Memphis Democrat
September 16, 2004

Alyson here, filling in for Rachel again. Our good-bye of the week was to Ingrid, who spent the summer as a work exchanger for Ironweed, like Ed. Ingrid's inspiring love of gardening and her intellectual curiosity were only parallelled by her ability to lift heavy stones for their kitchen's foundation. She'll be at Sandhill for the sorghum harvest season, so we're lucky we'll still get to hang out with her sometimes. Thanks for everything, Ingrid!

One of the times we're likely to see Ingrid (and the rest of the Sandhillers) is at our weekly potluck. Every Tuesday we take turns hosting the Sandhill/DR potluck. This week the meal was at DR, and some of us celebrated the beginning of soccer season by playing a game before dinner with Renay, a young girl who lives at Sandhill. Then on Friday we had a meal together again: our weekly DR community dinner. And on Sunday most of us gathered a third time for a raw vegan potluck, organized by Stefanie. If the health of a community is measured by the hours spent sharing meals together, we seem to be doing all right!

This week saw a number of meditative or spiritual events as well, besides the regular morning yoga and Sunday morning spiritual gathering. Tereza organized a candle-light vigil to honor and mourn those who have died in Iraq. On the weekend I facilitated a workshop on "deep ecology," a practice that can help people connect more deeply with themselves, each other and the Earth. One of the ultimate goals of "thinking like a mountain", as one author puts it, is to transform the way humans live with one another and the planet.

On a more practical note, we were fortunate to be able to pick more local fruit this week. Lorraine Kapfer invited us over to pick her yummy pears and peaches. Thanks, Lorraine! They're already in our cobblers and dehydrators. And a few people hopped in the Sandhill car heading over to Dan Kelly's orchard to help him bring in the huge apple crop--and to bring some apples home with them. He makes fabulous cider, too. And I heard at least one Rabbit talking about how to make that cider "hard." Ah, the fruits of the season.

I had a fun time this week in Kirksville teaching a class at Truman State University how to make decisions by consensus. The class was experimenting with making some of their own course decisions together, but wanted some pointers on how it's done. It was interesting exploring the differences between regular voting, in which there's usually an unhappy minority, and consensus, in which everyone has a fair say in the discussion.

Amy came back from the east coast this week, saying that it was great to see her old friends but that two and a half weeks was too long to be away. It's great to see her smiling face again. One of her friends will be visiting her this fall and we're looking forward to meeting him. Cecil also returned from a brief stay in Madison, WI.

He and Tamar had gone up there with our old friends and former residents Mark and Megan, who we were thrilled to have here again this week. While they were here, there was an impromptu mini-reunion: one evening, everybody but Tereza at Bluestem/Ironweed dinner had been or was an intern or work-exchanger: Penn, Ted, Sara, Tom, Mark, Megan, Ingrid, and Tamar. We love it when old friends return.

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