That’s still under discussion. With the pandemic, we definitely have to modify Halloween traditions. There’s a push to go all out decorating your house this year. The kids and I have really gone wild on my own porch, and a group of kids decorated the play structure. We’ve enjoyed walking the neighborhood and seeing some creative and spooky houses.
Homemade Sugar Skull Picture
If you want a haunting sugar skull in your window, as pictured above, let me know- the kids and I had great fun creating the masterpiece in our window and would love to make one to decorate your place. If you haven’t seen it yet, definitely drop by and take a look.
Me, when I’m angry
If you don’t decorate, I might put on my scary witch costume and put a curse on your house. (Yes, I’ll wear a mask.)
I am a fan of Star Trek, and have recently been re-watching Voyager. I watched an episode with the Borg, and it reminded me of something that came up at the National Cohousing Conference last year- assimilation.
Borg Drone Seven of Nine, tertiary adjunct of Unimatrix 01
If you aren’t familiar with the Borg, here’s an overview. They are “bad guys”- a collective of cybernetic humanoids (drones) linked with a hive mind. They assimilate populations and those innocent people become Borg. They are very persistent and adapt easily. Resistance is futile. But of course, our heroes always manage to defeat the Borg, even if it takes a few episodes to do it.
Back to the cohousing conference- one of the workshops I attended was about welcoming new members into the community. The presenter said new members must assimilate, or be exiled. We all chuckled, but recognized some truth to it. The presenter continued explaining, that when new people come, they have new ideas, and new energy. Which means “different” ideas and “different” energy. Which then means, it’s not the same way we’ve always done it, which means change, which is scary! And that can often result in conflict.
So what happens with that conflict? The new member gives up and assimilates to the old way, or they push their new ideas and become exiled. If that’s the case, often they are unhappy and end up moving out, which just begins the cycle again because there will be new people with new energy.
It was an eye opening lecture and discussion. It made me look inward and think about how have I responded to new ideas in the community? How was I treated when I first came and began participating? Am I one of the “bad guys” forcing assimilation? How can I help to welcome new members and encourage their new ideas and energy?
We have been facing a lot of change this year, and many of us are just worn out from all of it- the pandemic, the wildfire smoke, politics, and endless lists of stuff that needs getting done in the community with no energy to do it. Our meetings are virtual and our opportunities for connecting with one another in person are sparse. The pandemic has disrupted and limited our opportunities for connection. It has been tough for me to be a good community member right now. So I wonder, what kind of a community are we welcoming new people into right now? Would anyone want to be assimilated right now?
Since I’ve been here a while, I know this place to be a caring and supportive community with respectful people of varied interests and abilities. It is a community that strives to meet our mission, vision, and values. Community members are interesting and creative, and I am confident we will figure out new ways to keep connected as this pandemic continues. I am happy and grateful to live in this community.
I hope that prospective members will see that this is a vibrant community and great place to live. And maybe assimilation isn’t as bad as it seems on television.
As is typical during the first few days of school, the teachers asked the students about their summer vacation. Usually, there would be stories about the amusement park, the swimming pool, or traveling across the country. Because of the pandemic, I can’t imagine anyone had a typical summer vacation. We made occasional trips around town for hikes, but there were two camping trips we took with neighbors that were really bright spots in an otherwise unusual and lonely summer.
Enjoying a campfire
Cohousing is great for sharing resources. Since I don’t have a tent, I was able to borrow a tent and sleeping bags from one of the neighbors. The group that went camping is very skilled, so they helped me figure out how to set up the borrowed tent. They also made the reservations, planned the hikes, and brought all the other necessary supplies. I just had to show up! We were careful with physical distancing protocols and wearing masks during the trip. We took separate cars and had separate campsites, but we were still able to do activities together.
Sharing a meal
The highlights of the two trips were the hike to a waterfall, and watching the sunset on the beach. Sitting around the campfire, sharing meals, and playing games were also great memories.
My kids and I enjoyed the trips and are grateful we have neighbors who are willing to teach us how to camp and make the experience more enjoyable. We are also lucky to live in such a wonderful location with beautiful campgrounds a short drive away.
10:00 Saturday morning and 3 of us are working on the CH patio. There comes a loud noise from McDonalds. It was clear and loud enough we thought it was a car hitting a dumpster in the parking lot. We couldn’t see anything so we went back to work.
In a few minutes some folks come over the bridge and say “there is a car in the wetlands”. We went to look and there was a car 12-15 feet down the slope from fast food heaven.
The driver was a fully clothed elderly man who was able to get back up the hill with his cane. As we approached the police warned us the car was on a slippery slope. And the second officer quipped, “it’s in neutral too.”
The tow truck driver attached two lines to the back of the car while he and the officers had a good laugh. Several of us watched the operation from the back of our newest members 3 bedroom. And away the car went.
But there might have been a mystery involved in this incident. One of our families said they had seen that same car turn around in the north side parking lot not minutes before the accident. What had convinced him that whatever he was looking for was just over the hill from McDonalds parking lot.
At the 2019 National Cohousing Conference in Portland, I attended a workshop session where one of the ice-breaking activities was to go around our small circle and share something good and also something bad about living in cohousing. When we got back together into the larger group, the facilitator, somewhat jokingly, referred to this as the cohousing paradox- that it can exist as both good and bad.
[Paradox: any person, thing, or situation exhibiting an apparently contradictory nature.]
Until then, it hadn’t occurred to me that being both good and bad is a paradox. We all have good days and bad days, or good years and bad years. I just assumed that’s life, not a paradox. And yet, it’s practically the definition of a paradox. Cohousing has both frustrating (bad) and enjoyable (good) elements. I suppose we strive each day and with each interaction to strike a balance between those elements.
I will enjoy writing more about the frustrations and joys of cohousing… in future posts. The paradox of good and bad came up this week not in a discussion about cohousing, but with one of my kids.
School started back up this week and it’s distance learning from home because of the pandemic. One of my kid’s teachers has assigned “180 days of feelings” which is an online journal where they track how they feel each day. On the first day, my kid had only bad things to say: “it was stressful”, “it was frustrating”, “it was exhausting”, “I think they’re not a good teacher”, “this was the worst first day ever.” I admit, my kid takes after me. I find the negative very easily and complaining comes naturally. Though I empathized, since it was really stressful for me too, I pressed for more explanation, and also asked wasn’t there anything at all good to report? For example, you were barefoot all day, which has never happened at school before. After some thought, my kid finally conceded that, “well,… it was nice to pet the cat during the school day.”
For a reward after making it through the first day, we enjoyed ice cream at home. The first day back at school was, paradoxically, both bad and good. I’ve asked my kid to make an effort to record some good feelings in the journal, as well as the bad feelings. You’ll be happy to learn that the second day was “pretty good”.
If you were looking for proof of the apocalypse, look no further. We have a pandemic, the sky is on fire, and I am actually contributing to a blog! Was all that part of the prophecy?
I’ve been on the editorial team for months and though I’ve had ideas for posts and taken plenty of pictures, I haven’t contributed yet. At our editorial team meeting, I decided and was encouraged to post once a week- what’s been going on at Cascadia Commons Cohousing Community.
So here’s the big thing going on right now- THE SKY! This photo was taken by neighbor, Pat, and there was no color filter used- the sky is the orange hue and haze due to the nearby wildfire smoke. The angry red sun didn’t photograph as well, but it’s quite a fantastic sight.
So that’s why I’m indoors, posting a blog entry. I’m waiting to find out if there will be evacuation orders in the next few days. But I’ll enjoy looking through my window at this surreal, other-worldly, sci-fi, dystopian view while it lasts.
In the interest of communal harmony, the language and imagery of the original article have been altered. The stricken text remains, so that the original sin of the author is laid bare to the reader. If any Packers’ fans are offended by the replacement image for this article, please feel free to express your sentiments in the comments section. – ed
Imagine that you are standing at the front door of the Common House at 6am, with an urgent need to enter the building and the keypad lock isn’t responding. Do you know where the Common House key can be found? A light isn’t working in the south side parking lot. Whom should you inform and how? You’re not on the current meal rotation. Is it OK to take leftovers from the Common House fridge? The answers to these and a multitude of other questions are part of the tribal Cascadia Commons acquired (hereafter CCA) knowledge accumulated here over the past twenty years.
A small fraction of that tribal CCA knowledge is contained in the members manual, most of it resides in someone’s noggin, the rest can be found on a paper calendar, or document, by searching the mailing list message archive, or Google Drive.
Because we don’t know what we don’t know, it’s often difficult to formulate the questions we should ask. It would be helpful to have a proper owner’s manual for Cascadia Commons.
I’ve spent a week and a half, putting some of our tribal CCA knowledge into a Groups.io wiki. It’s really cool. And, the exercise of organizing and understanding the fraction of our collective wisdom available in print and on Google Drive has been personally illuminating. Particularly, I’ve become aware of the gaps where we have not formalized unwritten codes of conduct and tradition. We are very dependent on the knowledge that is often locked away in the brains of our fellow residents. Thank heavens for the mailing list. Otherwise we’d be constantly knocking on doors which, in this particular era, is probably something we should try to minimize.
While my first post on this topic focused on the nifty messaging features of Groups.io, I’m equally impressed with the Wiki and easy access to Google Drive files. Having a single site, where all of our digitized knowledge can be managed and accessed, is much less stressful than navigating between several different platforms to find what you are looking for.
I’ve been thinking for a while about our Cascadia Commons mailing list which is, by today’s standards of social media and online group networking tools, truly archaic. Even for a mailing list platform Google Groups is bare bones basic. It hasn’t changed much since its inception.
Groups.io has a take on dealing with some of the limitations in traditional mailing list platforms. At its basic level it works just like every other mailing list. Messages posted to the list show up in your inbox. What’s cool is that you decide which messages are sent to your inbox by filtering messages with hashtags you designate. So, if you don’t want email on topics such as #pandemic, #dirtyjoke, #dumptrump; you can mute them and manage the inflow from the list to your inbox as you wish. Handy links appear in the footer of each message letting you mute further messages on the thread or all messages with that hashtag in the future.
Links at bottom of message
There’s lots more great stuff on the server side too. You can create an album of vacation pix and post a link to it, or use a single album to store all photos that you share in messages on the site. And, like Google Groups, you can also have a web only account. Unlike Google Groups, the web features are so good that you will actually want to use it.
Requests for help can be mildly problematic as people often respond privately and we don’t know if the issue was resolved or not. The chat feature handles these scenarios beautifully. I send out my chat message to the list: “Need a ride to the airport Sunday AM.” In the footer of the message is a link to the online chat. Anyone can check the chat to see the status of the issue. No need for any more messages to the list on the topic.
There’s an integrated calendar that will send notices of upcoming birthdays and events to the list. Yes, you can mute those too if you don’t wish to receive calendar reminders. And, it has a simple poll feature for questions like: “What night would you like to watch my “Best of Ernest Borginine” film marathon:
Monday
Wednesday
Friday
Not in a million years
While it might not fully replace Google Drive because of the 1GB file limit on free accounts, the essential files can be stored on Groups.io and even links to Google Drive files and folders as well. Oh, and a feature that I appreciate, the list can subscribe to The Cascadian blog feed, sending notices of new articles as they are posted.
Finally, as the storehouse of Cascadia Commons tribal knowledge, there’s a wiki. Who knew we needed a wiki? Want to reference the Pet Policy and read comments on outstanding issues? It’s in the wiki. Confused for the umpteenth time about which plastic lids go where in the recycling, just check the wiki page. As a repository for communal knowledge, wikis are the jam.
You’re probably asking yourself now “How can I behold this eighth wonder of the world and see the great pyramids of email for myself?” You can subscribe to the list on it’s Groups.io home page and you’ll be all set for when and if we migrate from Google Groups. I think it’s a no-brainer 🤓.
Look for an official proposal and demo at the next HOA meeting.
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