Memphis Democrat June 28, 2001

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

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If we had coordinated a little better, we could have had "Parent's Week" at Dancing Rabbit. Many of the folks here are having their parents, siblings and friends visit. It was fun to get to know the important people in everyone's lives and see the family resemblances. We also had a visitor this week named Matt from Jefferson City. He just graduated from architecture school and we were pleased to have his help on the construction site.

Things have been happening on various construction sites. Most of the tin roof is on Skyhouse now. And the plaster of the house I live in, Allium, was finally finished. Allium is a two room straw bale house. It is load-bearing, meaning the bales are the structural supports for the roof. The only wood used in the house are for the windows, doors, roof and internal wall. The building has three coats of plaster both inside and out, so it looks like an adobe house, with undulating walls and rounded corners. Now that the final plaster is done, its time for finishing touches, like curtains and landscaping. And all the rest of the work we do we can call "repairs".

The most exciting things this week, however, were social events. Nearly every night had something exciting going on, making it hard to go to sleep at a reasonable hour. For Alline's birthday, we do an annual No-Talent show. Unlike a talent show, you need to perform something either not usually recognized as a talent or something for which you have no talent. Folks sang, danced, made music with pots and pans, told unfunny jokes, performed tricks, wrote poems and the like. We laughed so hard our sides hurt.

For the summer solstice, we had a party to recognize the longest day of the year. We had a bonfire and did some drumming and folk dancing, before it turned into an all out dance party. The rain started coming down but it didn't stop the dancers. They just moved into the summer kitchen and kept spinning the tunes.

There were a few trips to Kirksville. Alline attended the Quilt Guild meeting. Cecil performed with his trombone in the weekly jazz group there. A packed carload of folks joined Cecil to watch him play, hang out in the coffeehouse and generally have a good time.

This weekend we had a smaller group than usual because Alline took a carload of folks up to Wisconsin to attend the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair. Alline runs a book business and sold out of books about alternative energy and community. Brian, Aaron and Mark got to meet people and learn about renewable energy. Brian was especially pleased to meet Julia Butterfly, the young woman who sat in a redwood tree in northern CA to keep it from being cut down.

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