Memphis Democrat April 18, 2001

Day to Day Life
Memphis Democrat Column -- Jacob's Travel Logs

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by Brad Jacobson

Rachel, who usually writes this column, is away for three weeks so I volunteered to cover for her while she is gone. My name is Brad and I am living at Dancing Rabbit for the spring, helping out with construction and anything else that comes my way. I am an architect who makes his home in San Francisco and lived at college with many of the members of Dancing Rabbit.

The spring weather sure is strong around here. The wind rides in with the clouds to tell you what the day will be: today you will work inside, it says. Wednesday and Thursday were those kind of days. Don, Tamar, and Megan - our ace gardening posse - worked indoors building wood boxes or "flats" for transferring flowers, while Mark and I mixed up a batch of earthen plaster and put down a second coat inside "Bella Ciao", the strawbale cabin I am living in while I am here. Outside, the blue tarps that were protecting the unfinished strawbales were savagely ripped from the walls by the wind as rain blew diagonally into the face of the building.

Sol and Cedar's teepee, which was assembled with much love and care on Monday, toppled with them in it (!) during the height of the storm. They escaped unharmed physically but had to face the task of remaking three broken poles. They bounced right back, though, and this time next week you'll be reading the story of how the teepee has risen again!

An unexpected visitor helped out with the teepee work. Matt, a New Yorker who I met in Mexico a few weeks ago, motorcycled up 820 miles from Texas on Monday and arrived here unannounced after midnight. On Tuesday morning, after feeding him some home-baked bread and letting him take a shower, I got him right to work. He had useful experience setting up a teepee before in a community garden in the south Bronx in New York City. It is not rare for visitors to immediately jump into things here at DR; I think the helping spirit is infectious.

Our builders, Roger and Lisa, returned on Thursday and led ten of us up the ladder to the second floor of Skyhouse for a "bent raising". We build these "bents", or bolted together column & beam constructions, out of recycled heavy timber on the ground and then lift them up with the aid of jacks, ropes, and pulleys.

On Saturday we had another, much lighter, raising as we set up a volleyball net and eight of us went out for a post-dinner match as the dark storm clouds spit rain down. As usual for us, it was not who won or lost the game which mattered: only how funny you looked playing.

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