Memphis Democrat November 15, 2000

Hi everyone. This will be my last column for a while - Rachel is coming home and will be back at the reins in time for the next issue of the Democrat. While I'm going to miss writing this every week, we'e all happy as heck that Rachel will finally be back home.

We've been keeping warm and cozy during this recent 'cold snap,' and hope you have too! Evenings have been spent in a variety of ways. We had a sewing night with the Sandhill folks, an art night that lasted into the wee hours of the morning, a poetry reading, and a writing workshop. Then there was the evening when, for some unknown reason, everyone had the urge to dance to Michael Jackson music. Jacob ran out to his cabin, rifled through his boxes of tapes and CDs, and dashed back to the main house - victorious. Dance party!

Voting day was fun - some of us rode our bikes into town, others drove in, and all the interns voted absentee. I really enjoyed chatting with the folks 'manning' the polls. Back at Dancing Rabbit we stayed up late that night to find out the results, and are still waiting...I wonder if we'll know who our next president will be by the time this issue of the Democrat goes to press? If they can't figure things out soon, we'd like to nominate Irene Mayfield.

In other Dancing Rabbit news, intern Minna's friend Carrie came for a weekend visit from St. Louis, and we all enjoyed her company and enthusiasm.

And speaking of enthusiasm, Baloo the golden retreiver continues to offer us a wide variety of hedge apples. We keep replacing them with sticks (and hiding the hedge apples), but he always seems to find them. Maybe he really is a retreiver afer all!

Mark, our intern from Minneapolis, returned home this week - on his bike! He'll be participating in a bike messenger competition as soon as he gets there. We really miss him, and are grateful for all of his cheerful (and well-done) work. Kurt continues to work on the chimney, and Minna and Tim carry on (without Mark) on the stairs of Kurt and Alline's house.