Memphis Democrat
August 8, 2002

by Alyson, filling in for Rachel

This was a hard week for us here at Dancing Rabbit. On Thursday Don's sister Melinda was killed near her home up in Iowa. Don's been doing all right, and has been getting lots of support from the community here and from his friends at Sandhill. He's spent time talking with his other siblings and his mother. He went up to the funeral on Saturday.

Some folks here knew Melinda personally, having played music at her wedding two years ago. She had been planning to visit us next week. When something like this happens it really touches everybody in the community. On Thursday we're having a small memorial evening here to talk and share with each other about Melinda, her life, and how her death has moved us. We just hope our thoughts and prayers are offering some comfort to Don and his family who have suffered this great loss.

Meanwhile through our mourning life goes on. We've been getting some great sweet corn from our gardens, and the garlic is getting all braided up and ready for sale. We can hardly wait for our big fat tomatoes to ripen.

We enjoyed seeing some of our neighbors and hearing all the great singing talent at the musical in Memphis. Maybe some day we'll have a couple of our members up on that stage.

Mark returned from his vacation with his family and we got to meet his parents briefly. It's good to have him back. Tom also came back from his mountain climbing expedition. Sounds like he didn't get to go as high as he wanted because his climbing partner held back. I'm sure Susan will be glad to hear he didn't take as many risks as he could have.

Josh, our new Village Intern, arrived on Thursday. He adds to our growing list of interns and residents who hail from Canada. Recently having finished college, he will be here for a few months learning about a variety of aspects of our quickly growing ecovillage.

This week we figured out that we'll have about 14% more people than we had projected in our eating cooperative in the course of the year. That means we've got to get more food. Don will be growing some more of it, but we'll be looking to buy more onions, potatoes, and some other things before winter. If you know a local organic supplier of these things, please give us a call. We want lots!

The heat this week has meant more jumps in the pond, and more fans blowing. But for a few brave (crazy?) souls, it meant sprinting for hours in the blazing sun. Tony, Betsy, Cecil, and I went down to Columbia to play in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament. Ultimate Frisbee is a sport resembling basketball or soccer, where teams of seven people run down the field throwing the frisbee among themselves and trying to reach the opposite end zone, while the other team tries to block their throws and get the frisbee for themselves. It's a competitive sport but it's also cooperative and player-run, since there are no referees and no coaches. We'd been playing at DR for a few weeks, but usually we can only get three or four people on a team. It was great to play all day on a good field with full teams. We had fun playing our hearts out and meeting other local players, then walking around downtown Columbia, visiting the Peace Nook, seeing a movie and having dinner. We came home with blisters, skinned knees, and big smiles.

Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is a nonprofit and a residential community that demonstrates ecological sustainability in Rutledge, MO. We give a tour every Saturday at 1pm. Please call first before coming by, at 883-5511.

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