abandoned summer home neighborhood on the water, what will I do if the power goes out? How will I cook, get water, keep warm? Always the wood pile and my stash of candles reassured me. I don’t even think I have a candle with me in this house. Yikes. What to do?

Tap into that future cohousing neighborhood! I called John and Denise Lightner, fellow cohousers and soon to be my house mates in a home we are buying together. I dialed their number and asked if I could take refuge as we did a trial run of living together during the storm. Packing my knitting, a few good books, a jigsaw puzzle, and my cat – I headed out before the storm started.

For two days we holed up watching the winds swirl the snow in multiple directions. The wood stove hummed as we kept feeding it while a kettle of water bubbled away on top. John placed a pile of 12 inch square soap stones on the stove; each night he would wrap them in a coverlet then tuck them into our beds at our feet. Wow! This is an old Maine remedy for staying warm at night and it was great – except the cat curled up on top of it and wouldn’t let me near. The electricity never went out so movies kept the kids entertained at night. We ate great food, laughed a lot, started on the puzzle which was way over the top in terms of size and complexity, and generally enjoyed the storm. We talked about our future life together in cohousing and the excitement we were feeling for living without using fossil fuels to heat our houses. What will our houses feel like during a snowstorm we wondered aloud? We had only to look across John and Denise’s field to the prototype house build by GO-Logic to see that it was snuggled right into the landscape and doing well. And the kids pondered whose house they would run to for hanging out during a storm.

As I returned two days later to my rental house on the ocean, I was grateful for our trial run at combining our households. Life is truly one big experiment and in cohousing we are taking the next steps in building the village that will raise our children. I look forward to more snow storms with the Lightners.

An Introvert and an Extrovert Choose Cohousing — Susie

2011-01-19T16:59:00.000-08:00

A lot of people who know me say I'm an extrovert. My husband, on the other hand, is often perceived as an introvert. He's pretty quiet in social gatherings, prefers small groups or one-on-one interactions, and can work happily by himself for hours. Me, I need to have regular contact with people, and frequent inter-personal interaction. It's not always that clear cut, however. Dan's more willing to launch himself into new situations, but it can take me a lot of effort to overcome my reticence about meeting new people. We don't clearly draw the line between extroverted or introverted, and it can be a challenge to find a community that understands that. Cohousing is providing us the perfect solution.

When we first moved to the Belfast area from Seattle, we considered buying a piece of land a bit further north, in the Blue Hill area, and building a straw-bale or timber frame or passive solar home. The wooded coastal setting combined with energy efficient housing was really tempting, but doing it on our own seemed daunting. We looked at tons of small home, straw bale and passive solar building books, scoped out pieces of land and calculated what it would cost to clear, drill wells, and build, and debated if we really wanted to have to drive 20 minutes just to get into town and buy a second car for our work commutes. I began to realize I'd go batty in the winters, isolated and holed up so far from "civilization."

Also, the longer we lived in Belfast, the more we liked it and the less we were interested in a piece of land up the coast somewhere. Belfast is small enough to get to know people and be fantastically walkable, but vibrant enough to have some solidly great restaurants, a humming art and music scene, a co-op grocery store to rival anything we had in Seattle, and all the services we could want. As a hub for the region, it has a great YMCA with a new pool and a gym, it has a big Hannaford grocery store, and is close in to other coastal towns like Camden and Rockland without being too touristy or expensive. If we stayed in Belfast, we could avoid buying a second car since Dan could walk to work, and we'd be closer to the friends we were starting to make here. We started to look for houses in town, but were turned off by older properties that needed work or would have huge winter heating bills. None of the land parcels in the area really appealed to us, so we ended up in a holding pattern, staying in our in-town Belfast rental and dreaming of finding a more perfect solution.

In April of 2009, we heard about Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage, and came to an open house. What we saw was exciting. We got a warm, friendly and laid back vibe from the people we met, many of whom have now become close friends. Passive-solar houses being built on a pastoral farm plot that was right on the edge of our vibrant seaside town was the solution to all of our housing questions.

It was exciting to have found the answer to our housing quest. As first-time homebuyers, we'd be getting something that not only was high-quality, energy efficient new construction, but we'd be living in a community with people who had owned homes before and could help us when we faced those daunting home-ownership issues which lurk out there with names like "house painting boogeyman" or "ghost of refinancing" or "oh god the plumbing is broken beast". Best of all, we'd stumbled into the perfect community balance for a couple that's half introverted and half extroverted.

Despite the image many people have in their minds about cohousing, it's not a cultish, hyper-connected, in-your-face-all-the-time community structure. In fact, most people who live in cohousing tend to be introverts. It provides the right mix of privacy (we own our own home) and the availability of community (we can have dinner at the common house or garden with a neighbor, but we don't have to). It provides a comfortable, well-known community where neighbors won't be invasive but are happy to see us when we want to wander by and have a chat.

The more we've worked on this project, the more our paradigm of how we want to live has changed. It's not just the awesome houses (I can't tell you how excited we are to move in...) or the gorgeous setting or the town. It's the idea that we're not isolated and alone. We may want to have kids in a few years, and it's reassuring to know that there are many people in my community who have and have had children who can share their wisdom (and leftover baby gear) with us, and to know that as our kids grow, they'd have a safe place to romp around in the nearby wilderness, learn to garden (from someone other than me, who tends to accidentally kill plants), and be able to interact with adults of all ages.

Most importantly, in cohousing we'll have the support of our community, the comfort of regular interaction, as well as the ability to close our door and be cocooned in our own cozy little home without worrying we'll be perceived as anti-social or anti-community. Our cohousing community takes us as we are with no judgment - and that's what community should be.

Rules? Trust The Process, Trust The People — Denise Pendleton

2011-01-19T16:48:00.000-08:00

Recently, as I talked to an acquaintance about my adventure in cohousing, I got a response of, “Cohousing sounds great and I’d love to have such an energy efficient home, but I couldn’t stand to live with all those rules. ” Umm…I’ve been thinking a lot about this perspective and why I, someone not terribly fond of rules myself, find myself three years into developing a cohousing community. Overwhelmingly, what I realize is that it’s the people that make the difference. From the outside, not knowing anyone, it certainly could seem like just a bunch of rules to hamper my freedoms. Yet because I know, like and admire the people creating the rules, I trust that differences can be worked out with honesty, humor, compassion and a commitment to healthy community.

As I continue to reflect on that comment, I remembered when I joined Belfast Cohousing three years ago and the reasons why. I had been on the sidelines of another cohousing community in development about ten years earlier and as I heard of their meetings and the rules that were emerging, I shook my head and thought it sounded pretty crazy. So I entered this community with my ears and eyes open for what might seem similarly unappealing. Instead, I found a high level of positive energy, competence and lots of laughter among visionaries who knew when to compromise and how to keep their eyes on the goal. New members coming in over the past few years have made similar observations after attending their first General Meeting.

Of course, this isn’t to say we don’t have conflicts. They’re inevitable in a project of this scope, and some have taken significant effort to resolve. But these challenges also present opportunities for self-growth through change. When some of us feel stuck, there are others able to step in and introduce a solution, a fresh perspective and help us move forward. This is the beauty of community and group work.

Perhaps I sound like I’m patting myself on the back as I talk of this great group of community members that I’m a part of, when honestly I just feel lucky to be here. All I bring to the group is my early years as a middle child in a family of five kids! What do others bring? We have a strong core of Audubon Expeditionary Institute alumni, which has brought us the dedication and experience of those who have lived on a bus travelling cross country to study sustainable living. We have a diversity of ages and lifestyles. We have teachers, farmers, and social workers. Many of us have had lots of experience with committee work. We have members who have lived in other educational, intentional or cohousing communities. Among this range of life experience, there is a capacity for bringing significant wisdom to the process of making decisions, sharing hopes and fears and guiding healthy group dynamics.

At a recent meeting, we reviewed Land Use Guidelines and I thought to myself, “Is this just another bunch of rules? ” Then a member noted how lucky we are to have this opportunity to set out intentional guidelines, instead of just living with the often misinterpreted or misunderstood implied rules that exist among neighbors and within neighborhoods. Here, we have an explicit process for sharing our hopes, dreams and fears in ways that honor and enlighten us all. As we shared our ideas about how the land could be a part of our lives, I grew excited in anticipation of the chance I will have to learn more about permaculture, farming, landscaping, and gardening best practices.

Once we enter into any relationship — be it marriage, friendship, or society — there are rules spoken and unspoken. What we get in return meets many of our deepest needs as social beings. I’ve just been reading about the En’owkin decision-making practice of the Okanagen Indian people, based on a belief that their entire community must be engaged to achieve sustainability. This practice follows a process, i.e. has its “rules” as it recognizes our interconnectedness and includes the perspective of the land and human relations. When decisions are made following this practice, “Material things and all the worrying about matters such as money start to lose their power. When people realize that the community is there to sustain them, they have the most secure feeling in the world. The fear starts to leave, and they are imbued with hope. ” (From an essay written by Okanagen Jeannette Armstrong, “En’owkin: Decision-Making as if Sustainability Mattered”) What I have been learning in my several years of forming Belfast Cohousing is that community steps in to transform fear into unexpected pleasures and gifts.

Surviving Winter — Elizabeth Garber

2011-01-06T15:12:00.000-08:00

This poem helps answer that perennial fear
people worry about when they move to Maine.
How will we make it through the winter?

What It Takes to Get Through the Winter in Maine

We probably wouldn't choose it, staying here all winter,
if we weren't so rooted in like the indigo mussel shells
grasping onto the ledges as the daily tides of winter
wrap and batter and wear us smooth.

The winter is a series of heartaches and reprieves.

It begins with the first cold days that crash in so fast
the last week of August, like a slap to the side of the face,
leaving us bereft, grieving the softly warm luminous days.
Suddenly sobered, we are left facing
what it will take
to get through the winter.

That summer, so sweet, so short, the blue washed light
over the shimmering sea, the blissful handful of days
the waves were warm enough to enter.
Skin alive and radiant, sun filled, granite sparkles illuminating eyes
shining over campfires on evenings that stretch out so long.
Those days when some tender place in us relaxes and trusts
that we are held and supported in this warmth,
as the sea holds us so buoyantly.

Then the spell is broken.
The first cold warning softens soon enough,
but nothing is the same again.
We feel older, wearied, humbled.
This is what winter brings us,
again and again,
tide after tide,
wearing away at us,
teaching us to surrender
to the darkness, the cold, the fear.

Now is the time to gather up what we need
for getting through the winter, and
I don't mean getting the wood in and the house banked,
the windows sealed, the doors muffled.

The winter is a series of heartaches and reprieves,
and each one hits harder than the last,
shearing us as bare as the trees.

We need to stock the root cellar
with enough Ball jars of canned ripe peaches
to open the remembrance of sunlight into dark winter nights.
We need to stock up enough captivating books to draw us
expectantly under our deep covers for the long cold night.
We need to know enough warm kitchens we can step into
where arms will embrace us
and warm voices will rise to surround us.
We need to engage in enough good work that will grasp us strongly
and work us hard and well on days we can't bear another storm.
We need enough music so songs will rise up out of our bellies
and take us singing out into the long icy drive home.
We need enough points of contact that our hold
in the storm will be enough to make it through.

Winter's work is to take us to our greatest fears,
to break us down, and work us hard.
We have to strengthen that muscle
that anchors us to the rock of the winter sea,
holding us steady.

We don’t know if we will be enough to make it through the winter.

This may seem like a warning,
but really, it's winter’s challenge,
an invitation.

Years after writing this poem, it seems the list of what we need
— captivating friends around the kitchen table, playing and singing music,
good food canned for the winter — all of this is what we are gathering
together for our life in Belfast Cohousing.

"How We Give Gifts: A Tribute to Love and Stuff" — Lindsey Piper

2010-12-09T14:58:00.000-08:00

(sung to the tune of the Beatles "Help")

Stuff! You know I need it honey
Stuff! Keep spending lots of money
Stuff! To fill up all my shelves
STUUUUFFF!!!

When I was younger, not much younger than today
I really "needed" stuff (ps hey, mom & dad, I'm gay)
But now I see the light, my house is small for sure
Not to mention plastic crap, and over-flowed drawers

Help me change the way we give out stuuufff
Cause I think I am ok and have enouuuuggh
Don't get me wrong, great gifts are hiiip

Won't you please, please help me
gift-y, stuff freeeee.... oooooooooo.

To our dear friends and family,

There are two reasons for this letter: First, as many of you know, we have signed on a home in Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage in Belfast, Maine, that we plan on moving into after Allison graduates from dental school in 2011. Many of you don’t know, however, that the home we’ll be moving to is small - very small by American standards (under 500 sq ft.) with very little storage. Second, we’ve been meaning for a long time to make a list of things that we really want and need for gifts so that people don’t have to guess (and it would be great to have that available for people we want to get gifts for, too!).

Moving into a place as small as our new home will be is going to be a big adjustment. Together we have amassed quite a lot of “stuff” over our combined 65 years. Starting this spring, we are going to need to start liquidating large volumes of our belongings: big things like furniture and appliances as well as a plethora of tchotchke and excess supplies of all sorts that have built up. The reality of this is a little stressful but it’s also pretty liberating. Right now we live in a generously-sized apartment with a very large attic and basement - lots and lots of storage. Our default, as it is for many people, is to simply put things that are not immediately useful or regularly used somewhere upstairs or downstairs, or to put it in a closet, cabinet or drawer in our apartment. When we get a gift or replace an item, like clothes, housewares or electronics, we frequently don’t dispose of or donate the original. Usually we just put the old one somewhere else “in case we ever need it” and use the new item. The end result of this is that we have a whole lot of work to do to bring this accumulation down to a size that will be comfortable in our new home. Virtually every drawer, shelf, closet, nook and cranny in our current home is full. So thinking about what we are going to have to do to adjust our lives to a very small space is daunting. But if we’re successful, imagine how much easier it’s going to be to move!

So... why are we telling everyone this? Well, it turns out we actually need your help to achieve this goal, and we’re going to need it for years to come. Because we have such an amazing, loving and generous circle of family and friends, each year we receive a lot of gifts… a whole lot of gifts. Just think about all the gifts! There are Christmas gifts and Valentine’s Day gifts and Easter gifts and birthday gifts and just plain old I-saw-something-and-thought-of-you gifts. All of these gifts, given to us with so much love, merriment, joy and sometimes, if we are all truly honest with ourselves, a certain sense of obligation, add up. In conjunction with the many things that we buy ourselves each year, they’ve added up in our lives to a critical mass that begs to be changed.

What we somewhat uncomfortably are asking you to do, and are asking ourselves to do, is to consider changing the way you buy us gifts or whether you buy us gifts at all. In our culture, as in many cultures, gift giving is an expression of love, gratitude and respect. And receiving gifts is also an expression of love, gratitude and respect. So what are we saying? Do we want you to stop expressing love, gratitude and respect for us? Are we saying that we don’t love or respect you or are not grateful for all of the gifts that have been given to us already and/or the sentiments behind them? No, not at all.

We are actually hoping that we can start to change the way we give and receive gifts, perhaps even shift our expressions of love, gratitude and respect for each other, while simultaneously reducing the number of garage sales, re-gifts, donations and square footage we’ll need over the course of our lives!

We are so incredibly fortunate. While we may want a few things, we honestly truly need nothing. If we never received a gift again, and only replaced things that wore out, we would be just fine. We have more love and great people in our lives than we ever hoped for.

But as far as gifts go, let’s face it - we all have had the experience of receiving a gift from someone, saying thank you and having thoughts like this: “Oh dear, where am I going to put that? ” or “I really wish I had gotten __ instead ” or “I really could have used __” or “Nice, but not my style. ” It also kind of stinks when you buy or make someone a gift and you never see them use it - even if you paid a lot of money for it, put in a lot of time and tried really hard to think of something they wanted or could use. None of those are great experiences - but the good news is we can do something about it!

If you see something out in the world that lovingly or humorously reminds you of us, please consider picking up the phone to tell us about it instead of bringing it to the register, especially if it’s not something you’re positive we want and need. Come Christmastime, holidays or our birthdays, ignore that nagging notion that you need to get us a gift to show us you love us. Call us to tell us about it and the thoughts it brought up. Write us a card or letter or just think of us fondly! Don’t get us wrong - there will always be things that we can’t afford or would really like as gifts. You can always feel free to ask us if we want that perfect gift that you see but is not on any wish list! You can always volunteer or donate to a cause in our name! Our obligation in this whole endeavor is to be honest with you about whether we want that gift you’re thinking of getting us or to tell you if we really need something. This is kind of radical and sometimes uncomfortable, don’t you think?

To make this work, we also need to put in the effort to make wish lists available to you. Or if we don’t have a list available, we need to not be upset with what comes to us (or doesn't)! Alternatively, we can actually make a date of it and go shopping for gifts together! All of this is going to be especially important when we have kids in the next couple of years. We will need help to get that fancy running stroller that we covet but can’t really afford and our kids will grow like weeds and need new or new-to-them-clothes. If we don’t have the space for all of the adult things we have, we really, really are not going to have the space for all of the adorable toys, clothes and games that are out there! And we also deeply want to keep reducing the impact that we have on the earth. That in and of itself is a very valuable gift that we are asking of our loved ones. Ultimately, it’s a new adventure for all of us and could end up being a lot of fun!

The Other Side of Moving — Elizabeth Garber

2010-12-09T14:31:00.000-08:00

The day I agreed to sell my house, I felt like I got on a train, a rumbling old steam engine that was going to take me on a journey. There would be no stopping until I reached the “other side.” That first day I opened a notebook and made pages of notes, mapping out how I was going to do this, what I would pack and store, what I would sell, what would go to my office (files, finances), my mother’s attic (wedding dress, children’s treasures), on and on, creating the grand map for how I would consolidate my life for the two years before I move into Cohousing. From then on, every day from the moment I woke up I was aware I was on the “moving” train. I’d emerge from sleep creating lists, as well as plans, where was I going to live, housesit, rent? Sleep became more difficult as I scoured the chess board of options through the night, slowly edging from a vision through fear, panic, overwhelmedness, prayer, brainstorms, until a workable plan for my life in transition emerged. And during the day, when I wasn’t working or going for a walk or cooking meals, I was packing and organizing my life. I was on a train, I couldn’t stop, I had to keep to the schedule.

Fortunately I started with my desk, going through every file and drawer. I say fortunately, because at the beginning of moving I could still think, examine and sort wisely. By the end of moving, there was no energy or mind left for minutiae! Then books, sorting what I need for the winter to read, what for long-term keeping, what to give to the library and to give away to friends. Then the photo albums I’d created every year for my children’s childhood — I stored in big plastic tubs with firmly locking lids. My kids called home asking about the photo albums, admonishing me to keep them safe. We agreed that these albums are our most treasured belonging. The living room steadily filled with boxes and storage tubs.

I realized I was going to clean out and organize every drawer, every shelf, every closet of my life. What an incredible cleansing process! Each day, I allowed myself to do whatever I was drawn to clean next. I got excited, ooh yes, finally I could clean out the Christmas wrappings, the bottom of my closet, the drawer where I saved photos that hadn’t gone into the photo album. At the end of each project there was another drawer, sorted, wiped clean and empty. This process could not be rushed. Two months passed, each stop on the journey passed, the give-away, the yard sale, the packing party. My back recovered, I got over my cough, I used every herb and tea I knew to get sleep, and I kept making the next revised list. What was left to do? What had to wait until the last minute?

I must confess, I had a secret pleasure that helped me come home from work and look forward to packing, the mindless non-decision making kind of packing and cleaning. I listened to the Harry Potter books 1-5, read aloud, with terrifically varied voices and accents, so that I always had their friendly company late into the night. And the challenges that Harry, Hermione and Ron were dealing with made packing look easy. I will lend my collection to anyone who would like them when they are moving!

Then it was the night before moving day. I got home from work and my mother arrived. I am so blessed to have an energetic, enthusiastic, fun 81 year old mother who would organize and pack my pantry and hardware drawers all through moving day. Before we went to sleep, she sprayed oven cleaner in the oven, and we choked and gagged to get away from the stink of it! She was planning to clean the oven the next morning. At 3:30 am on moving day, I woke up smelling the oven cleaner. I knew what I had to do. I found a painter’s face mask and rubber gloves. By 4am, I was kneeling down with my head in the oven, cleaning out the cooked on baking and broiling spills and splatters of the last 9 years. I was laughing as I worked, this is part of the spiritual practice of cleansing and attending to every aspect of my life.

I was so happy that in a few hours I’d be able to take my mother a cup a coffee when she woke up in and tell her I had a surprise for her, that I’d done the oven. When we were kids and weeding long rows of beans or peas, she taught us about doing surprises for each other. She’d leave her row and weed a few feet of our rows, so it was a surprise when we got to it. This was my weeding ahead for her. I was on a roll, this was moving day. I would strip the beds, wash and dry the sheets and pack the bedding away. I would work my way through the list of what had been waiting for me to do.

It went like clockwork, the two moving guys came with a U-Haul truck and carried away the piles of boxes, the paintings, the furniture, and we kept packing the last things that needed to be dealt with while reassuring the cat that it was alright. By two o’clock my mother and I were starving but satisfied, the last surfaces wiped off, the last load gone in the truck. We had been an incredible team, each doing the next thing to do, seamless, easy, and we were having a good time. A friend brought us coconut milk to hydrate us and cookies to hold us over until a late lunch. We left the empty apartment, fed and patted the cat, gathered up food for a picnic dinner, rented a movie and went to a B&B where I’d reserved a room for the night. By five pm, we’d each had a hot shower and were in our sumptuously soft twin beds, talking over the amazing day. Then she read the NY Times and I napped. The deep astounding weariness of the last few weeks of packing began to recede. I slept deeply all night. When I woke up briefly, my mind was quiet and blank, there was (nearly) nothing really left to do.

I had entered the “other side” of moving. The train had reached a little country station, and I was let off in a new place, to discover what my life was like. My mother went home. I walked through my empty apartment and felt at ease. I remembered how it was when I bought it — when I had envisioned how we would live there. The rooms were empty again and ready for my new friend who was buying it. She came by holding up paint chips to the walls planning the life she’ll live in this space. I was glad to offer my feedback.

This process of moving was so intense and all involving, I am glad for our Cohousing community that we are getting on the train one at a time, to spread this out over time. This way those off us who are on the other side can help our future neighbors as they prep for selling their houses with painting parties and then moving parties. I feel so grateful for all who helped me and will soon be able to offer a hand to them.

Now, I am house-sitting for a friend before moving to a winter rental which is furnished, complete with sheets and towels. I realize this is my first week of stepping out of twenty-five years of being a householder who created home for her family. Now I feel very simple, like I’m on a meditation retreat. I have a few changes of clothes and simple food for the week. I move through my friend’s house and observe how we each gather objects that are full of meaning for ourselves and assemble a life. I have dissembled the objects of my life, and have put them away. I’m glad that I have this space and time before I create my new home at Cohousing. I’m aware that my relationship to the objects that I have saved and stored will change a great deal over this two year break.

Living without the things of my life, all there is left is me. I feel like I am simply an aware presence living a life. I am not rushing around in a house filled with tasks I have to do. I feel very mindful, choosing each next thing to do. It is a much simpler life. I’m actually doing what I’ve wanted to do. No computer in the evening. Instead, I’m reading the memoir I’ve wanted to read for months. I go to bed early, sleep deeply, ah, heaven, refilling the well of my energy. Waking up early, I discover I want to meditate, then stretch and exercise, then eat a good breakfast, all without rushing. Then walk to work. This is good, simple, moment by moment.

A Ball of Yarn — Coleen O'Connell

2010-12-09T14:07:00.000-08:00

To think that it can all start with a ball of yarn. The design, the preliminary planning, and the decisions all take time before the process can begin. The moment arrives and the chosen yarn is unraveled and the creation begins to be woven. There is anticipatory excitement in those first stitches.

The months ahead will involve painstaking attention as the connections of yarn are woven into interactions that will result in a bundle of warmth and protection. There will be frustrating days; there will be delays in the process as the knitting gets placed on the back burner; days when unraveling will have to happen in order to get back on track after a small mistake; days when the yarn breaks and has to be repaired. But certainly there will be days when growth will be apparent and celebrated. But the eye is always on the prize – the knitting together of a beautiful and functional creation. The commitment to the goal is essential to its attainment. The vision of beauty to be realized never wavers.

Breaking from the standard patterns – the ones that you see over and over again – the vision is fresh. To think out of the box is to design something that will have lasting value in a world that calls for and practices mediocrity. Distinctive. A model others will want to emulate or copy. Practical and functional. Though others who come after will want the design, there will never be a creation quite like this one. The yarns will never be able to be truly reproduced again. This creation will be unique.

And so it is with knitting together an Ecovillage. The designs are set, the pattern determined, the knitters are lining up to do the weaving. The process is about to unfold as the stunning vision of a shared dream is seeing its way to finally being realized. Breaking ground this spring will be like taking out that first ball of yarn awaiting diligent hands that will turn it into a beautiful sweater. The excitement will be palpable. Patience and diligence will be necessary as the designs are made real. The coming together of a diverse group of people, weaving together a community beautiful and unique in our little village of Belfast, Maine, will be the realization of a long held dream. Let us hope that others will want our design and pattern; that others will want to knit together such a thing of beauty.

Meanwhile, I look forward to the day we can set the needles aside, try on our creation for its perfect fit, and see the sensations of the world reflected in our labor. Let it be so.

A "From the Farm" Thanksgiving — Craig Jensen

2010-11-28T10:44:00.000-08:00

One night in August, a fox snuck into our barn and carried away many of our turkey chicks. It was an early and excessive thanksgiving for the fox family, but a major setback here at The Meeting School. New birds were ordered and the staff and students (with the help of dogs, cows, and guinea hens) stayed on alert. The new birds have done well, but we’re still expecting a smaller-than-average Thanksgiving turkey on the table.

At The Meeting School, we celebrate the fall harvest with a “from the farm” Thanksgiving. We serve our turkey as well as our roasted root vegetables and our mashed potatoes. We stuff squash and press cider, we bake pies from our apples and pears, and we invite our families and friends to sit down at the long wooden farm tables that make up our dining hall. Sharing food, and sharing the work of growing and preparing it, is an essential part of The Meeting School’s unique learning experience and there is no better display of this than Thanksgiving. Farm raised turkeys, slaughtered here and cooked here by a staff and student team, are the traditional focus of the table. I know that our current farm coordinator is thankful that the birds have sized up enough to show well, but my own food-related thanks this November are still set on our tomatoes.

Our greenhouse is a small, slant window design, built onto the south side of the boarding house that is also home to our community kitchen. When I returned to The Meeting School in August I began reclaiming this favorite space. I started new greens and began moving others inside. I’ve transplanted in leeks and herbs and flowers that will extend our season and enrich our community meals. But the highlight has been the sprawling tomato plant that continues to bud, and flower, and fruit even now in the second week of November. The greenhouse is unheated but has a very warm bank from the building behind it. When I began tying up the plant in August it was just a leggy and ambitious start that had not been moved outside. It was slow to fruit, but has really been producing some quality tomatoes. It seems very possible that we’ll have fruit ripen on the vine that we can add to a Thanksgiving salad. Incredible!

In my experience, the way we grow, cook, and share our food can really define a community. Sharing food with friends at The Meeting School helped me realize my call to farming and convinced me to live in community. I am looking forward to growing food and growing community in Belfast soon, but until then you are all invited to visit us here in southern New Hampshire.

What motivates a family to join? — Abby Gilchrist

2010-11-28T10:42:00.000-08:00

We joined Belfast Cohousing for many reasons. We have lived on a farm half an hour from Belfast for the last seven years. Over that time, we have worked on it — completely renovating, and making the old farmhouse really efficient, fixing up the barn and other outbuildings, starting gardens — basically we have made it into the farm that we always dreamed of having. But, since having our two children, we realize how often we are in Belfast and how much time our children spend in the car. We have also found that we are isolated on our farm, having to schedule times to see any of our friends who live just a few miles down the road. With just the two of us and our two young children, it has also been difficult to find the time to do any serious farming, and we have had to cut our flock of sheep way down to a much more manageable six.

The more we thought about it, Belfast Cohousing seemed like a great choice for us. Only two miles out of town (a five minute drive), it offers us a wonderful mix of community, farming, gardening, woods, nature, the ocean, and convenience! Now we can enjoy having agricultural animals and the related chores, but not be tied down by them. Sharing the work with others allows us the chance to have more freedom in our schedules.

The children will be able to run out the door to play with their friends within sight of many community members. We feel it’s important for our children to be around many other children and adults, and this interaction will be very easy in our community — the homes will be in close proximity, and all connected by walking paths throughout the community. The common house will be a wonderful gathering space with a few shared meals a week (and we will only have to cook or clean-up once in a while!). We also picture many craft projects spread out on the tables in the afternoons, spontaneous plays put on by the kids, and sitting in the living room talking with friends while children run back and forth between us and the children's playroom.

Of course, the community aspect is the main reason we have joined the project. While we can see the many benefits that there will be when we move in, our family has already experienced many of them. Support and friendships, as well as help with projects like pickling beets. And perhaps there will be a big work party at our farm this weekend to help with our move! Coleen and Elizabeth have already given us a chance to leave our children with someone they know while we have had a few dinners in town.

Another reason we decided to join the community is to minimize our eco-footprint and impact on the environment by driving less, sharing resources, and living in a home that reduces heating costs by 90%. And did we mention what a wonderful, cool town Belfast is? It has a wonderful co-op, a very active downtown library, art galleries, a variety of music gatherings, and community theater. So, we are moving. It is sad to say good-bye to the life that we had dreamed of for so long, but exciting to be moving forward toward this new dream of ours.

The Bella Luna Common House — Steve Chiasson

2010-11-28T10:39:00.000-08:00

The weekend before Thanksgiving, at the instigation of our super-motivated Boston-based contingent, a bunch of cohousers from Maine traveled south to help “Plaster Boston” with posters and brochures, tapping this significant market in an effort to uncover ten more families — TEN! — for whom Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage is the perfect fit. We know they’re out there. We just need to find each other.

The caper was well planned. We all arrived at North Station around 1:00 and sprang into action, jazzing up our standard marketing posters with dayglow pink and green stickers — “Sustainability, Community, and Affordability!” “Only ten units left!” “One BR units starting at $150,000!” “A fraction of Boston prices!” “Super energy-efficient!” All true.

Our team leaders equipped us with lists of businesses plotted on Google maps, stacks of flyers, tacks, tape and directions to Bella Luna in Jamaica Plain, where we would regroup for dinner at the end of the day. Four teams fanned out to comb four sections of the city, looking not just for places to hang posters, but also for any businesses that might allow us to put up a display or host a presentation. It was an ambitious undertaking. And I had misgivings from the start…

Let’s just say I’ve had some seriously unpleasant experiences involving asking complete strangers for favors, dealing with noisy, fast-paced environments, and getting lost in Boston. Even with Jim, Bill, Sarah and Atkins (Sarah’s service dog) by my side, I felt a slight heaviness in my gut as we headed up the street toward Boston’s North End. At a corner coffee shop near North Station, Bill and Sarah headed off on their own while Jim and I inquired inside. The folks in the shop gladly let us post our materials, supplied the name of the manager, and came over to study the flyer as we were on our way out. So far, so good. At our second stop, Jim slid into a neighborhood laundromat while I crossed the street to another coffee shop. No room for posters there, but they did have space for brochures next to the door. The manager even cleared out some old materials to make space for ours. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad.

Back outside the coffee shop, I squatted on the sidewalk and scanned the printed list Jim had previously given me for the name and address of the shop I'd just "postered." Boston Commons Coffee. Check. I looked up, but didn’t see Jim on the street, and so I assumed he’d finished postering the laundromat and had moved on to the next business on his list. OK then. I had a map. I had a cell phone. I knew how to proceed. Feeling somewhat emboldened, I decided to strike out on my own.

First I pinpointed my location on my Google map and headed off toward the next business on my list. At the next intersection, I opened the map to double-check reference points and street names. Hmmmm. The major street directly in front of me was not identified on the map. I walked a few blocks in either direction and still did not find any other streets I could identify on the map. In short, I was lost in Boston. Again! With a map!! Fighting off my upset feelings, I decided it didn’t matter. I could just walk up and down the streets in the immediate area, simply moving block by block looking for any place of business where I might leave materials.

I walked past rows of upscale restaurants, too intimidated to walk through the doors. A couple of pastry shops with lines of patrons stretching out the door were clearly too busy to even speak with me. A butcher shop? Wrong clientele. A small organic grocer looked promising, but I could find no place inside where materials might be left. Same with the gelati shop. I hung a poster in a dingy laundromat and plowed on, struggling now with quickly growing feelings of discouragement. When I found myself leaving the neighborhoods of shops and entering a sort of warehouse district, I turned to retrace my steps only to discover that I now truly had no clue which way to go. On top of that, I was getting cold. And my back, which I’d injured at work earlier in the week, was becoming seriously painful.

I hunkered down against the wind and pulled out the large Boston map Jim had given me, ”Just in case.” It might as well have been in Greek. The streets were too numerous and densely packed, and many were not identified by name. Having no idea where I was, I had no point of reference. I stared at it in dismay. I could have gotten my phone out and called Jim. I could have asked a passerby for directions. I could have done any number of things that involved rational thought, but the reality was that I was completely in the thrall of discouragement, despair and self-recrimination. Blinking back tears, the most coherent thought I could seem to muster was simply, “I’ve got to get back to North Station,” and I started walking.

Fortunately, my choice of direction was sound. Soon things started to look more familiar, and I came out upon the broad avenue that runs down toward the Zakim Bridge and North Station. Now that the worst of the crisis had passed, I felt calmer. I sat on a curbside bench and took out my map and my list of businesses for one more look. Still nothing made sense. The brief thought that I might just resume systematically canvassing the neighborhood vanished in an eyeblink when I realized that daylight was waning. No way was I going to let myself be caught out there in the dark. It was 4:00 o’clock as I rose and headed down two blocks to North Station for a 5:30 rendezvous with the members of my team. I had three businesses listed on my sheet, and felt miserable. A wimp. A total failure.

I spent the next hour and a half watching commuters and Bruins fans come and go, sometimes standing to knead the knot in my back, sometimes sitting with with my head in my hands, staring at the floor. I was in this position when Jim walked up. I was immediately comforted by his companionable compassion. It made absolutely no difference to him that I had only three names on my sheet. Nothing could have mattered less. What mattered was that we were there, together. I almost felt like crying again, this time for completely different reasons.

A short time later at the restaurant, Lindsey gave me a hug and a look that clearly said, “I care about you. ” Denise offered to swap seats so I wouldn’t have to sit apart from the group. From the far end of the table, James noticed me kneading my back and came over to apply some on-the-spot massage therapy. It was heavenly. In the midst of the hustle and bustle of a busy Boston restaurant, two dozen members of Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage sat together, sharing a meal and stories of the day. That evening, the Bella Luna restaurant in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts became our Common House. Looking at those familiar faces around the table and hearing the laughter and conversation I realized that for the rest of my life, unless I consciously choose to, I will never, ever have to be alone in this world. I love these people.

A Day at the Fair — Jeffrey Mabee

2010-11-09T13:09:00.000-08:00

Judith and I went to the Common Ground Fair on Friday this year. It was a cold, cloudy damp day, an amazing contrast to the next day which was sunny and hot. I love the cool, wet days. It reminds me of fishing in Alaska. Anyway, I love the sheepdog trials and made a beeline there while Judith wandered over to the Energy and Shelter area. It is a marvel to watch these dogs and their handlers. I wondered if we should have one at cohousing to make sure the children don’t wander off! After the show I met up with Judith, and as we strolled through the energy displays, I was delighted to find that I felt free of the need to figure out what systems we would be using in our future home. I felt grateful that so many intelligent and thoughtful decisions had already been made on our behalf and that we can look forward to being cozy, warm and energy efficient without making another decision! We will not have to cut down another tree or burn another gallon of oil if we are judicious in our use of electricity. We don’t need to decide what kind of construction we want, what roof type, what kind of windows and doors, what type of insulation etc. What freedom!

From the vast array of lunch possibilities, we chose a veggie wrap and sat down at a picnic table. A couple from Rockport, MA came along and sat with us and we immediately started a conversation about cohousing (perhaps because of my tee-shirt). They were very interested in our project. We talked them into checking out Belfast before returning home. We love Belfast and it is easy for us to be enthusiastic about it. Then another couple sat down with us. They were from Martha’s Vineyard and had been receiving our newsletter for some time. We had many things in common and I could see how well they would fit into cohousing. It was a good example of how we never know where we might bump into a stranger who will become a future neighbor. And that’s a reason to wear your t-shirt and carry BC&E cards and brochures wherever you go!

It was a good day at the fair. I went there thinking this could be the last time we need to do our booth. I left the fair thinking we would always have a presence there and that there will always be people interested in our way of life. We might even need our own tent considering all the exciting projects we will want to share with these thousands of like-minded people at the fair!

More Kudos to G•O Logic

2010-10-20T04:13:00.000-07:00

By now, most folks who are involved with our community or have been following our progress are well aware that G•O Logic (Alan Gibson and Matt O'Malia) have designed and will be building the homes in our community. The prototype house they constructed on Crocker Road in Belfast — a visit to which is always one of the most popular parts of our monthly Open House events — has been garnering much acclaim, and more and more people are sitting up and taking notice. Witness these tidbits from a recent newsletter sent around by the company:

Passive House Certification

In Maine, the standard for green design and construction has been officially raised with the completion and certification of The GO Home in Belfast, which is the first Passive House Certified Home in Maine and only the 12th Passive House in the entire United States. This smart and small 1500 square foot, three-bedroom residence packs an elegant design punch, while achieving super energy efficiency at construction costs comparable to a standard home. As a passive house, the homeowners will see a 90% reduction in their heating bill, resulting in a cool $300 dollars per year for space heating, while enjoying all the comforts of the super insulated building shell during the winter months. Alan Gibson and Matthew O’Malia will be traveling to Portland, Oregon next month to receive the Passive House Certification in person at the annual Passive House Convention, where they have also been invited to be guest panelists, as well as present their current work. For more information about Passive Houses visit: www.passivehouse.us

The GO Home’s This New House television début!

In This New House, a new magazine-style series on DIY Network, co-hosts Amy Matthews and This Old House's Kevin O'Connor bring viewers inside homes across the U.S. that feature innovative building materials, techniques and gadgets. At 8 pm on October 13th on the DIY network, The GO Home will be featured on This New House episode: Why Passive Houses Rock. Licensed contractor and host Amy Matthews visits our certified Passive House in Belfast, Maine and discuss the technology of the GO Home, the fact that there is no furnace and it’s affordability. For more information visit: www.diynetwork.com/this-new-house/why-passive-houses-rock/index.html

Unity College Residence Hall

Unity College has announced that GO Logic has been awarded the contract for the design of a one-of-a-kind residence hall on an American college campus. G•O Logic will design a Unity College residence hall to the Passive House standard. If the construction achieves the standard, it will be the first Passive House residence hall constructed on a college or university campus in the United States. In June, Unity College was awarded a grant from The Kendeda Fund to construct a “cottage style” residence based on principles of passive house design. The project entails an educational component involving Unity College students in the design, construction, and monitoring of the facility through curricular and co-curricular activities.

Small Business of the Year Award 2010

GO Logic is proud to have been awarded the Belfast Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business of the Year Award 2010. The Small Business of the Year Award recognizes the smaller business that operate in Waldo County. This award reflects something special about the business, whether it is a unique style or approach, new technology, special services, or some other criteria that distinguishes the business from others similar to it. GO Logic will receive the award at the 50th Annual Awards Dinner set for October 21 at the Point Lookout Resort. For More Information visit: www.belfastmaine.org/

Lessons From The Geese — Coleen O'Connell

2010-10-19T17:28:00.000-07:00

Today as I was sorting through the piles of papers that have been accumulating over the past years when I came across a piece by Milton Olson. It was at once a reading for this season as geese fly overhead, AND a reminder for our cohousing community as we continue to migrate toward groundbreaking.

Here is some wisdom from the geese:

Observation: As each goose flaps its wings, it creates an uplift for the birds that follow. By flying in a V formation, the whole flock adds 71 percent greater flying range than if each bird flew alone.

Lesson: People who share a common direction and sense of community can get where they are going quicker and easier because they are traveling on the thrust of one another. As Elizabeth and Coleen close on their houses, they are providing the uplift for Wendy & Hans, Denise & John, Bill & Sarah and others to get their homes ready for sale and sell them.

Observation: When a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of flying alone. It quickly moves back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front of it.

Lesson: If we have as much sense as a goose we stay in formation with those headed where we want to go. We are willing to accept their help and give our help to others. Arielle and Rob are longing for Belfast from their Chicago home. How can we secure them jobs so they can return? They do have the good sense of geese. They know where they need to be.

Observation: When the lead goose tires, it rotates back into the formation and another goose flies to the point position.

Lesson: It pays to take turns doing the hard tasks and sharing leadership. As with geese, people are interdependent on each other’s skills, capabilities, and unique arrangements of gifts, talents or resources. The Steering Committee, though committed to the end, is getting much needed help from those willing to step into leadership as “champs” of certain tasks that need doing. We are going to do this thing together!

Observation: The geese flying in formation honk to encourage those up front to keep their speed.

Lesson: We need to make sure our honking is encouraging. In groups where there is encouragement, the production is much greater. The power of encouragement (to stand by one’s heart or core of values and encourage the heart and core of others) is the quality of honking we seek. In general, BC&E is an upbeat and encouraging group. Feeling appreciated for hard work is a common sharing.

Observation: When a goose gets sick, wounded or shot down, two geese drop out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it. They stay with it until it dies or is able to fly again. Then, they launch out with another formation or catch up with the flock.

Lesson: If we have as much sense as geese, we will stand by each other in difficult times as well as when we are strong. Surely Chuck’s heart surgery this past summer engaged many as he recovered and found his form again.

We'll continue helping each other as we work toward breaking ground in the spring. The work we are all doing now is the foundation for the neighborhood we will be once we are moved in. As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. If you're of a like mind, join our flock and fly with us!

Deciding to Join — Mary-Anne Clancy

2010-10-06T16:59:00.000-07:00

In mid-July, almost a month to the day of our first Open House, I asked David how he’d rate our chances of joining Belfast Cohousing as equity members. We were driving home from our first potluck and general meeting and he took his eyes off the road and turned to me.

“70 percent”, he said.

It would be another month before we signed the paperwork and handed over our check, but that exchange on Route 9 was the first time either of us put a number on something we’d known almost from the first.

"That was fun, ” I said after the June Open House. “I really liked the people we talked to.”

“They seemed genuine, ” agreed David. “Everyone was very gracious. ”

We’d been drawn to Belfast Cohousing by the concept of a group of people dedicated to sustainable living and community farming. Who made up that community was the question. The answer began when we walked through the farmhouse door.

Jeffrey welcomed us, spending much of the next hour explaining the project and answering our many questions with humor and no reservations. Lindsey, Allison, and Sawyer took us on a tour of the land, soldiering on despite the slugs that squished between Lindsey’s feet and her flip-flops.

When it came time to visit the prototype, Abby jumped into our car, ignored the dog hair, and answered even more questions. After the presentation at the prototype, Coleen took the time to show us the architect’s drawings and explain the various housing units, even as it became evident that tour time was up. Outside, Chuck talked to us about how impressed he’d been by the process that cohousing used to make decisions. Abby and Geoff lingered in the parking lot and continued to talk to us, despite having two small children who were more than ready to go home.

The July potluck, general meeting and open house further convinced us as we met and talked to Judith, Wendy, Hans, Marion, Jim, Steve and Barbara, Elizabeth, Paul, Craig, Jon and Joline, Mike and Margie, Bill and Sarah. We began the two and a half hour ride home, exchanging stories on who we’d talked to and what they’d said.

I was struck by how a close-knit group who obviously enjoyed being with each other had taken the time to make us feel so welcome. David was surprised by how open the men he’d met had been about their concerns and the risk they were taking. Those concerns had been paramount in our discussions, but once we knew that others shared them, they began moving into the background.

The following week, we had lunch in Lubec with Geoff, Abby, Noah, Clare, Mike and Margie. We came away with the overwhelming feeling we were going to join. Reading the operating agreement and attending the clarity session were almost superfluous.

It was then that I remembered a phrase from The Waking by Theodore Roethke: “We think by feeling. What is there to know? It is the best explanation I know of how we made our decision as quickly and surely as we did. Now, when people ask me how we came to join Belfast Cohousing, I say: “Do you know Roethke?"

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke

Community Apples — Susie

2010-10-06T16:13:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite Maine fall traditions is apple picking and the subsequent apple sauce, butters, pies and crisps that get made with fresh fall apples. I usually track down a local orchard that has pick-your-own and spend an afternoon wandering through precise lines of trees to select good looking fruit. Northern Spy, Macintosh, Granny Smith... Some are better for sauce, some are better for pies, some I just like to eat right off the tree. It's one of those quintessential Maine fall activities that I remember from my childhood, and always brings a sense of rightness to the season for me.

This year, I haven't had a chance to get to the orchard I usually do. Schedules have been tight, it's a bit of a drive, and with a busy fall, I haven't quite felt like I had the time. When I get a call from my friend (and cohousing future-neighbor) Emily, pleading for people to come pick apples from trees in their backyard, it was perfect timing. "We have so many good apples, and they're just falling to the ground," she said, and asked if we wanted to come over to get some. Emily and James live only a few minutes drive away, and there's something really awesome about picking apples from a tree in a friend's yard - organic, hyper local, and of unknown (but tasty) variety, adding a bit of mystery to spice up the apple sauce.

The picking was a combination of gymnastics (James climbing up into the branches, shaking them so the fruit from the top falls onto the tarp below), education (their two year old teaching me about the "bad" apples with the rotten spots that must be chucked into the woods for the animals to eat) and just genuine fun with friends. We pick two big bags of apples for sauce and a smaller bag of the "good eating apples," and call it a job well done. Relaxing dinner and conversation ensues, and we leave for home later in the evening with a trunk of apples and bellies full of dinner.

It's exciting to think that I managed to score two free bags of apples, plus a fantastic evening with friends, all because of my coho connections. It's even more exciting to think about how we'll be growing our own fruit trees on the cohousing land, and in a few years, we'll be able to have a big community gathering of apple picking and pie, cider and sauce making.

Here's my recipe for apple butter made with a slow cooker - easy as... pie?

Cook a bunch of apples into apple sauce: - wash them, cut into quarters (leave the peel and core - this adds pectin and flavor) - fill a big pot with enough water to cover them, and then add 1T of apple cider vinegar - when they're soft, drain them, let them cool a few minutes, and then run them through a food mill until you have apple sauce - spice and sweeten to taste (I usually use honey, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, and allspice) - stir to mix well.

Cook apple sauce in slow cooker: - on high for 4 or so hours - leave lid off or significantly cracked (so moisture can escape) - stir regularly (every ten minutes) and scrape the sides down so the apple butter doesn't form into goo on the edges of the pan - check consistency by putting a small dollop on a plate, spreading it out and letting it cool. - when it's the thickness and consistency you like, turn off the slow cooker and let it cool.

This makes excellent gifts when canned in half pint jars, and can be used as cookie or cake filling, jam for toast, hot topping for vanilla ice cream or, if you're sneaky about it, eating right from the jar as a decadent alternative to apple sauce.

Stuff — Steve Chiasson

2010-09-23T13:25:00.000-07:00

“The more stuff you own, the more stuff owns you.”

This morning as I was carrying my breakfast dishes to the kitchen, I noticed a certain slant of light coming through the windows of my sunroom and found myself veering from the “things-I-need-to-do” path I’d set for myself the evening before. Conditions were perfect for taking photos of the interior spaces in our house (something I’ve been wanting to do in preparation for putting it on the market), so I decided to seize the moment and follow that path instead.

I attached the camera to my tripod and set up for the first shot — looking back towards the entryway from the sunroom — and noticed that the long counter on that wall was covered with stuff. Books, papers, office supplies, bric-a-brac. I moved all the clutter to the dining table, strategically placed a couple of African violets on the counter to give the space a little color, then snapped the picture.

Turning 180˚ to take in the rest of the sunroom, it was immediately clear I needed to move the vacuum cleaner from the middle of the room, the pieces of sheepskin (cut from an old waterbed pad) that Barbara was crafting into something else, the deflated green-and-white fuzzy Celtics beach ball that came from God-knows-where and somehow found a place in our lives, and a few other sundry pieces of flotsam and jetsam.

Next up was the corner where the dining table sits, now covered, of course, with all the stuff I’d moved from the long counter. Thinking ahead (aha!), I decided to postpone that shot, knowing I’d need to move even more stuff onto the table when I photographed the kitchen, as the counters there were dutifully obeying the “Flat Surface Law” which states (contrary to what some physicists will tell you): “Every available flat surface in any human habitation must be covered with stuff.”

I was getting the hang of it now, though. Sometimes it wasn’t necessary to actually move things from one place to another. I could just push it all into a corner and frame the shot to avoid that, or cover it up with something more visually appealing. Some things that were hugely cluttered — the corkboard next to my phone, for instance — turned out to be OK as they were, giving the place a “lived-in” kind of feel. Nothing Better Homes & Gardens would go for, mind you, but it worked for me.

In the process of going from room to room, rearranging all manner of stuff along the way, I lay my hands on a dizzying array of clothing, furniture, tableware, books, papers, pictures, laundry, exercise equipment, tools, personal care items, rotting produce, bottle caps, kids’ artwork, you-name-it. The funny thing is, it didn’t look all that bad to me when I started. It still doesn’t, really.

We’re not slovenly, by any means. We’re just busy people who have, for many years, bought into the Great American Misconception that “stuff” somehow makes your life better. Hey, sometimes it does. But more often than not, it just sort of attaches itself to you in very insidious ways and finds a place to live under your roof (or in your garage, or your barn). I have a feeling that if most of us could see all of our worldly possessions in a pile in our front yards, we’d be horrified.

On occasion the thought crosses my mind that maybe a saffron robe and a rice bowl ain’t so bad. But with cohousing in my future, I get to walk a middle path. The downsized house that Barbara and I will be moving into will force us to touch virtually every piece of stuff that has attached itself to us over the past thirty-plus years and decide what is really, truly essential. What is really, truly precious enough to be allowed to share our new living space. What we really need for ourselves, and what we can own in common with other members of the community.

It’s a new day, baby…

Here are some other interesting takes on "stuff."

George Carlin
Annie Leonard
Paul Graham

Oh, and here's a link to house photos, if you're interested…

Fear of Transformation — Danaan Parry

2010-09-23T12:09:00.000-07:00

Excerpted from The Essene Book of Days

Sometimes I feel that my life is a series of trapeze swings. I'm either hanging on to a trapeze bar swinging along or, for a few moments it my life, I'm hurtling across space in between trapeze bars.

Most of the time I spend my life hanging on for dear life to my trapeze-bar-of-the-moment. It carries me along at a certain steady rate of swing and I have the feeling that I'm in control of my life. I know most of the right questions and even some of the right answers. But once in a while as I'm merrily (or not so merrily) swinging along, I look out ahead of me into the distance, and what do I see? I see another trapeze bar swinging toward me. It's empty, and I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new trapeze bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness, coming to get me. In my heart-of-hearts I know that for me to grow, I must release my grip of this present, well-known bar to move to the new one.

Each time it happens to me, I hope (no, I pray) that I won't have to grab the new one. But in my knowing place I know that l must totally release my grasp on my old bar, and for some moment in time I must hurtle across space before I can grab onto the new bar. Each time I am filled with terror. It doesn't matter that in all my previous hurtles across the void of unknowing I have always made it. Each time I am afraid that I will miss, that I will be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless chasm between the bars. But I do it anyway. Perhaps this is the essence of what the mystics call the faith experience. No guarantee, no net, no insurance policy, but you do it anyway because somehow to keep hanging on to that old bar is no longer on the list of alternatives. And so for an eternity that can last a microsecond or a thousand lifetimes, I soar across the dark void of "the past is gone, the future is not yet here". It’s called transition. I have come to believe that is the only place that real change occurs. I mean real change, not the pseudo-change that only lasts until the next time my old buttons get punched.

I have noticed that, in our culture, this transition zone is looked upon as a “no-thing,” a no-place between places. Sure, the old trapeze-bar was real, and that new one coming towards me, I hope that's real too. But the void in between? That's just a scary, confusing disorienting “nowhere” that must be gotten through as fast and as unconsciously as possible. What a waste! I have the sneaking suspicion that the transition zone is the only real thing, and the bars are illusions we dream up to avoid the void, where the real change, the real growth occurs for us. Whether or not my hunch is true, it remains that the transition zones in our lives are incredibly rich places. They should be honored — even savored. Yes, with all the pain and fear and feelings of being out-of-control that can (but not necessarily) accompany transitions, they are still the most alive, most growth-filled, passionate, expansive moments in our lives.

And so, transformation of fear may have nothing to do with making fear go away, but rather with giving ourselves permission to "hang-out” in the transition between trapeze bars. Transforming our need to grab that new bar, any bar is allowing ourselves to dwell in the only place where change really happens. It can be terrifying. It can also be enlightening, in the true sense of the word. Hurtling through the void we just may learn how to fly.

Click here for more on Danaan Parry, Earthstewards, and the Essene Book of Days.

Stepping Off The Cliff — Elizabeth Garber

2010-09-23T11:38:00.000-07:00

The conversation I keep having goes something like this:
“I heard you’ve sold your home.”
“Yes, I’m moving to cohousing.”
“So, are the houses built?”
“Ah, no. They’ll start building first thing in the spring.”
“So how soon can you move in?”
“About two years from now.”
“So where are you going to live until then?”
“I’m figuring it out.”

My twenty year old daughter says, “Mom, this isn’t rational. Why are you leaving my beautiful house to live like some college student? Now I have no place to come home to! Where will I have Thanksgiving?”

I promise her, “Wherever I live, I’ll have a place for you.” She’s unconvinced.

Usually when people move, they are moving someplace — where they will move in, and set up home right away again. Or sometimes people my age, once their kids have left home, pack up and go off traveling or go to the Peace Corps. I’m downsizing and storing my belongings because of a vision a small group of us hold that we are creating a village where we’ll live together, have gardens, and so much more. It is this vision we’ve been developing for years that I now lean into as I sell my house and begin to pack.

At first, there is an exhilaration and excitement about the lightening up, sorting through of a lifetime of raising my two children. I finally cleaned out the medicine cabinet I’d meant to organize for years. I threw out old children’s cough medicine bottles, and organized all my herbs and homeopathic remedies in a plastic tub for taking with me. I descended through layers of history as I cleaned out the cubbies in the roll-top desk—finding, in the bottom of the drawers, my daughter’s five-year-old drawings of princesses, photos of my kids, love notes they left for me over the years. How much do I keep or toss? Someone is coming to buy the desk, the wood stove sold, my daughter’s high school desk sold. I listen to my gut. What do I keep, sell or give away? The peach couch is going to a single mom with a little girl so they can read books the way I did for years. The give-away party for my friends is in five days, the yard sale in six, the moving day in less than two weeks. I’m feeling weary and scared. I’m not exactly sure where I’ll be living this winter. I get emails and calls with generous offers of places to stay. My cohousing friend, Coleen, just put her house under contract. I’m not alone in this. We plan to be roommates, living somewhere for the next two years.

I’m dismantling the life I created to raise my children as a single mom for the last ten years. I’m getting ready to begin the next era of my life. All this sounds sensible, until sometimes I find myself as tearful and vulnerable as the day when my youngest left home three years ago. This is the end of the era of my raising my children that I’m grieving. I find a folder of my son’s art work from grade school. Do I keep it? And what about his stuffed dragon, and favorite t-shirt when he was two? I stare at the photos of their little faces beaming at me from their childhoods. Now my engineer son gives me a G-1 cellphone and teaches me how to check email. He’s all for the move, thrilled I’ll be living in such an energy efficient house in a community of like minded people. He cheers me on, while my daughter calls from her apartment in Somerville, Mass, “But why do you have to leave my beautiful house?”

At bedtime, I take out my worn Tarot deck that I’ve used for years when I’ve asked for guidance. I slide the cards, face down, through my hands, asking the question, “Where am I in my life?” Finally I pull out one card and turn it over and laugh. Of, course. I’ve chosen The Fool. A youth, smiling merrily, is stepping off a cliff. It is the ancient card for beginning a journey. I read from the book: “On an inner level, the Fool, is an image of the mysterious impulse within us to leap into the unknown. The conservative, cautious, realistic side of us watches with horror this wild, youthful spirit who, trusting in heaven, is prepared to walk over the cliff’s edge without a moment’s hesitation.” Yes, this is the beginning of the next adventure. I have always listened to the call for what is next.

In 1985, when I was thirty two I drove to Maine from California in a Honda Civic packed with all I owned, $300, and a vision: to start my practice, get married and have a family. As I sort through tapes for the yard sale, I find songs I belted out as I drove across county, the Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin “Sisters are Doing It for Themselves.” Do I keep this tape or pass it on? What do I need for the life ahead? I imagine putting this on a tape player as we mop the Common House floor before a dance. Ok, I’ll keep it.

What do I save from the last eras for this, the next adventure? My life has been a series of leaps into the unknown. Many looked foolhardy and irrational from the outside. So this leap towards cohousing is the next stepping off the cliff. As a life strategy, it’s worked amazingly well for me. I’ve been incredibly fortunate and have followed an amazing path, but it doesn’t mean it gets any more comfortable. I still wake up unsettled, but I trust in the vision this community of fine people is holding together. I trust in the foundation we are building month after month to create a life together. I’m not alone in this. We are all a community of fine fools, trusting in a vision of a life we’ll create together, stepping off the cliff.

Postscript…

Coleen and I are going to be renting a furnished beautiful house in Bayside this winter, and spend the summer in Geoff and Abby's spacious church sanctuary where we danced to rock and roll this summer. We'll have to do that again next summer!! What's kind of wild is that for years I've had thoughts of cool things I'd like to do someday: live in a church and spend a winter in Bayside. So now is the time to do both! After I described the cozy house in Bayside, my daughter can't wait to come for Thanksgiving!

Steering The Process — Coleen O'Connell

2010-09-08T16:12:00.000-07:00

Boats of various sizes, colors and design bob on Belfast Harbor in the late afternoon sun as five people pile into a little dinghy to row out to a sailboat moored near the landing. It is our weekly Steering Committee meeting. Sanna McKim, our Project Manager, has invited us to meet on her sailboat Tigger as a change of scenery from our headquarters on Edgecomb Road. Geoff Gilchrist, Wendy Watson, Denise Pendleton and myself have been working together weekly to literally “steer” our cohousing project forward. We haggle through issues of competing topics, delve into questions about the project that have arisen since our last meeting only a week ago, and prioritize the next steps to bring to our Equity members – those households who have committed their money and time to birth our intentional neighborhood. Certainly I had no idea when I joined this project that I was to become a developer. It never occurred to me as a child when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up that “developer” was even an aspiration or an option. Yet that is what I/we have all become in this project. We have bought land, designed homes and a Common House, and now we need to sell them in order to break ground.

The good news of today, Sanna reports, is that we received the final approval from the state Department of Environmental Protection that our project is environmentally sound. We have also cleared the old easement that was attached to our land, which the town needed that before granting final approval. Check. Check. Two more things off the list of “things that need to happen” to make this ecovillage a reality. So many little details tied to each other, so many ways to think about each piece of information, so many directions to go. We haggle about which one will follow next, questioning each other as to why that should be priority now over some other important aspect. Five good minds listening and questioning, and ultimately trusting that we are making good choices for all the other members who are not present.

It is a huge responsibility, but what I know to be true from my past experience of working closely with a group of people to make a dream come true is that we are building our community in the process. We are building relationships that will last us the rest of our lives. We are binding ourselves to each other in ways that are unseen on the surface but with each obstacle we tackle, each conflict resolved, each joy celebrated, the underlying web of interdependence is woven tighter and tighter. The juice, the chips and the dark chocolate almonds are gone. The sun has gone down behind the trees and the harbor loon starts calling. A few boats come in from the day. Today’s work is finished. The accomplishments are many. We look forward to the launching of our project come spring.

Six Wooden Objects — Sawyer Stone

2010-08-26T16:43:00.000-07:00

Looking around my room, I count six wooden objects I made — and all before high school. The skills and know-how I used to make them seem distant to me now and I’m hungry to (re)learn how to do more with my hands. Maybe those skill and knowledge sets are simply dormant and could be woken and coaxed out of their groggy state. Five of the wooden objects in my room I made in elementary school shop class and the sixth — a three-cubby shelf — I made in the small disorganized shop in my family’s basement to go in the treehouse my dad and I took almost seven years to build. When my parents recently moved out of my childhood home, about twenty years after I originally drew rough sketches for the treehouse on a brown paper napkin, I recovered the shelf and it now sits simply and proudly beside my bed.

It’s been a long time since I sketched out that vision for my childhood treehouse, or any other vision, but recently I had an idea to make a small wooden extension for the very limited countertop next to our stove. It would fold down, against the side of the counter when not in use, and would fold up and lock in place to rest that bowl or plate for which there never seems to be a spot. It seems simple enough, and certainly less of an undertaking that an entire treehouse, but there’s a certain amount of learning-as-I go that will need to happen. Walking home from work recently, I came across an abandoned bed frame, the headboard for which seemed like a good piece of wood for my counter extension. I hoisted it up on my shoulder and carried it the rest of the way home. Now I just need a saw and some hardware.

One of the gear shifters on my bicycle hasn’t been working properly for months, but I’ve been ignoring it until recently, when twice I’ve flipped my bike upside down in the grass behind my house, pliers and hex wrench out, hands soon greasy, determined to figure out how the bike works, and make it work more smoothly. I know I could take it to a bike shop, ask a friend more experienced with bike maintenance, or look it up in a book or online, but there’s a certain learning and satisfaction that comes from tinkering and figuring it out for myself.

The bathroom sink in the apartment I moved into two and half months ago has been slow to drain since we moved in. Early on, I’d reluctantly poured some “natural” drain de-clogger down it, in a passive attempt to resolve the problem, with no luck. Why hadn’t I just gotten on my hands and knees in the first place? It wasn’t until last week I decided to take matters, and the drainpipe, into my own hands. After pulling the various items out of the cupboard beneath the sink, exposing the pipe, I kneeled amongst the dislocated toilet paper and all-purpose cleaner. Reaching in, I removed a willing section of drainpipe and out came a long blob of hair and gunk – yuck! But that is what I was looking for and was glad I found because now our sink actually drains instead of backing up like it had a plug in it. So satisfying. So simple.

Looking back on my elementary and middle school experiences, two aspects that have long stood out for me, and that are some of my most identifiable valued learning experiences, are shop class and work program. At the time, I may not have extolled the virtues of shop class, or work program — taking out trash, washing dishes, or vacuuming the hallways — but looking back on it, I wouldn’t have wanted to miss all of that, and I worry that shop class and work program may have been eliminated from that and many other schools, depriving current and future students of the enriching experiences that hands-on work offers. They wouldn’t even know what they’re missing.

Despite having had shop class and other manual leaning experiences, for which I am grateful, when it comes to making or fixing certain things, I have often felt disempowered or not manually competent, to borrow a term from Matthew Crawford’s book Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, which I recently started reading. In general, I feel manual skills were undervalued in my upbringing, and in society at large as well. While I don’t support the dichotomy often presented between knowledge work and manual work, I was being better prepared for the former, not the latter. And while I highly value (the intertwined) intellectual and manual work, it is the latter for which I often feel less competent than I’d like to be, and I am eager to learn more hands-on skills such as woodworking, pottery, bookbinding, and farming. And what better place to do that than in community — in a community of people with all sorts of skills and knowledge and experience, eager to share and grow with one another.

All Hail The Beet Queens

2010-08-26T15:30:00.000-07:00

Three of the Beet Queens in Abby's kitchen.

What are those women doing leaning over boiling cauldrons, ladling steaming spicy-sweet vinegar into rows of glass jars and why are their hands stained red? Pickling beets, of course!

For years now, when we've visioned our life after we move into cohousing, near to the top of the list of what we've wanted to do is canning food together. But we don't have to wait to move to cohousing to can, we can start right now! Abby put out the word that she had a lot of beets and invited us to come can. Little did we know she had planted 150 feet of beets — bushels of enormous tasty beets!

We got our systems down quickly: boiling, peeling, slicing, loading jars, processing in the canner and then cooling until the lids ping. We were telling stories and laughing, kids and dogs were running in for food and then off again to play and swim in the pond. We brainstormed about a summer kitchen for canning at the Common House and had a taste of what it will be like, before we know it!

When we were done, we were off to weed Chuck's garden, eat his lovely snacks, swim, and go home tired and happy from being together all day. The first of many work parties.

The end result was 14 pints and 34 quarts of pickled beets ready to open on winter nights when we remember the generosity of a full summer day in Maine!

I Can't Wait to Move to Maine — Allison Piper

2010-08-26T15:14:00.000-07:00

My family has had connections to Maine for many generations. My great, great, great grandparents purchased a large plot of land in Franklin, Maine along the shore of Taunton Bay, about an hour north of Belfast. I would come to Franklin every summer as a child and it holds a very dear place in my heart. Whether it was the lobster "races" across the farm house floor, watching the harbor seals watch us off the bow of my great uncle's boat, or the arts and crafts I would engage in on cool, foggy, rainy August days, visiting up Franklin was a highlight of my youth.

I grew up in the rural suburbs of New York. While a very beautiful place, it felt terribly stifling to the teenage me — just not the right fit. When searching for colleges, I visited NYU, but even though I had been sneaking down on the Greyhound to visit for a few years, New York was just too much. Too dirty, too busy, too scary. The second round of searches took me to Boston. I've been there now for eighteen years.

My mother and step dad moved to Franklin while I was in college. She has been sending me newspaper clippings on Maine's forays into social libertarianism and on how badly Maine needs dentists since I started applying to dental schools six years ago. If you'd asked the me back then whether I'd ever move to Maine, I would probably have looked alarmed at even the question. But over the last two years, as we had to decide whether we really wanted to raise our future kids in the city, as we had to deal with the litter and the crowding and the thump-thump bass beats of car radios outside our window, and the absolutely astronomical cost of real estate, my firm resolve to remain a Bostonian the rest of my days started wilting. When Lindsey's family decided to make the greater Belfast area their home, it was all over.

Now I'm finishing the last days of my five week dental student internship at the Penobscot Indian Health Services outside of Old Town and I am happy to say that I'm in love — with dentistry and with Maine. There were a few key moments that captured my heart. One was stepping out of my car one morning at the parking lot outside of work early on during my internship. The rich, blessed scent of pine trees greeted me and caused such a joy in my heart I can't even describe. Then, every day during lunch, I would walk a couple of blocks down to a beautiful reservation park overlooking the Penobscot River. What a simultaneously calming and rejuvenating way to spend my hour between the morning and afternoon sessions! I am slightly pained now at the idea of this coming September when I return for my last year of dental school where I will be spending my lunch hour in the bustling, mostly treeless "Combat Zone" of Boston.

Then, last but not least, there were my visits to Belfast. The drive from Bangor alone, down Routes 9 and 7 across the rolling, farm-dotted hills and mountains (including Piper Mountain west of Newburgh) made me happy enough to go. But my mid-coast destinations sealed the deal, whether it was the ocean view from Belfast City Park, the panorama laid out before me after hiking up Mt. Battie in the Camden Hills with the promise of many more adventures to come before me, or the equity meeting where we set our April ground breaking drive and all of the cooperation and good communication that never ceases to impress me at our meetings. Oh, and of course there was the wonderful, spontaneous cookout at Sanna and Alan's, foretelling Common House meals to come and visits to see my beautiful three month old nephew, Yukon, right next door in Morrill.

So as I'm packing my bags to head back to Jamaica Plain, I'm doing my best to remember that I can enjoy each and every day between now and then in that great city. We have many wonderful friends there that we'll sorely miss and I'll never again be surrounded by the kind of daily, enriching academic melting pot that is Tufts Dental School. But I can still hold in my heart the little joys and promises that I now truly know await me in Belfast. I will be there before I know it.

Adventures in Ecuador — James Pierson

2010-08-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

I went to high school at Vermont Academy, where they ran a study abroad program to Ecuador during the summer. After studying Spanish for seven years (surrounded by people who speak English as their primary language) I decided this trip would be great to help me to really apply what I had learned. After graduating from V. A. in the summer of 2002, I headed out.

We flew into Quito, the capital of Ecuador, and spent a day roaming around checking out the city. It’s a fairly modern place that I didn’t find it too interesting. I did have an interesting conversation with two guys, though, and I’m pretty sure one of them made fun of me in Portuguese. The next morning we were off to Cuenca, which would be our home base for the next month.

In Cuenca we all split up to stay with our own host families. When you start living in someone’s house and you can’t really speak their language very well you start learning pretty quickly, though I must say the first week or so was quite confusing. Yes, I said I took seven years of Spanish, but no one said I was very good at conversing! Speaking was not the only way of communicating, though. People were very patient with me and helped me to understand things.

I was amazed at how close the people were in this culture. Every time my host family took me somewhere, even if it was people they just met, there were hugs and kisses galore. Awesome! I couldn’t figure out what happened with our culture. How could these people sit and talk to each other with their faces only inches from each other? If I talked to someone like that in the states, they would think I was coming on to them (or just weird) and probably not want to have anything to do with me. These people really have a strong cultural love for each other.

Other than running around with my host family meeting people, I also went to school to improve my Spanish. Its funny how much more I actually wanted to pay attention now that I realized how much more I had to learn. We also had this awesome pottery teacher who always had some kind of wonderful tea brewing for us in this extravagant glass tea pot. I loved working with her! She was always so fun and laughing about everything.

After the first week in Cuenca we went to Cajas. This huge national park is almost impossible to describe. You are hiking along mountainous terrain, all the while looking down into a huge open landscape. The vegetation was yucca, agave, and similar succulents, one with razor sharp teeth all along the leaves, as well as razor sharp grasses that you had to very carefully part to walk through. We had packhorses and guides taking us through this beautiful place. At about 9,000 – 10,000 feet it was quite a workout. Lots of little steps make it easier though. I tried chewing on coca leaves, which I was told those who did hard labor often chewed to help cure hunger pangs. It was interesting to say the least.

Then we were back to Cuenca for a few days, back in school, and then back out to the Amazon to stay with the Shuar. The Shuar are an amazing tribe in the Amazon. I was constantly planning how I could stay there forever. If I just disappeared with this beautiful girl into the rainforest, what could they do? They would never find me! OK, so obviously I came back—but not before being completely falling in love with the tribe and the rainforest. We visited a family in their home. This is quite an experience.

You enter the rectangular home from the front, and inside sits the host. The man of the house sits on a stool and greets people as they come in. The spot where he sits marks a boundary line through the house. You don’t go past him, period. The woman of the house comes out from behind a wall just a few feet behind the man, carrying a large (and I do mean large) pot of Chicha. What is Chicha you ask? A fine traditional beverage made by the woman of the house. She masticates Yucca, spits it into a container and lets it ferment. It kind of tastes like hard apple cider, with a little… well we’ll just call it added texture. All guests in the home must partake in drinking. And not just a sip, either! The woman walks around offering the bowl, inviting all the sitting guests to enjoy as much as they wish. Then she goes back to the pot, refills the bowl and passes it to the next person until the pot is empty. Or (as in our case) until she goes into the back room and refills the pot two more times. Yum. Did I mention that when you are handed the bowl, if you are a man, you do not make eye contact? Our instructor said, “you can stare at her breasts for all I care—just don’t make eye contact. ” When a man and woman make eye contact, it’s worse than flirting; it’s like asking them to go deep into the rainforest and… well you get the idea. So after lots of drinking, the man pulled out what looked like a two stringed violin and started playing. It was awesome to sit and drink and listen to his music.

Back in Cuenca we decided to have a fine meal of cui—a delicacy to the Ecuadorian people. Cui is roasted guinea pig—a wonderful food if you don’t mind eating what your friend’s daughter might be keeping as a pet! Following that up with a traditional large shot of corn alcohol makes it a little better, but not much.

After spending a little more time at school in Cuenca, we spent four days traveling around the Galapagos Islands. Quite possibly the coolest turtles-lizards-and-birds experience I have had. Walking around on the islands you constantly have to be careful not to trip over boobies—blue-footed boobies, that is. They are amazing birds that fly high above the water and then plunge like high dive artists into the water to get fish. Ironically, it’s this diving that also kills them. Eventually they go blind from hitting the water so hard with their eyes open, and no longer can get food. Frigate birds—with large red neck bladders that they inflate to attract females—were everywhere. Albatross were diving off cliffs to take off and clumsily crashing back to the ground, as their wingspans are so large that they can’t really land gracefully. The Galapagos turtles were so huge that I’m pretty sure that if I curled up into a ball I could fit into their shell. Walking the beach with sea lions was intimidating and awesome at the same time. None of the animals on the islands care at all that there is a human presence, as they have been protected for so long that they have no reason to fear. You can walk right up to a sea lion and talk to it, though I wouldn’t recommend doing that to a large male; one briefly charged me, but apparently decided I wasn’t worth his while as he quickly stopped. Guess I just got a little to close.

That trip changed my view of the world and life itself. I realized a love that can exist between people as a whole, and how truly amazing our earth is. It was then that I realized how important it was to maintain healthy relationships with people and with our earth.

The Sweetest Open House Ever — Elizabeth Garber

2010-08-11T13:45:00.000-07:00

You might think that it was the golden light of August, the singing hum of cicadas in the background, the rumbling of hand-crank ice cream makers grinding ice around blueberry ice cream, or the bowls of coconut milk ginger or peach sorbet, or the circle of musicians under the shade trees in the front yard that made this the sweetest open house ever, but I don't think it was all of that fine sweetness. It was what happened for all of us when Chuck visited on his way home from the hospital, five days after open heart surgery.

The children had made him a bright, colorful get-well banner. He sat in a chair under the ancient locust tree, standing up to hug each of us, and the musicians circled around and played for him. Tears of tenderness and love welled up for all of us, over and over. We suddenly realized how deeply we are growing to care for each other, how a web of caring and love is connecting us all. How we couldn't stop gazing at Chuck with love and fondness and awe, that one who had stepped so close to the edge of life and death had returned to us, and it meant so much. We looked around at everyone and realized how much we cared about each other at such a deep level, and that this is at the heart of all we are doing.

Thank you all for the gifts you brought to the day — the ice cream you made, the mowing and weed-whacking, the generosity of all the conversations you offered the abundance of guests, the tours on the land and the prototype house, the playing with children, and the giant bubbles that filled the afternoon with luminous joy.

It was a blessed day.

"Between Sky and Sea" Opens at Beaver Street August 13

2010-08-04T14:13:00.000-07:00

A selection of intimate artworks by renowned painter Angelo Ippolito marks the second exhibition in BC&E's Beaver Street gallery, located in the alley opposite the Co-op in downtown Belfast. On view will be a selection of oils, watercolors, and collages, many created in response to seaside locales, such as the Adriatic and Aegean. All convey the artist's signature concern for capturing the vibrant air where the sky meets sea or land. The opening reception is Friday August 13th from 5-8 pm; the gallery will also be open Friday evenings throughout the summer, as well as by appointment. Apart from sharing the visions of diverse artists, exhibitions in this windowed corner office offer interested visitors a chance to meet cohousers and learn more about their vision of creative sustainability.

"Between Sky and Sea: Intimate works by Angelo Ippolito" celebrates the creativity of BC&E's extended family by showcasing work by the father of member Jon Ippolito. Best known for his prominent role in the New York School of abstract expressionism, Angelo Ippolito (1922-2001) produced a body of paintings and works on paper renowned for their lyrical color, light, and compositional rigor. Having immigrated from Italy at age nine, Ippolito helped usher in the downtown New York arts scene by co-founding the influential Tanager gallery in 1952, whose members included celebrated Maine painters Alex Katz and Lois Dodd. His paintings gained acclaim for their "brilliant color" (Fairfield Porter) and "joyous lyricism" (Dore Ashton). Long featured in the collections of New York's MoMA, Whitney, and Metropolitan museums, Ippolito's work has recently been seen in Maine via acquisitions by Colby College (2010) and the University of Maine (2008), whose president Robert Kennedy described Ippolito as "an accomplished artist of the first order."

The exhibition is curated by Jon Ippolito with help from Jeffrey Mabee and Elizabeth Garber, all BC&E members. You can find more information on the artist at AngeloIppolito.com; for more on the show, please email info@mainecohousing.org or call 207-338-9200.

Making The Leap — Elizabeth Garber

2010-07-29T12:56:00.000-07:00

All of us in cohousing knew the day would come when we’d start doing what we’ve been talking about for years now, but I had no idea that it was going to start changing this soon! Last weekend, at our last Equity members meeting, we were told it was time to put our houses on the market to make sure we had funds ready for building. We might be breaking ground this fall, we might be building in phases, and perhaps as early as next spring some folks could start moving in. We are getting so close, so much is getting pulled together, it’s almost time for everything to begin. I gulped. But was it time to put my beautiful nest on the market?

I’ve had a vision for the last few years that I’d effortlessly sell my condo apartment in an 1824 house in Belfast and move into cohousing when our houses were ready. Was it time now to put it up for sale? I felt sobered. I know over the years several people had said they loved my place, but would anyone want to buy it now? What if I couldn’t sell it in time for building? But then what would I do if I did sell it? I walked around the colorful rooms I love and went to sleep wondering, "How will I do this transition?" The next afternoon when I got home from our cohousing Open House, there was a message on my phone saying that my neighbor wanted to talk to me about real estate. I invited her over, and the conversation ended up with her saying she wanted to buy my apartment. I answered with a curiously calm certainty. “OK. We can do this.”

In that moment, everything changed in how I looked at my life and belongings. After she left I walked around my house, looking at everything with new eyes. I saw the table piled with books and notebooks, my rugs, and book shelves filled with poetry and art books. I looked through the lens of what do I love and what is essential that will fit in my future, cozy, snug, sustainable and minimal 500 square foot one bedroom triplex that will look like a little row of English garden houses. I looked at the peach couch, oak roll top desk, wicker chair. I felt a wave of ease and clarity, I can let go. I started making a list of what I want to sell. I decided for my birthday this fall I’ll have a give away party for my friends to choose their favorite treasures.

But what about the art work I’ve gathered for years? Paintings, etchings, sculpture, drawings? All with their own special meanings, some gifts, some bought over time or traded for? I walked up to each one, seeing the black and white photograph, the still life painting with my new eyes. Again and again, a quiet voice said, I can let go of this. I can pass this on to someone else to enjoy. Some will go to decorate the Common House, some to give as gifts, some for my house. And by the end of the evening, I’d taken fifteen pieces off the wall and decided to offer them for sale at our new Cohousing Gallery to raise money for our future Common house. (At the Beaver Street office in downtown Belfast on Friday nights from 5-7 pm.)

The life I’ve been getting ready for has already begun. My life's priorities are already changing to discover a different ways for living in community. This is a new way for us to express generosity and to let go of attachments. We are stepping into unknown territory to discover another way to live. It’s time to start packing!

Cohousing Art Show Opens in Downtown Belfast

2010-07-25T13:06:00.000-07:00

Art, summer, and Belfast are three words that often appear in the same sentence—and Belfast Cohousing members are no strangers to the fine arts. Friday, July 23rd saw the opening of the first art exhibition at the Beaver Street office of Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage.

Organized by Elizabeth Garber with help from Jon Ippolito, the show includes artworks from the personal collections of BC&E members. The works on display are affordably priced, with proceeds going to help the cohousing project. The show is also a way for interested visitors to meet cohousers and learn more about their vision of creative sustainability.

This initial show includes paintings, drawings, and sculpture by Maine artists such as Robert Shetterly and Tom Prescott. A future exhibition, planned to open in mid-August, will feature works by renowned abstract expressionist Angelo Ippolito, the father of BC&E's member Jon Ippolito, who also happened to be a curator at the Guggenheim for fifteen years.

The Beaver Street office is located in a small but beautiful corner of downtown Belfast, in the side street directly opposite the Belfast Co-op.

The show will be open on consecutive Fridays through the summer from 5-7 pm, or by appointment by calling (207) 338-9936 or 338-9200.

For more information, you can also contact us via info@mainecohousing.org.

Above, top to bottom: Elizabeth Garber in the gallery space; Rosencrantz by Tom Prescott; the BC&E Beaver Street office.

Neighborhood Now — Denise Pendleton

2010-07-14T16:32:00.000-07:00

I give thanks, almost daily, for the rich web of support and relationships my family enjoys, with increasing depth, through our participation in Belfast Cohousing since spring 2008. I often reflect on what drew us to our first open house, to our next steps of exploring members, and I think, “it was the energy efficient home, ” or “it was the gardening and raising animals together” or “it was the neighborhood life for my children. ” I didn’t really expect, when we wrote our equity check, that any of it would happen before ground-breaking. But I’ve been happily surprised to discover that the “neighborhood for the kids” has transformed into vibrant community as our paths crisscross with those of other members and our lives become increasingly a shared journey in the past few years.

Last Sunday, for example, our thirteen-year-old daughter participated as one of five girls in a “Coming of Age” ceremony at the Belfast UU Church. Three of the five are part of our coho community, and we joined this church a little over a year ago thanks to the urging of Joanne, another Coho mom. On our first church visit, we discovered that Audrey needed a mentor, and without hesitation, who stepped forward to nominate herself for this task but Coho friend, Coleen. This has been a memorable year for our daughter and her new friends and her growing understanding of the importance of community, as the credo she read today to the congregation expressed, “I believe in community. Communities are there to help you with hard times, to enjoy happy moments with you. I belong to the cohousing community and that community is very friendly and nice and has kind of become my other family. ”

Perhaps she was thinking back, as I often do, to our sailing adventure of last summer, with a flotilla of several member boats. It wouldn’t have happened if a few of our coho friends hadn’t initiated, instigated and put in some hours of hard work to make it happen. I still marvel at those magical days we had, setting off by moonlight for Holbrook Island and in the several anchorages that followed, sharing resources from cabin space to rowboats, passing platters of food over the bow and stern lines as we moored together, trusting in one boat’s anchor to hold us in the sparkling waters of a tree-lined island cove.

This past winter, we found ourselves in similar configuration on skis, pooling our resources to make it possible for us to enjoy a few long weekends in a slope side condo, carpooling, sharing meals and good conversation. Some of the kids are old enough to take off on their independently and I’m lucky to get one run in with Luke or Audrey. Meanwhile, among us adults, we’ve found that while some of us ski fast and some of us do not, in subzero temps or warm sunshine, we all have double delight because the kids are happy and we parents are having fun too.

I can’t count the number of sleepovers our son Luke has had with his friends Finn and Soren or how often we’ve had them at our home—enough that we now have toothbrushes with their names on them. We’ve been delightfully surprised on several occasions to find ourselves childless for an entire 24-hour spell as our children happily go to stay with another family, and we are able to celebrate anniversaries or birthdays we’d given up on. Meanwhile, lost and found clothes pass between our homes along with loaned books and, well, chicken tractors and a trailer that’s been so popular among coho-ers that we’ve thought of putting a sign-up sheet on Basecamp. We’re thrilled it’s not just sitting in our yard for our occasional use, but had it borrowed to transport lawn mowers for Coleen’s work party, hay for Sanna’s horses, and manure for the farmhouse children’s garden.

Last spring, we finally got the chickens we thought we’d get 3 years earlier when we moved to this old farmhouse. We got the chickens because Sanna, in her usual enthusiasm for shared life, offered my daughter a hen and a few baby chicks, and before he knew it, my husband John was building his first chicken coop. It wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t been made so effortless, and now we’ve got so many eggs we have the joy of giving them to relatives who bring us, in exchange, cookies, freezer pie crust, mended clothes and herbal tinctures. We love looking out the window at our free range chickens bringing life to all corners of our yard, and we love that kids are learning more about raising their own food. (While not part of my initial motivation for joining Belfast Cohousing, it’s more become more important to me as I contemplate with increasing frequency what life might be like for my children in 30 years and hope they’ll know how to thrive absent a petroleum-based economy.)

Two nights ago, John and I both had to be away for work. I patched together rides to Tae Kwon Do at the local Y for our 10-year-old son Luke, while Audrey’s 14-year-old coho friend Mika offered to “babysit” until I got home at 8:30. When I walked in the door, Mika’s dad Paul was making himself at home playing a lovely tune on the piano and the kids were playing happily together thanks to Mika’s fun-loving presence. I realized I had a moment to walk through my gardens and take a breath in the late summer light. When I came back in, I told Paul that Luke wanted him to be his Coming of Age UU mentor for next year. I didn’t include Luke in the conversation because I know Paul is a single dad and might say I don’t have the extra time, but he unhesitatingly responded with a big smile and a “yes, I’d be thrilled. ” And, “Oh, ” Paul said, “I just happened to have brought a gift for Luke tonight. ” He pulled out of his pocket a battery-powered fork that twirls spaghetti for eating the Italian way, explaining that it used to be Mika’s. Somehow, I think, these two guys are meant to come together across generations into deeper relationship, as the many paths in family life overlap, as the threads of community life are interwoven.

Our connection as cohousing neighbors deepens every other community interaction, be it through the UU church or baseball or the horse barn. I know that we will more than watch each other’s kids growing up, but actually care, in every sense of the word, for each other’s kids and families. And I can head out on Monday, as a steering committee member for a week long National Cohousing conference, knowing that Coleen is going the extra mile to help out, staying at the house to help John, whose work often takes him on the road, with the kids and meals and chicken care. And she promises me I won’t regret having gone, I’ll come home to family and home not in chaos, and I believe her.

Small Blue Portions — Steve Chiasson

2010-07-14T14:09:00.000-07:00

This piece was originally written in 1994…

Of all the fruits I’ve known and loved, blueberries are the only ones I’ve reached a real understanding with. Purists will maintain that the smaller, low-bush wild berries are the only legitimate blueberry, and I’ll confess that I do prefer them in cooking; their form suits that function perfectly. But for eating out of hand, my taste buds give them no clear advantage. For compactness, convenient picking and overall ease of maintenance, high bush berries get my vote. And for a few weeks each summer my breakfasts consist of roughly equal amounts of cereal and blueberries, with just enough milk to moisten.

Because it was rainy yesterday morning and I did not pick, the bushes in my yard are laden with ripe berries. Surveying them from the back porch, I imagine I am standing on the moon looking earthward and the heavens are strewn with small blue globes, immeasurably precious. Each is complete unto itself, birthed by the universe and suspended in space by the slenderest, greenest of threads. They are fat and ripe and ready to fall. Overhead, the sky reflects that blue as if some watercolorist has flung dabs of cobalt into the air and spread a wash from horizon to horizon. I walk into the cool morning air. Deep, dewy grass licks my bare feet. A branch so heavy with berries it brushes the ground beckons me. I begin picking there.

This picking is not the indiscriminate feeding frenzy of the blueberry rake. This picking is berry-by-berry, each one turned between thumb and forefinger, inspected, and consciously chosen or left to ripen further. I circle the bush with slow deliberation, pausing now and again to admire and cherish the early August morning swelling to life around me. The quiet rustlings of the woods and the low murmur of the stream down the hill… the sparkling elegance and symmetry of spider nets newly slung. A pair of large, perfectly ripe berries anchors one such net. With a nod of acknowledgement to the demure and inconspicuous architect (who resembles nothing so much as an unripe berry) I pass them over.

Unseen and unheard, our little orange cat suddenly appears at my elbow, mewling. I scratch behind her ears. She purrs and rubs her arched back against the lowering blueberry branches, then scampers away at the approach of the dog. My small plastic container soon overflows. I rise and turn toward the house.

In the living room my son sits in the recliner, wrapped in the fur-soft blue-and-white blanket we keep draped on the back of the sofa for just such mornings as this. A shaft of dappled sunlight carves the space between us, slanting across his face. He smiles.

“Isn’t it cold out there?”

“A little,” I reply, rubbing my damp feet on the carpet to warm and dry them. I return his smile and tousle his hair, then follow the scent of fresh coffee into the kitchen.

I half-fill my bowl with cereal and pour berries in. They roll and tumble, pattering, and I am well satisfied to my take pleasure in small blue portions.

A Mission for Community Meals — Susie

2010-07-14T12:29:00.000-07:00

Food is social glue – how many times have you been at a party, and everyone ends up in the kitchen? How many new friendships have formed over a cup of coffee and a muffin, or at a dinner thrown by friends? How many families have been welcomed to the neighborhood, comforted in times of stress, or surprised at the holidays with a hot dish or plate of cookies? Sharing food is a way to bond with our friends and loved ones, and to meet and interact with a wide variety of people. It can be a sacred experience, it can be fun and engaging, connecting us to each other and to the land we live on and the cycle of life we're a part of. In short, sharing food is more than just eating together – it represents part of our commitment to our mission as Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage, and our commitment to living happily in connection with each other and the land.

As a community, we hope to eat together frequently. Our Common House, both the eating and cooking spaces, is designed with this in mind. We won't always eat together (our own home kitchens are going to be top-notch, too), but having frequent community meals offered at our Common House means it'll be easy – parents can depend on a few nights a week they won't have to cook, folks feeling lonely can come up and socialize, people wanting to try something new can always check out what's on the menu.

Recently, we participated in a visioning exercise to discuss some of our values around food and brainstorm some fun ideas about what community meals at BC&E could look like. Ultimately, we'll develop a mission statement to help shape how it all comes together.

Our discussion began with a little appetizer – uh, I mean opening exercise. We broke into groups, with folks of all ages and dietary persuasions to develop a dream menu for a community meal. Some samples:

Meal 1:
Big green salad from our own garden and with other local seasonal ingredients
Hearty lentil soup, with carrots, potatoes, etc., also from our back garden
Hearty multi-grain bread, baked in our own kitchen
Big bowl of locally grown fruit

Meal 2:
Seasonal spinach & arugula salad with homemade vinaigrette
Quesadilla with roasted peppers, refried beans, cheese (optional) with salsa and sour cream on the side
Homemade coconut milk ice cream

Meal 3:
Egg frittata with greens
Mixed green salad
Wendy's bulgur, tomato, feta, cuke and garbanzo salad
Homemade bread
Organic fruit salad

... you get the idea. By the time just the opener was done, I was hungry (which is saying a lot, since I'd just scarfed down a tasty grilled cheese from the Co-op). As we moved on to the larger discussion, several key themes came out: Inclusivity, Simplicity, Sustainability, Quality & Fun. These themes seem like such a simple vision, an answer to both the WHY and the HOW of eating together, but there is a depth and richness behind each of those statements that will be discussed, teased out, celebrated as we move forward with our project.

While it's just the beginning of the discussion, and there is much to be figured out, it is clear how gifted (and enthusiastic!) our group is when it comes to food. I doubt we'll ever have a shortage of cooks or fantastic menu ideas, and I'm really looking forward to cooking and eating with my neighbors.

Planting a children's garden — Jon Ippolito

2010-06-25T12:23:00.000-07:00

Permaculture has taken root at Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage. At the June 13th Open House, cohousing adults and kids worked with exploring member Barbara Crowley and equity member and UMaine professor Joline Blais to build a "Three Sisters" garden on the land adjacent to the site.

Permaculture is a design philosophy based on a do-it-yourself, sustainable approach to agriculture, architecture, and other energy and ecological systems. Permaculture borrows many principles from Native practices, and is meant to work with, instead of against, nature. Its core ethics are a perfect 'soil' for ecological community living: care for the earth, care for the people, and fair share (living simply and sharing surplus.)

In keeping with these principles, the children's garden was created without any tilling of existing soil (care for the soil web organisms). The gardeners set down recycled cardboard over manure from Sanna McKim's horse barn (trucked over and pitchforked by cohousing members Denise Pendleton, Sanna, Jon Ippolito and Jeffrey Mabee) to nourish the soil and suppress weeds, a technique known as sheet mulching. On top of the wet manure and cardboard laid down by Elizabeth Garber and the amendments donated by Mitch Henrion, community gardeners pitchforked household compost from Joline's rental house in Belfast this past winter into evenly spaced cones about a foot high. On these they placed a layer of mature compost, and planted corn and squash seedlings from Joline's greenhouse surrounded by bean and nasturtium seeds.

The Three Sisters is an indigenous technique Joline learned from her research at LongGreenHouse, a collaboration with Wabanaki elders based on exploring the intersection of Permaculture and Native culture. This plant "guild" combines three plants that most people think of as separate crops but that support each other symbiotically.

The corn provides stalks for the beans to climb; the prickly leaves of the squash fend off hungry critters and provide a natural mulch to keep roots from drying out in hot summer sun; and the beans fix nitrogen in the soil for the other two. Nasturtiums—which produce spicy edible leaves, and yummy colorful flowers—grow in the spaces between adding mulch, and producing biomass for increased long term fertility of the soil. A common 'fourth sister' —sunflower or its perennial relative jerusalem artichoke—is often planted on the north side of the garden circle, providing beauty, seed for humans and wildlife, and a wind barrier for the crops.

Meanwhile Alan Gibson's intrepid crew of cohousing kids hammered siding onto the nearby tree house. It will soon be ready for occupancy!

Many of us in cohousing are looking forward to gardening together when the adult-sized houses are ready for occupancy—not to mention an enhanced connection to the land and to each other. In the meantime we are happy to practice our care for the earth, for each other, and for the other beings in our ecological community—from worms and mycorrhizal bacteria to birds and children.

June New Moon — Emily Gable

2010-06-22T17:44:00.000-07:00

I was praying to the sky for a beautiful day on Saturday. All of my begging paid off. It was a pleasantly beautiful day, unfolding into a crisp new moon of stars, music, and fire.

Earlier in the day Lindsey, Alison and Sawyer came by with Toby the dog, to set up their tents and asked if we needed help. Sawyer stayed at our house the rest of the afternoon while the ladies went to visit family in the area. Sawyer made new friends with the kids in the house, Parula, Sorrel and Linny. He was unsuspectingly roped into childcare for the afternoon, and for that I am extremely thankful! After all, spontaneous childcare is part of what cohousing is all about, right? I had brief glimpses of him swinging and climbing the ladder and going down the slide on our swing set with the kids. They seemed to me to be having a magical time, and there were 4 new friends made that afternoon.

Our guests arrived for the cohousing potluck/bonfire/campout by around 5:15. Delicious food started filling our dining room table, tents spotted the back yard, dogs ran around playing, and kids filled the air around them with bubbles supplied by Jeffrey. By 6:30 our back yard was full of people eating amazing food and chatting about life and days to come. I looked around and realized how lucky I am to have found such a great group of people to share a Saturday evening and night with. As the sun began to lower itself on the horizon, the food simultaneously disappeared into all of our bellies and the draw of the bonfire began.

On a side note, I had pulled my back several days previous to this event, and I was in desperate need of some relief. I had thought I would seek out one of the acupuncturists among the group, and told Elizabeth about my pain. She immediately told me to find a place to lie down, which happened to be on the kitchen floor, and pulled her emergency needles out of her wallet. How unique it was to be lying on my kitchen floor receiving such relieving treatment, amidst people coming in and out with dishes and food, always in question and amazement as to what was taking place. It was an experience I don’t think I will easily forget about. Mary joined Elizabeth to add some energy work towards the end of the session. When the two decided they were done, my body was in a completely different state than it had been just a half hour previous. I admit I was still in a lot of discomfort and pain, but my entire backside had been in contraction to compensate for the acute injury that had taken place, and all of that tightness and discomfort had been dispersed, and my body was able to focus on healing the specific origin of the pain. It was another amazing moment of support by our friends in cohousing… WOW, and THANK YOU!

After this healing session, my head was in an amazing space. Just a short time later I was talking with James, Lindsey and Steve. Steve mentioned something about creating a big extended family with all of the cohousers, and I didn't have words to say at the time, but now I think that this is indeed such a great idea! We had already been sharing such amazing things that I would already consider to be a key part of family; great food, inspiring conversation, healing energies, childcare, helping hands with work, and countless other items to add. It seems to be a given that we all adopt each other as family!

I headed out to the bonfire to find a nice large group sitting around a blazing fire, singing songs, playing guitars and cozying up to one another. These were some beautiful moments. The angelic voices of the group came together for some traditional, silly and heartfelt songs. I could tell that some of our members just feel the most comfortable singing and playing music when a fire is roaring. It was such a peaceful evening. The sparks of the fire fizzled up to a sky black and full of shimmering stars on the new moon of June. I looked around and felt so happy that these are the people that will soon be my neighbors. Yay!

How Far We've Come: Tales from Cohousing Conference — Denise Pendleton

2010-06-22T07:24:00.000-07:00

What is the ultimate destination for aspiring cohousers, cohousing residents, cohousing professionals, and community experts?

The 2010 National Cohousing Conference in Boulder, CO!

Project Manager Sanna McKim, and Steering Committee members Wendy Watson and I spent last week at this incredible conference. Here we are (left) pictured with Chuck Durrette, an architect who, with his wife Katie (pictured with us below), is credited with bringing the Danish cohousing model to the U.S. Click here to see Chuck's work.

We spent the week visiting vibrant cohousing communities in the Boulder & Denver area and attending workshops on almost every aspect of creating a cohousing community in hopes that the knowledge we gained would help us towards the completion of our own cohousing community: Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage. At the end of the week, all 3 of us had reached consensus... this conference gave us many more tools and encouragement to tackle the final phase of our project!

At the conference we met many folks who were in various stages of developing their project. I was awed by the high level of commitment, dedication and determination of those in both developing and developed cohousing communities who have spent extraordinarily large amounts of money and time to bring a community to completion. Some communities talked of ten-year celebrations happening this year, while for others the community is only in the first exploratory, "wouldn't it be nice if" stage.

This is when I realized how far we have come. In three years we've accomplished so much... with almost 2/3 of membership, our land purchased, permits and site engineering completed, common house and unit designs completed, as well as the legal condo docs, committees up and running, and more.

I heard from others in the development phase who have spent three years looking for a piece of land to build their community on, only to lose most of their members in this process as the membership disagrees on which piece of land is ideal.

I also heard the stories of those who are struggling with serious burn out and hadn't established the value or practice of having fun together. I was asked by several to share our list of fun things to do in this upcoming final phase of development as some forming communities hadn't done anything like this.

Leaving this conference, I feel inspired and proud of what we at Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage have already done, and confident that our group has what it takes to see this project through to breaking ground and move-in!

Cohousing: The Best Restaurant in Town — Susie Shea

2010-05-25T18:02:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite things about the folks in Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage is the food they make. When we joke about being “the best restaurant in town” it's only half-kidding. Of the dozens of meals I've had with these amateur chefs, I have yet to have a bad meal and I always come away inspired to make new dishes. It could be Edie's amazing rhubarb bars and Abby's blueberry cobbler at a meeting, or a spinach-and-feta salad with greens from somebody's yard, or perhaps tasty baked beans or a vegan chocolate-chocolate-chip cookie... (okay, now I'm hungry.)

Anyway, when I think about what to make for these potlucks, I always cook with these folks in mind – what can I make that will bring smiles to the faces of my neighbors but that won't take too much time or require special shopping trips? The answer often comes back to my old spring/summer reliable – the fritatta.

Fritattas are just cooked eggs, veggies and cheese. They're simple, and are the best way I've found to use up veggies, both those on the edge (wilty spinach or kale, bendy broccoli?) or that summer surplus that so many gardens seem to develop in August (drowning in tomatoes and zucchini?). Since we get a CSA box from one of our local farms that comes with a dozen eggs each week, we often have extra eggs to use up as well.

This also an amazingly flexible and forgiving recipe: you don't really need exact measurements or ingredients, and it can be served hot, cold or at room temperature. Put in whatever veggies you happen to have, whatever kind of cheese you like, increase or decrease amounts based on the volume of your baking dish or number of people you have to feed – once you've done it once or twice you won't even need to look at a recipe.

Susie's Coho Potluck Fritatta

Ingredients
butter and/or olive oil
vegetables
eggs
milk
salt & pepper
herbs
cheese

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 375F.

2. Butter or oil a 9x13 baking dish (I recommend glass or ceramic)

3. In a large bowl, beat 10-12 eggs with a little milk or soymilk. Add salt pepper and herbs to taste (thyme, oregano, rosemary are all nice) and set aside.

4. Chop the veggies! Chop or rip up a large handful of fresh spinach or kale, and set aside. Chop up a large head of broccoli and two small zucchinis into bite-sized pieces. Set aside.

5. Dice a large red onion and sauté in a bit of olive oil until slightly caramelized (I like to add a dash of balsamic vinegar here), then add your broccoli and zucchini.

6. When the broccoli and zucchini have cooked until they are soft but still a touch crunchy, turn off the heat, add your spinach to the pan and stir. Let sit for a few minutes until the spinach is wilty.

7. Grate a cup (or more!) of a tasty cheese. I like to use something sharp like Cabot “Racer's Edge” cheddar, or something creamy like a gouda or swiss.

8. Mix your vegetables and cheese in with your eggs, stirring until everything is well mixed, then pour into your greased pan. Make sure any protruding veggies are well coated with egg.

9. Pop it into the oven and bake until the egg is completely set and starting to brown at the edges of the pan. You should be able to poke a knife into the top and press to the side and see only firm tasty egg, no runny or overly gooey innards, and easily slide a knife around the outer edge of the fritatta.

10. Remove from the oven, serve warm, or let cool. Either way is delicious.

So what are your potluck “old faithfuls”?

Dulcimers, Permaculture & Martial Arts — Arielle Bywater

2010-05-25T16:42:00.000-07:00

It's a given that by joining our community, new members can learn how to raise chickens and plant flowers alongside their friends: that's part of our mission! But the standard skills involved in living in an ecovillage are only the tip of the iceberg: members of Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage tap into a veritable treasure trove of skills, talents and knowledge. At a recent Equity meeting, some of our members rattled off just a few of the many things they are excited to give to the community. Here are some of the most fun, funny and useful skills we're eager to share:

Playing the dulcimer
Buddhist meditation
Horse hoof de-icing
Sailing
Violin lessons
Wool spinning
Canning
White water rafting
Choosing a college
Knitting
Computer basics
Copy editing
Conference/event planning
Rowing/skulling
Cooking 20-minute healthy meals
Rug hooking
Indoor sprout growing
Bread baking
Linocut printmaking
Weaving
Baking and cooking
Math tutoring
Construction/wiring
Making wedding dresses
Wood carving
Martial arts
Cleansing and fasting
Audio recording
Holography
Transforming uncomfortable feelings
Wooden boat building
Intergenerational group games
Contradancing
Jewish rituals
Songwriting
Nonviolent Communication
Chinese medicine
Rock climbing
Massage therapy
Quaker meeting
Embroidery
Practical money saving
Lactation consulting
Frisbee
Home funerals
Bike repair
Baby sign language
Birding
Cat Talents

See something here you've been hoping to learn more about? Why go to classes or pay for workshops? In cohousing, you just knock on your neighbor's door! Join us!

The Costa Rican Connection — Jeffrey Mabee

2010-05-20T17:07:00.000-07:00

Our recent trip to Costa Rica brought up numbers of issues for me and I could write a separate article on each — the issue of going out of country for dental care, the ethical issue of fossil fuel usage for the flight, and the issue I plan to write about here — why are the Costa Ricans so darn happy? So happy, in fact, that they are numero uno on the Global Happiness Index (GHI) while we in the USA rank 113th?

I saw lots of parallels between Costa Rica and Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage (BC&E). The first thing you might notice upon entering the country and getting underway is the roads. Asphalt roads are, for the most part, two-lane and the speed limit is under 50 mph. And there are not a lot of people on the road. So why should this make people happy? People use public transportation and don’t have the hassle of buying and owning a car… let alone two or three. And going slowly feels so much better (read, “happier”). How does this relate to cohousing? We’ll be carpooling, walking, bicycling, maybe even a bus-cycling to get us slowly and efficiently to town.

The second thing you might notice is the homes. Most homes are around 400 sq. ft. There is laundry hanging outside and usually two or three folks hanging out on the porch. People don’t wander far from home, and their extended families live nearby. While I know that our homes at BC&E will be larger than most Costa Rican homes they, will be smaller by far than what most of us currently live in. And our BC&E family will be so nearby we’ll greet them from our porches.

Another thing that you might notice is the preponderance of fresh fruit and produce. Eating a daily plate of mango, papaya, pineapple and banana will put a smile on anyone’s face. It won’t be long before we'll be eating bowls of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, peaches and plums and fresh organic vegetables from our gardens and smiling as well.

We at Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage are doing our part to move the USA up the list on the GHI. And we’re doing it with big smiles on our faces!

Waldo County Green — Arielle Bywater

2010-05-20T16:21:00.001-07:00

Part of the reason my family is currently living in Belfast, Maine (on sabbatical from my job as a professor in Chicago) is because the Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage is just one example of the way this region is committed to green living. We are so in love with the many ways in which Waldo County is green, in fact, that we're writing a book about it!

Many people may not know that Waldo County (of which Belfast is the seat) has been a hotbed of back-to-the-land activity for at least two generations. Counterculture folks flocked here in the late 60s and 70s in search of inexpensive, fertile land — and found it! Many of these hippies and homesteaders stayed and helped create some of the wonderful eco-friendly infrastructure Belfast now enjoys: Belfast is the home to Maine's longest-running health food co-op, a general "Green Store" in the heart of downtown, a robust farmer's market, and more. Waldo County is also home to a major solar energy company and the Maine Organic Farmers & Growers Association, which is itself the longest-running such organization in the country, and puts on the wildly popular, nationally-known Common Ground Fair (a must-attend event and the highlight of Waldo County's social calendar) every year.

Recently, Waldo County has seen another influx of eco-minded, farm-oriented folks: young adults and young families who, like the generation before them, have moved here for a simpler, more sustainable way of life. Happily, this movement is happening all over America right now, but Waldo County is particularly vibrant with new, small farms that practice organic and biodynamic techniques, use permaculture, and are otherwise making high-quality, low-impact food for all of their neighbors.

As someone with both a scholarly and a personal interest in subcultures and environmental issues, I've been studying back-to-the-land movements for years, and have a collection of oral histories of hippie communes from the 60s and 70s. So I was dismayed to discover that there is no book that covers Waldo County's involvement in that era. My husband (also a writer) and I were determined to document this current wave of back-to-the-land activity here in Maine, for which Belfast is certainly a major hub.

Our manuscript, which is also my sabbatical project, will contain first-person stories culled from interviews with more than twenty local households, each with very different and exciting stories about how they made the choices they have made. The manuscript will open with a chapter on the previous generation back-to-the-land movement as an homage to and celebration of all the ground they broke for the new folks. Then there are chapters on younger people who are making lives in Waldo County as homesteaders, market and CSA farmers, as well as those making the choice of intentional community (a cohousing family will be featured in our book!). We also hope the book will include photographs of the farms and farmers by Waldo County native and professional photographer Sharyn Peavey. While we are nowhere close to being done yet, we hope the book will eventually be published and widely available, and serve as a testament to the amazing things happening on the land and in community here in Belfast and Waldo County.

An excerpt from one of our stories, of Maia and Jacob at After the Fall farm in Montville (20 minutes from Belfast), which offers winter CSA shares appears in the new issue of the online journal Connotation Press.

Excite, Nourish, Connect — Denise Pendleton

2010-05-13T14:12:00.000-07:00

At our recent general meeting, we were all asked to list activities that would excite and nourish us as cohousing members during the upcoming development phase. We started with the children’s list, and after they finished and went out to play, the adults reflected, wrote and shared, as facilitators wrote notes on flipcharts.

It was a gratifying and uplifting activity in many ways. In part, because our common vision and values were demonstrated in the repetition of similar ideas — from “let's start now to garden and raise chickens together here at the Farmhouse” (our interim Common House) to “let's have work parties, potlucks and visits to each member's home” to music nights, salons, art projects, taking the kids hiking, and putting together a kayak & sailboat armada to an island in the bay. There were pleasant surprises too, as members offered ideas — and a new side to their personalities that I might never have suspected. It was great to hear the kids say, “more campouts! ” Who knew they were having such fun? And of interest to hear the teens say, “having more kids in the community our age would be more fun. ” I truly loved every suggestion, but I was most excited by the idea of a "communiversity” — the idea that any community, and ours in particular, can provide what schools intend to provide: an education for our children and ourselves, but through a myriad of multigenerational relationships.

I was reminded of another time (quite a while ago) when we members sat in a circle and shared our individual visions of cohousing. This was in November 2008, when Chuck Durrett (grandfather of cohousing in the US) led a workshop and we shared, for the first time since I had joined several months earlier, what elements we envisioned as key to our community life. While many of the answers were similar and somewhat predictable (gardens, common meals, the chicken club, walking the trails), many again offered new insights into our values (clothesline and sauna committees were planned as well as an ice skating rink, as I remember).

While meetings, potlucks, campouts, salons and other gatherings have given us the chance to have many conversations, it feels as though we've completed a circle that is more like a spiral, where beginnings and endings will continue to cross over, and we move forward. Now, as we enter this new phase of development, with the site design, common house design and unit/home design behind us, we are coming ever closer to that deep connection we seek — to the land and to rich community relationships.

May Day Appreciations — Elizabeth Garber

2010-05-10T05:02:00.000-07:00

What a luminous time in the emerald meadow polka-dotted with dandelions, the Maypole crowned with a spray of lilacs, and our May 'ribbons' billowing in a mighty breeze. What an afternoon filled with delight together and welcoming so many visitors! I want to thank all of us — from the rain-braving hole diggers, to the mowing relay teams, the Maypole setting team wielding stones and crow bars, everyone who helped ready the farmhouse for the open house, all who danced, and the avid team of greeters, land walkers and tour guides at the prototype. Our profound thanks to the amazing musical Gawler family and friends for mentoring us in the Maypole setup and dances. Our visitors enjoyed all we shared with them. It was wonderful to have so many new members join in their first dance and especially sweet to appreciate our new members — Sawyer, Steven, Tom & Barbara, Jim & Paula — bringing their beaming smiles to the dance. What a remarkable unified team we are! Thank you all.

Noah, Nervin & Mark — Coleen O'Connell

2010-05-09T18:00:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago two work horses, Nervin and Mark, arrived at the farm where Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage has its development phase headquarters. Sanna McKim, our Project Manager, and fellow cohouser, Mitch Henrion bought the Halflinger horses as their first shared step in our sustainable agriculture mission. The newly constructed fence and barn with two beautiful horses is attracting neighborhood stir as they give definition to the farm.

As people arrived for yet another meeting, little Noah, son of Abby and Geoff Gilchrist, asked in his 3 ½ year old voice, “Coleen, can you take me out to see the horses? ” “Of course” I happily responded as I motioned to his father that we were departing. Nervin and Mark were happy to see us. We hauled armfuls of hay as I answered endless questions Noah posed about the life and purpose of these horses. His fear of their size was as large as his curiosity for who they were and what they were doing in this field.

A week later, while helping his parents unpack from a move, Noah was assisting me in placing books and magazines on shelves. He noticed a magazine with a pair of draft horses on the cover. He stopped, took the magazine and set it aside. Later he asked if I would read it to him so he could find out more about Nervin and Mark. Though Nervin and Mark were not in that magazine, there were other teams of horses that stimulated Noah’s questions once again. His fascination with these new members of our community was large as life. We looked at that magazine many times over the course of two days. What I love is that these animals have names, they have needs, and they are fast becoming a part of our community. Noah talks of them as if they have just paid an equity membership and signed up to buy a house. In a rural, sustainable intentional community, I am imagining that over the years the sheep, goats, chickens, pigs and who knows what else will join our community and their membership will be as important to our children as the people who join. Certainly as I field the curiosity of Noah I am aware of the role that animals play in the lives of our children and their growing experience of community. That is how it should be and that is what we intend. All animals – human or other – will all have a place in the ecosystem we are building. The ecological balance will be struck as we experiment with what works and what doesn’t. It will be an organic adventure both literally and figuratively.

Noah will grow up surrounded by a rich array of community members. Aunties like myself from the Auntie brigade will delight in the interactions with other people’s children. For Nervin and Mark, they will continue to have star status as long as there are three year olds around to marvel at them. This is all as it should be.

Exploring Personal Frontiers — Mary O'Herin

2010-05-05T18:04:00.001-07:00

While I love the pictures of deep space that return to us from the Hubble, and how they riffle the cilia in my imagination, the true frontiers of our time that I turn to for hope and inspiration are the body/mind frontier being explored in neuroscience and energy medicine, and the collective consciousness frontier being explored in psychology, astrology, Buddhism, communication, environmentalism, and probably a few other places as well. Cohousing for me is a choice that feels like a natural off-shoot of my love for these two frontiers, AND a collective endeavor that will deepen my knowledge of both.

Most of the intimacy in my life occurs between myself and one or two people at once. I also feel it to an extent in a few group activities: rowing, ultimate frisbee, an astrology study group. Each of these groups has a consistent core of people that have become known to me enough over time that I feel a warm sense of connection with them, even when there are a few new folks I don't know. My learning curve in each activity is very modest compared to the same curve in felt intimacy. It is the knowing and being known that keeps me returning.

Even just being in the planning and growing phase of cohousing, I already feel the enjoyment of knowing and being known by a cooperating group of people. I was actually surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I usually pick activities that have a very high freedom factor, where there is little pressure from the group to do anything much beyond your best effort when you are able to be there. I place high value on my freedom and flexibility, and tend to avoid groups that may have high or rigid expectations. I remember looking over the packet of exploring member info that Wendy gave me when I returned. One of the pages described which types of people did well in cohousing. I had to laugh when I read the description of the Maverick. That was me: the very independent self starter who generally did not seek out groups.

I was initially wary of cohousing, thinking it might be the sort of group I peel away from moments after pulling up to the curb: too clubby and rigid. My initial exploration was on the defensive side because of my own edgy fears around groups, control and conformism. Even in groups with a progressive agenda I have experienced regressive control and conformity issues. After my initial involvement 1 1/2 years ago, I dropped out after only 2 1/2 months probably in part due to past group experiences of mixed success, but I think mostly because I wasn't at the time able to give it a fair try. The concurrent psychic/emotional/mental demands in my life with my 2 boys, and getting it together as a split co-parenting family were such that I didn't have much left for a radically new consideration like cohousing.

When I returned about 9 months later I was ready to give it full consideration, and I knew some of the members that had joined since my lapse. I remember walking into the Farm house side door, I was a little late for a General meeting, and literally feeling an impact in my solar plexus: a warm pulsing wave of really nice energy. It caught me so off guard that tears came to my eyes, and I turned around and went back out to my car for a couple minutes to absorb the wave of feeling that the impact had triggered in me. It was all very sweet, and it certainly was my body giving me a big “Yes! We're back.” ( I do rely heavily on my body's wisdom to balance out my reasoning self.)

The first return impression proved to be true. It was great to be back amidst the endeavor to build a cohousing community in mid-coast Maine. It is a vibrant, flexible, creative group of folks who want to create something strong and positive and then spend a long time enjoying it!

Clan Hats — Coleen O'Connell

2010-03-24T17:03:00.001-07:00

While happily knitting away during one of our cohousing meetings, I realized that I could knit a clan hat for every person - child and adult - that would become a Belfast Cohousing and Ecovillage member. In our small coastal area of Maine, you will know the clan by their hats. How was I inspired to take up such a task as knitting everyone a hat?

Years ago, on a visit to the Hudson Bay area of Quebec, Canada I was on the Cree Indian Reserve and stepped into an indigenous craft store. If you want to learn about a culture, I have discovered, check out what crafts they are engaging in... what artforms are they producing and sharing? I wasn't disappointed in my exploration of the Borealis Craft store as I left with a local photographer's night time photograph of an aurora borealis similar to the one I had experienced the night before in that vast expanse of northern sky. What was also in my bag was a finely crocheted cornflower blue hat, banded with a zig zag design emblazened boldly in bright contrasting colors complete with a large tassel hanging from the top. Aside from being beautiful, it was the label sewn into the hat and the story that came with it that sold me.

I had purchased a "Pang" hat made in the Inuit settlement called Pangnirtung on Baffin Island. Baffin Island lies off the coast of Quebec but is officially part of the new Province of Nunavat. Pangnirtung is situated on a deep fiord that cuts through the mountain peaks of the Penny Ice Cap from Cumberland Sound to Auyuittuq National Park. Located at the arctic circle, the Inuit people experience long, snowy, dark, cold winters in this climate. Living close to nature and each other, the Inuit women had identified a brilliant way to locate their children, husbands and relatives at a glance in the snowy, all-white terrain... they each chose a color & a design which they knitted into hats and mittens their family wore. One glance at the children playing outdoors and they would know if any of the bundled children were theirs. Or one look out onto the waters to see what kayaks were coming home would inform them if it was their husband or father. I was humbled with the knowledge of how people in community all over the world come up with creative ways to solve problems.

I cherish the idea that I own a Pang hat of an Inuit family. My hat came with the information of the family to whom my hat design belonged and also a thank you for contributing to the cottage industry that was helping to sustain their community. I was invited in the brochure to enjoy the warmth and beauty that came with these clan hats.

It was in one of these first meetings of Belfast Cohousing and Ecovillage that I realized that the colorful jester hats I love to knit with Maine Peace Fleece could become, like the Inuits, a tribal hat for our forming Ecovillage. We are in the process of building a village with the intention of living together in one place, while raising our children, and listening to the land and our elders as we figure out what living sustainably really means. As one member commented a few weeks back, "We are doing something really BOLD, RECKLESS and CHALLENGING." Maybe not living at the edge of the sea on the Artic Circle, but no less living on the edge of our culture as we explore what it means to bring the old concept of neighborhood back into our lives, to live intergenerationally caring for both young and old; living sustainably in energy efficient homes, and growing as much of our own food as the Maine summer allows us. What will living sustainably really look like at Belfast Cohousing and Ecovillage?

I am excited and proud to be part of this bold, reckless and challenging project. We must come up with new structures of living if we are to birth the ecological era that is calling to us. May what we are forming at Belfast Cohousing and Ecovillage last 12,000 years and beyond as the Inuit culture has. Someday the children will be asking, just where did this design for a hat come from? How did our family end up with reds and greens and their family end up with blues and purples? Let us hope we are knitting together something that will endure and be generative. You too could have a clan hat!

Declaration of Interdependence — Mitch Henrion

2010-03-04T17:42:00.000-08:00

A declaration can change the world.

Hard to believe that it’s been only about a month since we finished our “BELFAST COHOUSING & ECOVILLAGE DECLARATION OF CONDOMINIUM.” So much has happened in the last month and a half that it seems like it must have been a year ago. We’ve brought in six new equity-member households and five new exploring-member households. We’ve had two packed, family-oriented Open Houses. We’ve honed in on the final floor plans for the homes and the Common House. We’ve had the first of our new, monthly, consensus-decision-making conversations. We’ve had a two-hour, heart-felt conversation on what sustainability means to us. We’ve confirmed the importance of a barn and a root cellar in our lives. We’ve wrestled with the location of unheated storage (garages). We’ve done energy analyses of the proposed Common House. The list goes on… For me, the most palpable growth over the last month has been our “maturing” as a group in the face of the ever-tougher decisions leading up to our planned spring ground-breaking.

Have you forgotten about the Declaration, yet?

Our Declaration, unanimously accepted on January 28, 2010, is a cornerstone now in place.

Life has been full in other realms, too. Cat (7 yrs old) and I moved out of our cabin to try to "finish" it; I am selling my home in Cobb Hill Cohousing; I am organizing a May workshop on "Communicating Oneness" with Robert Gonzales (an internationally renowned Nonviolent Communication trainer); and I am planning a Texas-Utah-Montana visit to family in June. After the June trip, perhaps Cat and I will stay in Boston a few days so that Cat can see the big fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Another Declaration comes to mind: our country's Declaration, unanimously accepted on July 4, 1776.

Reading the opening paragraphs of that revolutionary document, I’m struck by the consistency of human longings and our inherent wisdom when we’ve taken the time to reflect. A sentence jumps out at me: “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes…”

Probably not the sentence that you thought would jump out at me. But, then again, you may not have been thinking about the dominant, voting culture as much as I have been lately.

I smile at the prudence of our cohousing Declaration, our willingness to go along with the dominant culture, our own “Government[s] long established.” To satisfy corporate lenders, the town planning board, and the like, our cohousing Declaration states that “Each Owner of a Unit shall be entitled to one vote in the Association” and affirms that “the Declaration may be amended only by vote or agreement of the owners of Units to which at least seventy-five (75) percent of the votes in the Association are allocated.”

Bend your ear close, so I can whisper in it. Did you see the two, little, sneaky, barely noticeable words after “may be amended only by vote?” Now, that’s the stuff of revolutions!

“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people…to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare…

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted…, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

“Or agreement”—those two little words in our cohousing Declaration.

“Agreement,” “consent,” whatever you want to call it, there’s a power and greatness in coming together and declaring with one voice.

Our cohousing Declaration references another of our foundational documents, also recently completed—the Bylaws. The Bylaws tell a bit more of the story (ten words, instead of just two).

“The Community shall endeavor to make all decisions by consensus…”

If you’re asking what happened to the voting, it’s still there (see the three dots after “consensus?”), but the Bylaws are a slightly more private document, so our prudence doesn’t need to be quite so “front and center.”

If you’re finding yourself wondering why I think that “agreement,” “consent,” “consensus”—whatever you want to call it—is so revolutionary, you may be one of the many who has experienced the dominant-culture version of consensus.

The dominant-culture version of consensus consists of endless meetings in which one person after another rattles on about why they think the group should do “this, that, or the other thing.” Once everyone is thoroughly exhausted, the person with the hardest “but(t)” wins “agreement” to their view, and everyone “consents” to go home.

I find that type of “consensus” (an autocracy of the “hard but(t)s”) a revolutionary way to destroy life (energy), liberty (from meetings) and any semblance of happiness.

Give me a dominant-culture vote any day over, what I fondly refer to as, “death by consensus.” I’d even prefer to live under a dictator (at least a “benevolent” one).

[Insert British accent] “Bloody revolutions!”

Here's another vision of consensus—a revolution worth fighting for.

Picture every person being held sacred. Picture every person honored. Picture every person supported. Picture every person equally valued.

What does it mean to hold “self-evident, that all [people] are created equal?”

Picture us making decisions that consider everyone of us. No casualties. No blood. No one ignored. No one left behind (really, this time). No need for a but(t) of steel.

Evolutionary.

There’s a guy I once met who liked to say, “You can pay now, or you can pay later with interest.” He was a recovering alcoholic, and he was talking about dealing with feelings.

We live in a debtor’s culture (another aspect of the dominant culture). We want what we want NOW, and we’re willing to pay later. We rarely add up the interest payments to calculate the true price we’re paying.

The governance models with which we’re most familiar—Autocracy and Democracy—work well in a culture in which we want a decision NOW (and we proceed as if that immediacy will be free, without a future interest payment).

Autocracy (decision-making by one person or a tiny group) is the speediest form of decision-making (think corporations, small countries, and most families). This form of decision-making is also usually the most costly in the long run (think revolutions, rebellion, and ecosystem devastation).

Democracy (decision-making by voting) is the next quickest to deliver a decision. In democracies, half of the people are happy half of the time, and decisions last until the “under” half can overthrow the “over” half and, thereby, reverse the “dominator” and “dominated” roles.

Are either of those models truly serving us?

Time for a revolution in our evolution.

What if we pay up front? What if we take a little extra time in the making of a decision so that everyone feels okay about the decision upfront?

“You can pay now, or you can pay later with interest.”

Will endeavoring to make all our decisions by consensus doom us to endless meetings? I think not. I predict that as we get better and better at “true” consensus, our meetings will enliven, energize and excite us. We’ll start to see each decision as a creative, problem-solving adventure: a puzzle for our hearts and minds.

In my opinion, endless, energy-draining meetings, labeled as consensus decision-making, occur because, for most of our lives, most of us have lived in autocracies and democracies. In those systems, winning people over to our side is the only way to get our needs met.

We like the idea of everyone agreeing, but, because of our conditioning, we think that means getting everyone to agree WITH US, with our view, with our way of seeing something. We want “consensus” (really a unanimous vote) for the option that WE like the best.

Our founding fathers didn’t say anything about voting in their Declaration—they just said “…to secure these rights, Governments are instituted…, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” In our country, most of us have consented to use Democracy which has then shaped the very way that our minds work. We’ve forgotten that our consent (consensus) underlies the choice of which form of governance we’ll use.

So, what is consensus, if it’s not getting everyone to see things “my way” (or “someone else’s way”)?

Here’s how I see it: Consensus is putting the ALL the ways that we all see a situation into a single pot and then owning that whole pot together. It’s recognizing that my needs are best met when my neighbor’s needs are also met. It’s an acknowledgement that all of our perspectives are equally important and that we want to take them ALL into account.

It’s letting the tension of seeming incompatibility propel us into new realms.

When it comes to tension, Peter Senge of MIT (Learning Organizations) likes to use the analogy of a rubber band. When there’s tension on a rubber band it has potential energy. Tension in organizations also indicates the existence of potential energy. When we notice tension, we have options: 1) We can leave the tension in place (static, stuck); 2) We can increase the tension until we reach the breaking point (system failure, chaos, revolt); or 3) We can release the tension and zoom into previously unimagined realms.

Blast off!

I have an engineer friend who likes to say, “The harder the problem, the more fun it is to try to solve it.” (Guess his current passion….: Global sustainability.)

We are interconnected and interdependent. We are learning and creating. How we choose to live will change the world.

[Insert Texas accent] “I declare! We can pay now or we can pay later with interest.”

[Insert Maine accent] "Ayuh."

Here, Hold My Baby — Arielle Bywater

2010-01-19T17:14:00.000-08:00

There are many ways in which living in cohousing challenges contemporary American norms: smaller-than-average homes, shared resources, making decisions by consensus, community meals. But I think perhaps the most subversive, radical and wonderful thing about cohousing is its potential for a truly intergenerational living experience... and the opportunity to put the adage “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child” into practice.

In the urban and suburban experiences I’ve had growing up and into adulthood, I rarely get an opportunity to have meaningful relationships with anyone other than my own family and my peer group. I don’t really hang out with people who are much older than I am, nor do I often have ongoing interactions with children other than my own. Actually, even finding time to hang out with family, or with friends my own age is hard, since everyone is so spread out, and so busy with their work and families!

So I relish the opportunity cohousing gives me to form lasting intergenerational bonds. In our own community, there’s so much to enjoy from the folks from previous generations: I hope to learn to knit and hook rugs from Coleen and Marion, talk long into the night with Jeffrey, contradance with Jim and Edie. And I’m excited to sit around chatting with Maya or Pia or Soren or the other kids, each so different from one another and from my own, and to watch them become the adults they’re going to become. This seems like an enormous gift to me, to know these families almost as deeply as I know my own. (And maybe next time I’ll write about how cohousing also lets me to have actual friendships with men other than my partner... another rarity in our culture!)

Lovely visions to ponder, right? But I promise you, they’re real, and they come true every time our community gets together. I already have had Coleen help me knit, and Marion lent me a rug-hooking frame. I’ve colored with Pia and talked about colleges with Maya. We haven’t even broken ground yet, and already I feel invested in these people, these up-until-recently strangers, in a way that fills my life with meaning and richness.

I have a four and a half year old and a baby, which could make it hard for me to fully participate in cohousing meetings—goodness knows it makes it hard for me to fully participate in nearly everything else in life! But because cohousing values the kind of interconnectedness and shared life I’ve described here, not to mention how our group values small children, it isn’t hard. Various people take turns holding my baby, passing him toys, making sure he doesn’t tip over or chew on something he shouldn’t. Meanwhile, my daughter runs off to play with the other children and the teenage babysitters as soon as we arrive at a meeting. I love to imagine how, once we’re living in our community, my children might spend time reading, or sledding, or stargazing, or cooking, with another adult in the community, talking about things they want to discuss with a grown-up but do not want to discuss with their own parents, or just getting a different kind of attention and energy than they could from us. I never had that as a kid: I’d love it to exist for them.

Does any of this call to you the way it does to me? If so, I urge you to become an Exploring Member now: we’re filling up quickly, with a spring deadline. Coming to our meetings is the best way to get to know our group and whether or not this life is for you. At the meetings, you will see first-hand how everyone holds my baby and the other babies: the grandparents, the other young parents, the kids, the folks who have not had their own babies. Babies represent all that is good in the world, all that is hopeful and fresh. The way people care for them, or don’t, says a lot about a culture. And so the way babies get passed around at our meetings is truly one of the most beautiful things about our group, in my opinion. And if you want, you can hold my baby, too.

Arielle Bywater

What Makes A Healthy Home? — Alan Gibson

2010-01-06T17:41:00.000-08:00

Once at a building conference I heard about the results of a study on air quality. The study said the air quality inside the average new home in rural Wisconsin was 8 times worse than the air quality outdoors in New York City. This blew my mind. How could that be true? And then I heard more and read more about how toxins and pollutants can build up inside a home and, if there’s poor ventilation, reach unsafe levels in the air. Rates of asthma and other respiratory diseases have been on the rise in this country, and while industrial pollution is certainly a factor, the way houses are built and furnished is probably a bigger factor in the decline of respiratory health. As part of the team designing and building the homes for Belfast Cohousing and Ecovillage, I’m working to ensure all the homes are as healthy to live in as possible.

How can a home be less toxic? Conceptually it’s very simple—reduce the nasty stuff inside and bring in plenty of fresh air. Practically, though, it’s not that simple. On the material side, builders have gotten away from good old-fashioned building materials like solid wood, plaster and stone, and for some good reasons: they’re expensive and poorly insulating. But when these materials are replaced with particle board, fiberglass, vinyl and synthetic carpets, the home buyer is spending less money and probably using less energy for heating, but at the same time a lot of volatile organic compounds, formaldehyde, and other toxins have been introduced to the interior air. And in an effort to reduce energy use, builders have been trying to make buildings more air-tight and less drafty, which improves comfort as well as the utility bill. However, the combination of the tighter envelope and the off-gassing interior finishes is what leads to sick people in Wisconsin (and other places). So now we’re back to turning the conditions around, being aware of what we put in the house and making sure we ventilate properly. It is now relatively easy to find out if a building material is air-quality friendly. Several ratings agencies exist to test and determine the safety of various materials; an architect can specify formaldehyde-free or low-voc plywood and paints; natural linoleum is available as an alternative to vinyl flooring; people should know better than to put carpeting in a damp basement. On the ventilation side, agencies such as the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers studies indoor air quality and issues standards for rates of ventilation. They have formulas for determining how much fresh air to bring into the house over time to ensure proper fresh air supply.

More specifically, in the homes G•O Logic builds, we install a complete, ducted ventilation system that delivers fresh air to bedrooms and living spaces and removes stale air from the kitchen and bathrooms. The incoming air passes through a heat-recovery unit that transfers almost all the heat form the outgoing air to the incoming air, which means there’s very little energy penalty for the healthy ventilation. We determine the proper ventilation rate based on accepted standards. For example, in the 1500 square-foot model home, we will ventilate at a rate of 70 cubic feet of air per minute, continuously. This means the entire volume of air in the house will be changed once every 3 ½ hours, ensuring healthy air quality for a family of 4 or 5. And on the material side, we specify only low or no-voc materials and finishes. The floors are either polished concrete or solid wood; cabinets are formaldehyde-free. The building is incredibly air-tight, which helps tremendously in the energy-efficiency and comfort of the home, and when coupled with the ventilation system, results in a home that’s both super-efficient and healthy to be in.

Alan Gibson

A Cohousing Christmas — Emily Gable

2009-12-26T05:33:00.000-08:00

This year we had a wonderful Christmas dinner with our future cohousing friends at the home of Wendy and Hans. It was a great preview of things to come. Although we don't have a common house yet, or even our own houses in community with each other, it felt so good to have friendship, which seems to me the strongest part of community. We arrived with our two kids, to find Coleen, Wendy and Hans already settled into a cozy kitchen and bits to eat. Mitch and Catnip (with their dog Max) arrived a bit later. I came to realize that Mitch had been deliberating over recipe variations in her house a few miles away all afternoon. When we have a common kitchen, there will be others to chime in and help, not to mention we won't have to schlepp food in and out of cars and to another house- it will all be right there. It felt so good to be eating such wonderful food with such amazing people. Not to mention that my son Sorrel's first whisper this morning was "pie" (so all that time spend Mitch on the pies surely left an impression on Sorrel).
We all got to know each other a bit better, share our holiday cooking together, and play games with dogs and kids. Parula and Sorrel had a blast exploring Wendy and Hans's kitchen, playing with Coleen and Catnip and eating yummy food cooked by all. It was such a treat to watch my kids feel so comfortable with the folks we will be living in community with soon! It was a great way to spend the first of many holidays together in cohousing!

Halloween in Coho — Arielle Bywater

2009-12-05T16:40:00.000-08:00

I know this is a month late, but what can I say: life with two young kids!

Anyway, a month ago, on Halloween, my family was making the decision about where to trick or treat. We love Halloween and trick or treating, but it's always a bit, well, tricky, because we have a four year old who is pretty easily frightened by spooky things, and you just never know when you walk up to a house on Halloween whether you are going to be greeted with a gentle hello and some candy or someone in a gorilla mask accompanied by scary background music. And that's not even to get into the fears around unsafe candy, unsavory neighbors, etc. (none of which I worry much about, but some people do).

This year, as we walked around our neighborhood, some houses were safe and lovely places to trick or treat with my two young kids. Other houses were much too scary and had to be avoided at all costs. Some houses were not decorated in scary ways but had loud dogs or weird people at the door. Still other houses were dark. It made for a somewhat uneven experience. And it made me think of some future Halloween in Cohousing, when the community children can go door to door around our tightly clustered thirty-six home neighborhood without any fear at all. Perhaps without chaperones, even, because the children will know all the adults behind every door they knock on. All the people will be kind to my kids. All the candy will be safe. And, for maximum candy efficiency, and ideal for cold Maine Octobers, the whole circuit of thirty-six Halloween-friendly houses can be made in no time flat, since we are all within a few yards of one another!

Halloween. Another reason to join Cohousing.

Saving My Life With Poetry — Elizabeth Garber

2009-10-19T14:16:00.000-07:00

In my Cohousing life, I organize the monthly Open Houses -- Maypole dances, Live Chess Match, bulb planting-- for our community and guests, yet here I want to give a glimpse of my other life.

It's five fifteen am and the sliver of the waning moon is bright outside my back window. I'm wide awake, settled onto my couch, a shawl around my shoulders and knees, cup of hot tea on the table in front of me, my laptop ready to go. I have two hours free to write before I get ready to meet my first acupuncture patient at eight o'clock. I'm a writer and this is my idea of a happy morning.

The summer I was ten, in the 1960's, I decided I was going to be a writer. I opened a new notebook and wrote down the title of the novel about a girl in the 1880's in my village in Ohio. But I didn't know where to begin. At our little library, I read biographies of girls and drew drawings of clothes a girl would have worn. Yet when I stared at the notebook, I couldn't imagine her life or who she was. Finally I tore out the page and began a journal of my summer telling about camping in the backyard with my best friend, getting scared and coming back into the house.

I kept journals for the next forty years, and began writing poetry in my late twenties. The first line of a poem would appear on a walk or while sitting in nature. I'd grab pen and paper, catching the poem as it poured. This was a perfect art form in my life as a mother. I carried a notebook and sometimes when driving, with my kids asleep in car seats, a poem might arrive. With the notebook across my lap, (not looking down, I promise!), I scrawled ragged jumbles of lines across the page so I wouldn't lose the poem.

When my younger child left home, taking her lively daily conversations about life, music and school, I decided to start an MFA in Creative Writing in a low-residency program. Two and a half years later, the erratic untrained poet has become a steady writer with a nearly finished book-length memoir of my childhood in that old-fashioned village in Ohio. I've come full circle. I imagined the life of a girl in another time and filled the blank page my ten year old self yearned to write.

I imagine ahead to when we live in Cohousing, finishing my cup of tea and morning writing, and walking out into my Cohousing life. I'll be ready to plant a garden or cook a meal or perhaps read something I've just written to a friend over breakfast.

The Day After She Finishes Driver’s Ed My Daughter Suddenly Notices I Write Poetry While Driving

“What are you doing? You can’t write and drive!”
She’s aghast, watching my pen scrawl across the open notebook
on my lap, as I drive one handed north up Route 1.

“Mimi, I’ve written nearly half of all my poems while driving
since before you were born. When else can moms write poetry?
I’m completely focused on the road and another part of my mind
is free to write. It’s great!”

“I want all your mind on the road!
I don’t want to die just because you have to write poetry!”
She pulls the paper and pen out of my grasp.

“Mimi, it’s not just for poems. It’s for making grocery lists,
and making sure I don’t forget things, like that you need ballet shoes.
And lots of people drive and eat!
Please may I have my paper and pen back?”

“No! You can eat and drive, but no poetry!”
She says with determination as we continue up the coast.
I’m left empty handed, soothed by the billowing
indigo wash of lupine in meadow grasses following the road.

An expanse of white paper stretches out in my mind
and no way to etch the day across it.
I have to be patient until I drive off alone
and can once again save my life with poetry.

Why Belfast? Why Waldo County? Why Maine? — Arielle Bywater

2009-10-11T14:39:00.000-07:00

I was asked to give a reading at today's cohousing general meeting, and I chose to read a poem about how the Belfast community took care of our family when our second child died, a stillbirth. I didn't realize until afterward that many people did not know this part of our story. So below is a short essay I wrote about the experience--and how it fits into our interest in Maine and in community--back after it happened.

* * *

When my husband and I tell folks that we got married in an art gallery in Belfast, Maine, or that I gave birth to our son in a small house overlooking the bay there, or that this son is buried a bit further north in a pine forest in Orrington, they look at us funny. After all, we live in the Midwest. “You don’t have family there, do you?” Nope. “Did you grow up there?” We grew up in Ohio, New York and Massachusetts. “Well, then, why?”

How does anyone obsessed with Maine explain this particular madness? Usually, I say something like, “We started going there on vacation when we were dating because I had fond memories of camping in Acadia as a child. Also, I had once stumbled upon Belfast with an ex, ate hand-made lavender ice cream in an architectural salvage store/cafe, and swore I’d go back. Also, I saw a feature about the Common Ground Fair on TV when I was a teenager, wrote the name down in a notebook and never forgot about it. Also, it’s where I took up running, and where, in a used bookstore, I discovered Buddhism...” at which point my eyes start to flash the state seal and my conversational companions politely excuse themselves.

Or I tell this story: After several trips to Belfast wherein Rob and I discovered it was the place where the most magical things always happened to us, we were in Maine again, this time determined not to go to Belfast. “Let’s go to Camden,” we said. “We never go to Camden.” A half-dozen t-shirt shops later, we took one look at each other and hopped in the car, heading twenty minutes north for our beloved town. Driving in on High Street, we saw the road was blocked off: the town was having a midsummer festival, and people young and old were wearing flower wreaths in their hair and dancing barefoot in the middle of the street. Ah, we sighed. We’re back.

So when we were to be married, it had to be Belfast. The affair was strictly locavore, to use a phrase since coined: dinner with arriving guests at Chase’s Daily, everyone at B&Bs, picnic with food from the Co-op in a public park on the harbor, party the night before at the yoga studio, a morning run through the streets, flowers from a woman who lives in a geodesic dome outside of town, and a caterer and photographer we found right downtown, who provided food and photographs all of our sophisticated city friends pronounced the loveliest they’d ever eaten or seen. Our furthest import was the wonderful, wacky Buddhist professor from Bowdoin who married us. It was perfect.

Fast forward five year, and we were pregnant with our second child and living in Illinois, where the kind of birth we wanted, a homebirth with professional midwives, is illegal. Our solution? The same solution we have for everything: go to Belfast! Once again, we found the ideal people for the job in the tiny downtown: better midwives, I believe, than are available in the entire city of Chicago. So in the dead of winter, we moved temporarily into the little house we’d rented for a couple weeks the previous summer and waited for our son to arrive.

And when our son was stillborn, it was the Maine community who rallied around us and kept us whole, even though we were perfect strangers: the Belfast midwives; the homesteaders in Montville who’d had stillbirths themselves and made us a necklace to remember our boy out of grass seeds from their land; the labor doula from Union who became a dear friend; the stone carver from Stockton Springs who makes exquisite tombstones and dropped all his work to do this small job for us; the Solon woman starting a green cemetery in Orrington who allowed our son to be buried in her family’s private plot because the paperwork hadn’t yet gone through to make it public; and the local church folks who came out on that frigid winter day to dig the grave for us. Our baby’s death certificate, like our marriage license, is issued from the Belfast Town Hall. It’s the place where some of the biggest moments of our lives have happened, even though we’ve never actually lived there.

Dreaming of Cohousing II — Arielle Bywater

2009-10-03T05:03:00.000-07:00

Another cohousing dream last night: I dreamt Michelle Obama and her two kids were meeting with the members of our cohousing group (apparently in the cafeteria of my elementary school in upstate New York). The First Lady was very impressed with our group, especially with how membership required such a high level (quantity and quality) of volunteer work from us all: she felt this was a great model for volunteerism in America in general. And Sasha and Malia got along great with our cohousing kids!

So. Why do I seem to dream so much about cohousing? And how can we extend an invitation to the Obamas to come visit our project, get a tour of our house from Alan and Matt, join us for a potluck? And how can we find more non-white members for our group (probably the greatest diversity challenge in Midcoast Maine)?

Becoming Native To A Place — Coleen O'Connell

2009-09-16T17:40:00.000-07:00

From the banks of Thompson Creek in the St. George’s River watershed in the great state of Maine

For those of you who awaken each day to another day of sunshine it may not be known to you that there are those who feel responsible for the return of the sun each day. Twenty years ago, upon adopting a new homeland in Maine, I immediately began to explore the native history of the land. I had never read of the Wabanaki Confederacy in any of my history books nor heard of the northeast tribes who call themselves the Micmac, Maliseet, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy and Abenaki. This confederacy knows themselves as the “People of the Dawn” and they hold a responsibility on Turtle Island (North America) to call up the sun each morning.

On the eastern most point of the United States in a place in Maine where the waters were once filled with cod and whales, I am awakened in the dark to the sound of a rattle shaking near my head. My native friend, gkiesotonomook, is rousing us to action. I rise, dress and silently walk the path to the ocean’s edge. First light is announcing itself. With sweet grass lit, a smudging ceremony purifies each of us. As my friend faces the eastern ocean and raises his arms, a school of harbor porpoise passes quickly off shore – synchronized fins cutting through the dark water. A seal pops its curious head up in front of us. The ocean is calm this morning though a small breeze blows the smudge smoke toward the east.

Though not understanding the language of the prayer, I resonate with the earnestness in which my native friend calls forth to the directions. The intentions of his every movement and each word spoken brings with it increasing lightness. Pink and indigo streaks are beginning to lace the eastern sky. Black is shifting to dark purple out on the water. The spruce and fir trees are turning green as the blanket of night is lifted. The prayers continue with an increased tempo. As the sun peeks over the horizon my friend shouts a greeting of welcome. Tears roll down my cheek in a rush of primordial recognition. Another day has begun on Turtle Island. He turns with a big grin and announces “Let’s make some coffee and have some grub.”

How do I become native to this place? The local ancestors of the first white settlers to Maine (which was then part of Massachusetts) claim that your family must live here 3 or 4 generations before you can say you are native. The hippies that came in the 70’s and had children, who are now having children, cannot yet say they are natives. “Just because a cat has her kittens in the oven doesn’t make them bisquits” the old white guys proclaim. It occurs to me that the concept of Native has been contextualized and I wonder what my Indian friend would say to the bisquit joke?

I recently read somewhere that if you are native to a place, you must be able to tell it’s stories. Whether or not I can ever become native to this place, I am surely making it my home. I drink its waters, eat its wild berries, warm myself with its wood, and bask in the wild beauties of each season, including mud and black fly season. I eat lobster and blue mussels, grow potatoes and squash, nurture an apple orchard, and wonder how to get the wood chuck to stop living under my house and eating my flowers. I am an apprentice to the order of life in this wooded Eden. I am collecting stories each day I live on this small piece of land in midcoast Maine. Like the bear that wandered in to eat out of the bird feeder; or the porcupine that has her babies each year in the crawl space under my house; or the beaver that built an incredible pond on our stream – but then were eradicated by local trappers whom I had a confrontation with. I document the changes with photos that will collect over the years – taken each season at the same spot. I have instituted rituals that arise out of this place... and I love that others join me. This spring when the adolescent male turkey was practicing his mating warble in my front yard, I chided him for sounding more like a dog than a turkey. I wished him luck as he headed into the woods seemingly in search of the willing partner. Next year I hope he is back in full regalia and accomplished sex talk ... I can only wait and wonder.

Silently, and without fanfare, the Native Americans of North America continue their ceremonies that entwine their lives within the web of life. The Hopi’s gather ceremonially in their plazas; the Lakota dance and fast during four-day Sundances; the Makah conduct their ceremonial whale hunt. In our fast paced consumer culture, these ceremonies go unnoticed... relegated to another time, another worldview. I used to be confused by all the different Native cultures around the world proclaiming that their mountain, or their ritual site was the center of the Universe... that life arose from these special places. How could this be that there could be so many different “center of the universes”? In my westernized thinking – there could only be one center. Who was correct? I have lived my life into the answer – coming to understand that when I truly reside in a place, come to know my more-than-human neighbors, and am mindful each day of my place in the web of life, my home becomes a sacred place. My community has become the center of my universe...my life revolves around the order of things that sustain me in this place. As the circle shifts, so does the center... an ongoing dynamic as invisible circles are imagined into life everywhere on our planet.

It no longer matters to me whether or not I will ever be considered a native Mainer. I am of North America, I am of this land that gave birth to my parents, my grandparents, my great grandparents and beyond. I too will become an ancestor in just a generation. What does matter to me is that those that come after me will have fresh water to drink, will have clean air to breathe, and will have soil and a climate that will support the growing of food. If I can leave this physical existence knowing that I have done my best to insure that legacy for future generations then I will have the due reward that I desire. I will have found my place in “the family of things” as poet Mary Oliver announces.

Match Point — Emily Gable

2009-09-14T18:08:00.000-07:00

I really don't have a reason to title this "Match Point" except that I just watched Juan Martin Del Potro, a 20 year old Argentinian defeat the 5 time Swiss champion Roger Federer for the title of the U.S. Open Tennis tournament. I felt so honored to be a witness to this event, along with the millions of people also watching along and cheering. Maybe it was re-assuring to see a different name in bold to take the main stage....what an amazing match, and wow they get lots of cash with that prize! Maybe he'd like to donate some to the coho community?

Back to the reality of life with two children under the age of 3. Our days are full. Full of smiles, giggles, screams (of joy and of upset), singing, animal sounds, poopy diapers, sinks of dishes, dirty laundry baskets, you get it. Most of the time I don't know if I really have a life besides my family. I know I once did , and I imagine that the possibility exists sometime, but not quite yet. But there has been a distinct moment in time when my body has said "this is all you". I thought maybe this would be a good place to share with my future coho community and whoever else may end up reading this; the struggles of a seemingly young and healthy family, as getting to the match point is indeed quite hard work!

On May 23, 2008 I woke up excited and ready to get to the first Belfast Farmer's Market of the season. I was already dreaming of tasting the cheese samples from the Appleton Creamery and getting a fresh loaf of bread from Billy of the Firefly Farm. I was second in line to get a shower, enjoying the kicks of my baby in my womb, as I was just entering my 26th week of pregnancy with my second child. As I finished up my bathroom routine the room started spinning and I immediately grabbed my dirty clothes and ran for the bed about 10 feet away. I felt as if I were inside of a centrifuge, my world spinning endlessly around me, no up, no down, no in between. I felt as if I were falling but I was already on stable ground. I called for James, but could not be heard. Eventually he caught sound of my voice and came up the stairs. Maybe he would be able to do some Reiki on me and this would all stop and go away. But nothing slowed down. This was something serious, maybe I was having a miscarraige, this was all I could imagine, and I was worried. I began to be sick, as most people who get severe sea sickness do. James called our midwife, but there was no answer. He left a message. Next option was 911, and the dispatcher sent the EMT who arrived in minutes. One happened to be a neighbor from down the road, another an overweight smoker who I only remember by his huffing and puffing the entire trip to the hospital. What was going on, and why was this happening to me?

It turns out, after an emergency MRI and helicopter ride to Maine Medical Center (MMC) in Portland, that I had a blood clot in the right side of my cerebellum, causing me to have a stroke. I was unable to speak with clarity (due to weakened vocal chords), unable to swallow for 8 weeks, lost sensation on the right side of my face and left side of my body, and was living in constant vertigo for 6 months. I spent 4 weeks in Portland at two different hospitals. Parula, who was then 16 months old, was cut off from nursing, and broke her arm the 2nd day I was in the hospital. Good thing she and James were on their way to seeing me in the hospital, a quick trip to the ER. It was an extremely stressfull time in our lives. When we all returned home from Portland I was not in good shape. I could barely walk, I had to be fed liquid through a tube in my stomach as I could not swallow. I also got to carry around a bottle that I spit in, as I was unable to swallow, saliva included. The hottest days of summer came and went, and all I wanted to do was drink a tall glass of water. I sucked on cold popsicles and ice, my throat rejecting anything to go down. One day James encouraged me to try to eat something, maybe a bolus of food would be easier than a small amount of liquid. I swallowed a bite of homemade pizza a friend had brought over, and from that moment forward I was all about swallowing again!

Sorrel was born at MMC August 19, both he and I were very healthy and his birht was as natural as possible. We were both released from hospital care within 36 hours. I was able to drive a car again in late November, and this summer I have begun to feel in my body again, much more grounded and able to take care of not only myself, but also my kids. For a long time James was the primary caregiver to us all, holding the space of physical functioning human in our household. He has involuntarily taken on a huge load of care and done an amazing job at making sure we are all happy and staying healthy.

All of this being said, I think it is a huge part of my life that I cannot leave out, as my entire physical perception of the world has been changed by this event. The thoughts of joining the cohousing community first came into our minds last fall, when our friend Maria had become an exploring member and urged us to attend a meeting. We felt skeptical, as we weren't really ready to think about this idea that seemed larger than we could handle at the time. Now it seems we can handle not only the idea, but the reality of community as well. So many people were willing to help us out when we were struggling the most, and I know I would do the same if I were on the other side of the situation. This group of people involved in the Belfast Cohousing community feels open and inviting to me and my family. Having a community to support and be supported by seems to be extremely important with all I have come across in life so far. Not only would there be opportunity to help others with whatever their needs or desires are, but we have a chance to be a part of the creation of something sustainable, beautiful and extremely satisfying. In return, we are living more efficiently, with help nearby if needed, and with community for our kids to grow up knowing their neighbors! If there is one lesson I have learned from this life over and over and over again, it would be that our time here is finite. So, why not make the best of it and share the joys and struggles with our friends who are also our neighbors?!

You've become an Exploring Member, now what? — Elizabeth Garber

2009-09-06T13:00:00.000-07:00

Since we have several new Exploring Members, I'm including a letter I wrote to Arielle earlier this summer after she and her family joined and had come to a first General meeting. She had written in to the egroup to say "We are so incredibly buzzed and excited, but now what? When are meetings and what can I do?..."

We have worked to minimize numbers of big meetings so more work can happen on projects and in smaller committees. The General Meeting is held on the second Sunday of the month on the same day as our Open House's so we can make a day of it and so long distance members can enjoy both . We have many other ways that members of the Cohousing community can get together for fun and projects. Some are planned events where we sign-up to volunteer at events to share about Cohousing (like the Common Ground Fair coming in September) and some are spur of the moment.

When we have interested families in joining the community we've put out the word for potluck suppers at the Farmhouse, or small group lunches at Chases and then walking the land. This summer we have had some wonderful camp outs on the land. Many things like this depend on someone saying, How about we do this?! and organizing it, checking with others on dates, and seeing who comes. A fun event coming this fall with be the Women and Girls Clothes Swap party and a pot luck with our new Austrian family comes to visit in November and I'm sure many more events will be created!

A good way to help keep this project moving is joining a committee. See what's a good match for you. If you'd like to join Membership and Marketing to help with getting the word out, you can contact Wendy and/or Denise. If you're interested in Process committee contact Jim. If you'd like to write something for the E-news, a new member profile or responses to joining, you can send that to Steve. If you want to join the Finance Committee contact Sanna or Margi. If you want to help plan and organize Open Houses, definately let me know!

If you want to learn alot more about what's happening nationally with cohousing go to the National Website. Several members went to the National Convention this summer and I think we are going to be getting DVD's of keynote speeches. Ask Wendy about this.

When I first got involved I looked for a project that I could take on and really make my own. I looked at something that could help take some of the weight off Sanna and Wendy and the Steering committee. Organizing Open houses and writing the press releases and posters seemed just right for me.

As you find out what is happening in the community see what area speaks to you where you'd like to participate and that is a good match for your skills. Steve saw the Website as a good place to bring his energy. Since he started he's add the Enewsletter, gotten us on Twitter, added videos and loads of gorgeous photos! In August, Coleen and I were simultaneously taken over with Farmhouse nesting instincts. She cleaned and organized and I found and hung art work. We met with Sanna beforehand, confered, checked over everything and then cruised.

We seem to be a community where people listen to what is next, check in with the right folks, and keep things moving. Our primary marketing focus is to create more ways to connect with families to give them a connection to our community is . Any thoughts, confer with Wendy and Denise!

The best way to strengthen our community and help us grow is to have fun together! A group of Cohousing families went sailing over Labor Day weekend, and two members worked on Sanna and Alan's boat so that it was ready so they could go sailing. Other members have gone kayaking together, gardened together, and moved heavy furnature into the Common house with speed, fun and efficiency! We'd played with Jeffrey's amazing bubble making collection of gizmos at the Belfast Street Fair and we have danced in the street together in the summer on Thursday nights as well as grilled hot dogs and cut watermelon to give away at the Cohousing booth.

If you want to see what our future cohousing homes look like you can peek at the spec house (our 1500 sq. foot house), designed and built by Geo-Logic, drive down Crocker Road (off Route 3) and see a new house just going up to the right down in a field. You can read on Geo Logic website information on their designs.

When I first got involved as an Exploring Member I felt that not only the community and vision had opened to me, but also the land. I got tall Muck boots (for tromping through tall wet grass last year) and started exploring the land every chance I could. I followed the Little River, explored the woods, found the two ponds, the gravel pit, the valley of enourmous apple trees (perfect for apple picking for cider pressing in October). I fell in love with the land, the flocks of geese flying overhead, and meditated next to the stream. In the winter groups of us cross country skied up the stream and snowshoed across meadows, and there was a sledding and skating party. A group of us met at dusk in the spring with Mike Shannon who taught us how to listen to the sound of the woodcocks' mating dance.

What's been great for me to realize, is that our cohousing community is not something I'm waiting for, it's something we are creating right now.

Since I wrote to Arielle to answer some of these questions, I lent them cohousing books to read, had a fabulous waffle breakfast with Arielle, Rob, Willa and baby Jem, and mentioned Wendy's dream that we have a blog some day. Arielle jumped right in and made it happen! Thanks Arielle and to all our new Exploring Members! Who knows what gifts you'll bring to the community!

Cohousing and Marriage — Arielle Bywater

2009-09-04T12:35:00.000-07:00

For some reason, a bunch of friends of mine have marriages in trouble at the moment. It's a little alarming to me. Even though my marriage feels very solid, it's hard sometimes to look around and see and hear all the talk about the impossibility of heterosexual monogamy and of the institution of marriage and not feel somewhat doomed. (I should say that although I am using the term "marriage," I am really thinking about long-term partnership of any kind.) Sandra Tsing Loh's piece about her divorce in the recent Atlantic drove this point home further for me.

And here is another way cohousing seems beneficial to me: cohousing can help us avoid so many of the pitfalls of modern marriage. Pitfalls like the isolation of living in the suburbs and waiting, alone and tired, for your partner to come home from work. The isolation of parenting solo. Cooking and eating and cleaning and gardening alone. Plus: the lack of models of good, long marriages. The lack of models of productive and compassionate communication.

I'm not naive. I know that living in intentional community does not solve all of life's problems, or guarantee a good relationship; in fact, living in community sometimes seems to facilitate "partner roulette." But when I think about it for myself, right now, I think that being around others who have good attitudes towards the work a long-term relationship, and focusing one's whole life on living better with others, seems like it would go a long way in keeping one's own relationship healthy and sustainable.
I found this quote on the subject:
"Cohousing takes a lot of pressure off the family. The modern family is over stressed-especially emotionally. A cohousing environment balances marriage and offers some relief to the emotional burdens on the modern family. Living in community provides an inherent support system. A mother with 2 children who desires a divorce must carefully consider the dramatic lifestyle consequences. Will it be too difficult to raise the children alone? Obviously, cohousing doesn't eliminate these problems, nor should it try to, but it does add to peoples independence. yet even though divorce might appear easier in cohousing, the statistics show that the divorce rate for people who live in cohousing is lower than for comparable segments of the general population."
--Niels Revsgaard, sociologist and member of Drejerban, from Cohousing-A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves, 2nd Ed

"Holy Work" — Arielle Bywater

2009-08-31T19:07:00.000-07:00

I attended a workshop this weekend with the Coho folks about facilitating meetings. Mundane topic, one would think--except that it wasn't at all. Instead, it was a group of folks from different backgrounds trying to figure out how to run meetings in which we can meet one another with compassion, curiousity, and good will in order to work toward a greater good. In the process of learning how to do this, we had such a meeting: lots of laughter, good food, friendship and ideas exchanged.

One highlight for me: Dyan, the woman who led our training, asked everyone to get into "spectrum" formation over an issue as an example of how to use this meeting technique. (It involves people lining up according to where they are on a "spectrum" in terms of their feelings about a certain issue.) The issue she gave us was how we felt about firearms in the cohousing community. As someone who has lived mostly in major urban centers--New York City, Boston, and Chicago--my adult life, and who has never hunted (I don't even eat meat!), I sort of assumed that a room full of eco-minded progressives such as we have at Belfast Cohousing would all be of like minds: "Firearms in our community?! No way!" Little did I know! The "spectrum" line ran the gamut, and soon I was paired up with another Coho person who was as pro-firearms in the community as I was against.

And guess what? After only a couple minutes of discussion on the topic, my mind was changed. Absolutely changed. While I like to think I'm open-minded, I am also opinionated and pretty reactionary, so it was utterly refreshing to see how easily and smoothly my mind could be changed...and with zero conflict. This happens all too rarely in my life! In place of conflict and stubborness was a genuine willingness to listen, on both sides, and the result was that I walked away from that day with a new understanding about the culture and belief around firearms in rural Maine...and my own ignorance on the matter.

And this was just a sample exercise, to demonstrate how to use a technique! We weren't even really discussing firearms in the community!

Dyan called what we were doing that day, gathering to learn how to be better at facilitating and participating in our group meetings, "holy work." It struck me that this was not an overstatement at all. There is something deeply spiritual about trying to form an intentional community. It reminds me of meditation, or other difficult, worthwhile spiritual practice.

Wisdom of the Lost Boys — Steve Chiasson

2009-08-22T12:17:00.000-07:00

We just saw a powerful movie about the Lost Boys of Sudan called "God Grew Tired of Us"
The film follows a handful of the Lost Boys — young men from age 5 to 15 or so — who were forced by civil war to flee their homes in Sudan, ultimately to be resettled in various parts of the US. One of the things that really struck me about this film was that, despite their gratitude for the opportunity they'd been given, they deeply missed the community they left behind in Africa. All their material needs were met (and then some!), but the kind of community they were accustomed to — full of shared experience and genuine interest in each other's welfare — didn't exist for them here in the states. It was an interesting and right-on observation — one that cohousers, too, are well aware of and working to remedy…

Shifting Consciousness — Elizabeth Garber

2009-08-21T05:23:00.003-07:00

Good morning, Arielle. I woke up thinking about your dream and wanted to tell you how this first year of being involved in the Cohousing community has been for my urgent self, like yours in the dream.

I, too, had very headstrong parts of me that were quite nervous about joining a group that would be designing and creating a place where I would live. What if something that was really important to me didn’t happen? Would I have to work hard to “make” something happen? What if it didn’t go the way I wanted? I think of the wise statement about a new relationship that we bring our old patterns but we have the possibility to heal ourselves or we can harm ourselves. I came to cohousing with my old patterns on alert from being in groups, which are certainly complex layering of many relationships. I remembered arduous discussions of Robert’s rules at Berkeley Free Clinic meetings in the 70’s, and exhausting board meetings for the parent-run Toddy Pond School in the 90’s. After a year with Belfast Cohousing, I can say this has been a remarkably healing year where I have come to trust the wisdom and magic that happens with this mature group of individuals working skillfully in the process of creating community together.

I think I have experienced a major shift in my consciousness as I have come to trust our group decision making process. I hear other members repeatedly remarking on this happening for them as well. So many times we have come in with a strongly held belief, and then over the space of the meeting and discussion, so much information and many points of view are expressed and heard. Somehow a common understanding and resolution seems to arise out of our talking together; a consensus agreement becomes almost effortless, taking most of us to a decision we might never having imagined making. We sometimes talk with wonder about what happened afterwards. I sometimes feel like we come to a river with all our personal little boats of different ideas, yet something happens when we get into the river and begin sailing together. In this process of coming to understanding every aspect of a decision, we often end up in a beautiful schooner all sailing together.

There are so many stories of particular moments I could tell. We could sit around talking for hours to do that. But for now, here is a glimpse of the astounding day we realized we could live wisely, better economically, with more energy efficiency, and with less impact on the land, if our homes were duplexes. Most of our members have been living in individual houses, many on vast farms with no other houses in sight, and at the beginning of the meeting duplexes seemed unimaginable. But by the end, something had shifted in us so much that it was as if we were breathing differently, yes, as if we breathed together, yes, we can do this because it makes the best sense for the whole project, for the whole community. Other decisions, like the pet policy, we are developing slowly, with many discussions so that we can come to something we can all live with, seeing our pets in the context of a whole community as well as in terms of the impact on the land and wild animals.

I think of Coleen talking about how we are going to have to make a shift in consciousness in this millennium, in how we think about living in groups and to create small households. We have to shift in our attachments to our ‘stuff’ and expand in how we are with each other. We have to become aware of the arrogance of our expectations from the privilege that we assume as Americans. I am aware of the process that is unfolding as I am involved with this group. I came in a year ago as an individual thinking about how I want My House, and My Gardens, and I now think about what I want to share and bring to the Common House and Common Gardens before I think my cozy little house.

I know there will be many thresholds of developing trust. I know there will be honeymoon periods and other times in the trenches of hard work together. I know the shadow sides of all of us will rear, and hopefully our dreams will help us understand those sides. But in the meantime, I see how I am healing from this journey. I am trusting the skills and willingness to learn and grow together that is happening in our community.

Elizabeth

Dreaming of Cohousing — Arielle Bywater

2009-08-19T08:12:00.000-07:00

A few nights ago I had a cohousing dream. It was, of course, about consensus decision-making. In it, a group of folks were trying to decide on a name and signage for a retail store we were doing through cohousing (on site?). There were three guys who wanted to name it after and use the image of a goddess, which for some reason I thought was a terrible idea. (Interesting that it was three GUYS aruging FOR a goddess which I was AGAINST...but that's fodder for a different kind of blog.) I finally realized I was not going to get my way and I had to stand aside, which was not easy for me.

All of which is to say, I guess, that I'm realizing that cohousing is not just buying a house in an established community and getting to know your neighbors well. It's not even just planning such a community. It's working with and establishing that community from the beginning, which, like parenting, partnering, or any other difficult and long-term and complicated relationship, requires real work and one's best self.

Why I'm Considering Cohousing — Arielle Bywater

2009-08-16T12:30:00.000-07:00

One of the members of the Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage recently suggested that we use this blog to explore some of the reasons why we're considering this option as candidly as possible. She made the point that many Americans respond with fear to the idea of their individual needs being met. I admit to often being one of those people!

Anyway, as a first stab at this enormous topic, here's what I wrote for the BC&E e-newsletter:

Ever since I can remember, I've been fascinated by countercultures and subcultures. (Watching the documentary Woodstock on video twenty years after it took place was enough to reduce me to self-pitying, born-in-the-wrong-time tears.) As the suburban kid of religious Jewish parents who were also sort of hippie ex-urbanites who also loved tent camping (and took me to Acadia when I was still in diapers), I was brought up in a wealth of interesting dichotomies, and have always been most at home outside the mainstream culture.

Now that I have a family of my own, I am constantly thinking of how best to live a life that reflects my values and satisfies my desires — which, like my childhood, are full of dichotomies. I want quiet (I write poems) and fellowship (I'm pretty outgoing, especially for a poet). Interdependence and independence. Simplicity and challenge. Freedom and responsibility. Like many people I know, I am striving to live a slower, greener life, but don't have the skill-set or time to homestead — and don't want to spend one more second in a car than I have to. I love pedestrian-friendly, in-town living — heck, I love big-city living! — except when it feels crowded and noisy and unfriendly. I want a life that is affordable, sustainable, and connected to the seasons, the landscape, and the people around me in deep and meaningful ways. Oh, and I want community with like-minded souls who will teach and inspire and enrich me. It's not too much to ask, is it?

To me, the idea of cohousing offers both a very old-fashioned, wholesome vision — kids running through the grass in wild packs! Baking chocolate-chip cookies for sixty people! Car pools!--and a genuinely radical experiment in living, one which offers a downright revolutionary antidote to many of our accepted but misguided American notions about house and home. Even what worries me about cohousing — how I think I would have to learn to be a better listener; how I would be forced to own less and share more; how, as a parent, I might not know where my children were every minute of the day — excites me, because I can see how much I'd benefit from those lessons.

I hope others in the group will chime in here about their hopes and fears!

"Instigating" — Arielle Bywater

2009-08-13T19:06:00.000-07:00

Steve's nickname for me is so much more revolutionary-sounding than I feel! I will aim to live up to it, in a good way.

My idea for this blog was that it could be a way for those of us participating in the Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage community-in-progress/process to chime in about it as we go along in an informal, as-it-happens sort of way. Maybe it can serve as another log of our experiences as they happen, and hopefully others out there interested in intentional communities will listen in. It seems like there will be multiple authors to this blog, which will make it all the more diverse and rich in its perspective.

For now, though, I'm off to bed (the dog was sick last night, and kept us all up--we're wiped out). So goodnight. And bye, Sanna and family! We can't wait to hear about what you discover while abroad!

Heading to Denmark — Sanna McKim

2009-08-13T18:33:00.000-07:00

Our bags are packed, kids are finally sleeping after much excitement about tomorrow's plane flight (it's not Denmark they're excited about as much as the flip down tables and free movie!), list of Danish cohousing communities in hand, and we're off to visit my mother's homeland tomorrow morning. Hoping to see Jernstoberiet, Tinggarden and Munksogaard (Danish bofaellesskaber) at a minimum, after several days of riding ancient bikes along the north coast of Sealand. Stay tuned! (I'm open to ideas of rural communities to visit when I'm there, so surf the web and post suggestions!).

A new outreach tool — Steve Chiasson

2009-08-13T04:18:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Arielle Bywater, AKA "The Instigator" for putting her shoulder to the wheel and providing the nudge that was needed to get this particular vehicle moving. Looking forward to it! — Steve