Memphis Democrat
January 26, 2006

Rachel here, reporting on another week of the hustle and bustle at Dancing Rabbit. Things have felt unusually busy for the depths of January. Maybe it has been the warm weather, or maybe the upcoming retreat. It seems like every committee has been meeting to get ready for the retreat, the first part of which is this coming weekend. This is the time of year when we make lots of plans and decisions for the upcoming year.

But there's been a lot of physical bustle, too. The firewood that was cut and stacked at the Common House was getting low, so Suzanne and I devoted a few afternoons to cutting up some more. I like using the chain saw and I also like that in this community it is normal for two small women to be the ones processing the firewood.

Thomas has been leading crews to take care of long-standing tasks. He brought a bunch of folks out to maintain some of the trails on our land. He also organized the burning of what we call the Falling Down Barn. When we bought our land, there was a barn in disrepair that over the years became a jagged pile of wood and metal. We have been pulling out wood to reuse, but what was left was a lot of hard to use bits. Thomas got the fire started at 9:30 and kept throwing more onto the blaze until 3pm, despite sleet and hail. His crew got it all onto the fire. Two days later there were still coals and a ring of unfrozen ground around the pile. Now we have to figure out what to call that area ("Go to where the Falling Down Barn used to be"?) and what we want to do with it.

There have been some comings and goings. Molly returned from her long vacation with her family, with eyes that have been surgically improved. Jennifer's step-mother Carol visited and Jenn got a cute little kitten named Vega. Tony and Laird went down to Tennessee for their quarterly meeting for the Fellowship of Intentional Communities. We also said goodbye to all the delegates who came to northeast Missouri for the Federation of Egalitarian Communities meeting. We sent them off with a big dance party in Skyhouse.

All that rain filled up my wood-fired hot tub and I have been enjoying the cold, snowy nights and the crisp, bright stars from my warm tub. There's nothing like country living.

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