Memphis Democrat
February 6, 2003

Alline returned from leading a Sierra Club trip in Hawaii with tropical treats and stories of palm trees and beautiful vistas. Stephanie returned from her trip to Portland, OR with avocados and tales of concerts and delicious ethnic food. We enjoyed very much the entertainment they both offered, especially because they often did so during breaks of our weekend long retreat. We met long and hard, making plans about how we will be building a community building this upcoming year, and how we'd like to change our decision-making process now that we are getting bigger. We took some pretty exciting steps.

We ended the retreat with a trip to Memphis to have dinner and see the movie "Catch Me If You Can". We were very sad to discover our favorite Memphis restaurant, Kelly's, was closed on Sundays. I had been dreaming all weekend of their curly fries.

As soon as the retreat was over, we had to say goodbye to Tamar. She flew out to meet her partner Jeffrey, who has been living these past few months in Germany. Jeffrey went to Germany to attend his childhood friend's wedding there and decided to stay for a few months, living and working nearby. Tamar is joining him for a one month to backpack around Europe before they both return home. After months of communicating mostly over the internet, I'm sure they'll be very glad to see each other.

The warmer weather came in and melted all the snow, leaving that warm, wet feeling that is an awful lot like spring. We know it will probably get cold again, but those of us who are living in unfinished houses sure are glad it is no longer below zero.

I forgot to mention it before, but we have a very special bird visitor in our area. A snowy owl moved in for the winter near the junction of 15 and 11. It is a large, almost totally white owl that spends its summers way up north in the tundra. Snowy owls migrate south in the winter, but not usually this far south. So this is a special treat for bird lovers. Unlike most owls, this species hunts during the daytime (which makes sense, because it's just about always daytime in the arctic in the summer). So you are likely to see him sitting on an utility pole scanning the fields for rodents in broad daylight.

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