Memphis Democrat
December 29, 2005

Suzanne here--wishing all of you a happy holiday. This year we celebrated with a Winter Solstice party over at Sandhill. First we worked up an appetite skating on Sandhill's pond. A group of us played ice hockey--I found that it is not that different from ultimate frisbee. Except that it is a lot harder to stop moving on the ice! I also discovered that if you play ice hockey with Canadians (Stan!) you should make sure they are on your team. There were a lot of kids out on the ice-a few of whom learned to skate that day. I couldn't believe how quickly they picked it up.

After skating we all came inside for the feast--stuffed mushrooms, homemade bread, hot tamales (compliments of Laird and Maikwe who was visiting from Albuquerque,) squash casserole, sweet potato fries, scalloped potatoes, and all kinds of other goodies. It was a fantastic meal. Jenn made a really good hot apple drink with spices and rum called wassail. There were lots of cookies and even vegan chocolate marzipan. By the end of the night I was in a food coma but happy.

Earlier in the day Tom and Tereza hosted a "secret snow co" party. Two weeks beforehand, participants exchanged names and then for the next two weeks gave each other secret small presents. There were lots of very creatively wrapped gifts--mostly small things like sodas and fruit and chocolate bars. Every time I heard somebody giggle, I knew a secret snow co had struck again. There was a lot of fun but fruitless guessing until the party when all snow cos were revealed.

After Solstice, suddenly it got very quiet around here. Rachel, Tony, Amy, Juan, Nathan and Tamar all left at 4 am driven by Cecil to catch the Quincy train and Laura and Penn left later the same day- all off to visit their families. We are going to be a pretty small crew until about mid-January when everyone returns.

Early in the week Tony lead a "design charette." A small group of us got together and each drew what we envision that our town center will eventually look like. We then looked at each other's drawings and Tony drew a design that pulled together elements from different drawings. Some to the things we considered were, will the roads be inside the town or on the outside? How can we include the trees that are already there in the design? How can we ensure that the town gets lots of foot traffic? And what businesses do we envision there? I would like to say we completely planned town center but it is sure to be an ongoing process.

The few of us left got together last night for a small party over at Tom and Tereza's Saturday night. They had made cookies and punch and we sat around and told goofy jokes and laughed a lot and some of us drank a bit too much rum. I'm not naming any names!

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