Memphis Democrat June 21, 2001

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

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Its been another packed week here at the ecovillage. One of the highlights was when 30 of the local 4-H-ers came by for a tour. They asked good questions and also had a good piece of advice. Many folks who read this column have never been to Dancing Rabbit, and can't imagine what a straw bale house looks like or may not know what I'm talking about half the time. So I'm going to try and explain about a little something every week.

Besides the 4-H crew, we had lots of other visitors. Ken and Andy from the FSA office in Memphis came out to help us with erosion control. Two visitors who are deaf stopped by for a day and Susan and I had the grandest time communicating with them in sign language. My music booking intern, Ellen, arrived here after a long road trip from her home in Oregon. She's living in a yurt she built herself. A yurt is a portable structure that is used by nomads in eurasia. The band Rebecca Riots, who I work for, visited us as part of their midwest tour and played a concert on the open second floor of Skyhouse. Skyhouse is a large community house that we are building and there are not yet walls. We had one sad departure. Rose, who joined us just a few weeks ago, decided to return to Madison, WI because of family concerns.

During one of the big rainstorms, our outhouse blew on its side. We were glad to learn no one had been in it at the time and had too much fun pushing it back over. Between the rainstorms, we got some work done. Kurt and Cecil got the electronics that were damaged by the lightening strike fixed and got the electricity going again. The tin is going on the roof of Skyhouse. Tony hosted a plastering party on Allium where he taught the folks at Sandhill how to plaster. A group went out to mulch some of the thousands of trees we planted. Erik and Rainbow are fixing up the laboratory we set up for biodiesel and are preparing to try and produce some from used vegetable oil. And the garden crew has been busy planting onions, zucchini, summer squash and leeks.

Tony led a workshop for new people here to learn facilitation skills. We have weekly meetings run by consensus, a democratic decision making process. The person who runs the meeting is called the facilitator and in order to share power equally we encourage everyone who wants to to take turns in that position.

Bekka from Sandhill led a contradance on the second floor of Skyhouse that was very well attended. Tamar, Don and Cecil provided the music, and lightening and fireflies provided the light show. The dance was in honor of Bekka's birthday, which is fortuitously the same day as Irene Mayfield's. Happy birthday to them both.

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