Memphis Democrat
October 27, 2008

Newbie Mem-Dem writer Mary Beth here, reporting this week’s Dancing Rabbit news.

As the time of year for growing food, building, and being outdoors in general comes to an end, my fellow Rabbits and I have been scurrying about, trying to finish our last projects of the season before the snow flies. As the common house bustles increasingly with life, the outdoor hum of power tools, the chirps of early morning birds and late night insects are becoming a distant memory.

This was yet another week that included a surprising number of visitors. Despite the wind and cold that blew in Tuesday just before potluck, there was quite a crowd gathered at the common house for the feast. Guests included a large group from Eastwind Community, two Canadian women who stopped here on their bike trip from Winnipeg to New Orleans, Tereza’s mother Joyce visiting us from Michigan, and Caroline Estes, consensus and facilitation trainer extraordinaire.

Caroline was around this week to offer a two day training session for those interested in learning her consensus and facilitation methods. She is one of the elders of consensus training. At 80 years old she has trained the majority of other teachers in the country who work with secular consensus.

Following the potluck there was a stunning performance by The Headless Chickens, a musical group consisting of two singer/songwriters, Cynder (age 10) and Ant (age 11), accompanied by Mark (from Red Earth Farms) on guitar, Thomas on harmonica, and Ted on djembe. Their concert featured such thought-provoking ditties as “Ballad of the Banana” and “Face it, Everyone’s a Little Mean”. It was quite an impressive show, especially given the number of unfamiliar faces in the audience.

Late season work exchanger Kayla from Berkeley graced the village this week, helping Matt and Jeff with the earth bag dome they are building which now has walls that are over head high. Kayla was also busy this week interviewing folks for an independent study project she is doing on communities, as well as sharing her culinary knowledge and first hand experience as a pastry chef with us. Mmm,

Dancing Rabbit, with the help of the neighboring communities Sandhill and Red Earth, hosted this year’s Fellowship of Intentional Communities (FIC) meeting. This group included around twelve FIC members, all long term communitarians, holding three solid days of meetings. Folks reading this might not know that Sandhill is the home to a national non-profit organization that supports not just “intentional communities” but also all kinds of cooperative organizations. The meetings included several interesting conversations such as “How can big groups, like cities and neighborhood associations, make decisions that include everyone?” and “In this time of economic and ecological crisis, what do we as a group have to offer the wider world?”

The FIC meeting was catered by our own Annie Radford, an impressive chef to boot. For three days she fed this group a gourmet breakfast, lunch, and dinner. One of the dinners featured homemade, local, organic mozzarella cheese, made by resident cheese maker, Dan Durica.

After Friday’s community dinner there was yet another performance by Cynder and Ant, this time theatrical in nature. The girls did their own renditions of a few numbers from the play Santa Goes Green, which is interestingly the play that the local public school is performing this Winter. This has been a hyper-creative week for the girls, as I heard rumors of them making up cheers for the weekly Ultimate Frisbee game, Last I saw them, they were walking on stilts they had fashioned from old coffee cans.

Saturday night we celebrated Laird’s Birthday, just the way he wanted it, with funny hats, good beer and games of all kinds. And cake of course. Laird is a typical Sandhiller in liking liquid sweeteners and his birthday tradition is maple cake. This year’s cake, made by Kayla, was reported to be the best ever. The highlight of the evening was the group actually managing to stump Laird in a word game, which is a rare feat!

the first night(s) in his new house, which is now, with the help of “Ziggy Sr.”, complete with windows and a door.

On a very windy Sunday, immediately following the Week in Preview meeting, those of us in the common house received word that Ziggy needed help, that parts of his roof were flying away. With little delay, about fifteen of us went over to find Ziggy on top of his house attempting to hold down the pond liner that is supposed to cover his roof, which was flapping in the wind. The flattened cardboard boxes under the liner were flying through the air, one piece after another. With all of the help, Ziggy was able to tie down the pond liner with a hastily designed criss-cross of rope. For more detailed updates on Ziggy and the year of mud, check out http://small-scale.net/yearofmud/.

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