Memphis Democrat
January 5, 2006

Happy New Year everyone! Here's the news from Dancing Rabbit for this week, from your trusty correspondent Ted Sterling.

Well, I'm pretty sure we had a new record for the number of members here for the holidays this year. I counted 15 of us around Christmas day, and I think we increased that number for New Year's Eve. It was my first time here for the holidays and I had a great time. We had several games of ultimate frisbee during the week. When you have ultimate fanatics around, consideration of the weather is relative-- if the wind isn't too strong, or if the sun is out, we can usually scrounge up a handful of die-hards to play for an hour even if the temperature is in the 30's. This week we actually had enough for substitutes. I'm loving the opportunities to get my aerobic activity in mid-winter. Many of us look forward to the days when we have a rec room or gym to resort to in bad weather, but meanwhile we have to stick to the old-fashioned sorts of activities, like firewood gathering and cutting, fire building, bean sorting and cooking, kneading and baking bread, playing tag with the Johnson kids, and the like.

New Year's eve we also got some excellent exercise dancing the night away in Skyhouse. With perhaps the greatest networking of laptop computers yet seen at DR, we had several DJs through the evening, and lots of us got our groove on. We were extremely pleased to have Jeffrey with us again, though much too briefly, on a journey from Michigan back to his new home in California, and our new resident Ron made it twenty minutes ahead of midnight from Illinois, so the event had even more significance. DR friend Ron and his son Andrew also joined us and lasted well past midnight. I brought out my silly hat collection to help those who hadn't dressed up for the event, and various colored lights and glow sticks made dancing a spectator event as well as a participatory sport when the lights were turned out. The libations and snacks were tasty and kept us going through midnight and beyond, when the hardy partiers headed out to the big field for the first bonfire of the new year. I haven't had to write 2006 yet, but I'm sure I will one of these days.

The power scene at DR has the village looking a little dark in the evenings these days. With only a small amount of spotty sun seen in the past week, many of the power systems on farm are running pretty low. The common house's system has entered orange level, which means no showers, no superfluous email or web browsing, and other belt-tightening measures. Though at first I'm tempted to feel let down when this happens, I actually find myself pleased to be living a life in which I have no choice but to spend some quiet evenings by candlelight in the dark of midwinter, and to play board (not bored!) games or build puzzles instead of watch movies or surf the web. These few periods each winter keep electricity in its proper place in my mind, as something that is a great help in many ways, but is nonetheless something I can and should be able to live without. Of course, not every system is low. The Johnson's wind turbine sits on a pole forty or so feet above the other two turbines, and can be seen churning out the electrons many times when the other two are sitting still. Tim says the system has been at full for the past three weeks or more.

We look forward to the return of our other traveling members, and now we're moving toward our winter retreat in a few weeks, when we'll attempt to make some decisions for what we'll do and how we'll do it in the coming year. As we grow in numbers, so too does the complexity of our various social and infrastructural systems. With a new neighborhood set to open for building this coming year, we're in the process of designing and arranging roads, utilities, greywater systems, and all sorts of other things. The fun never stops!

We at Dancing Rabbit wish you all the best in your own new year, and we hope to see you when good weather returns!

Back to list of Memphis Democrat Columns