Jacob Stevens

EX-MEMBER BIO

These have all been themes in my life at one time or another, in one way or another, for reasons that are too involved to explain here. Instead I'll provide some simple facts.

I was born in Michigan. It's dunes, hills, trees and lakes tug at me. Although I have no intention of moving back there in the foreseeable future, the connection is such that if my soul has a geography, it mirrors Michigan's.

Although originally from Detroit, my family moved out to farmland when I was a child, where I spent my time surviving school in a cow-town and running around in the woods. Later I spent four idyllic years at Kalamazoo College, which was everything I could have ever hoped for in higher education. My family (who I often refer to as "the fam") is a much cherished source of strength and love to me.

After college came the Chicago years. I learned life in the big city, with it's various ups and downs, did nonprofit administration for The Chicago Chamber Musicians, and later settled into the Northwestern University library. During this time I had an epiphany. I had been planning to pursue what promised to be an illustrious career as a professor of Sociology. Instead I decided to put my efforts toward saving the world in a more direct manner (which is not to imply any denigration of Soc. profs, for whom I often hold a high regard). I was faced with the choice of studying certain cultures and activities or living them directly. The latter won out.

My plans were, in a nutshell, to devote my life to environmental (and other forms of) activism, a spiritual and cultural grounding in place, and a deeper integration of my emotional, political, academic, spiritual, vocational lives. The manner in which to achieve this took some time to percolate and explore, but Dancing Rabbit quickly rose to the front of how I envisioned beginning this life. I am excited to begin this next phase of the journey. Some of the first things I'll be devoting time to at DR are helping to build a strong art presence and furthering our publicity efforts and networking [and thus our educational work], including "development" work.

Somehow this describes my life and yet doesn't capture anything at all....

Other tidbits: I enjoy hearing and making music and to varying degrees play a smattering of instruments; compose riddles; do illustrations and so-called "fine art"; play games; love people; advocate/live feminism; do computer work (including GIS mapping); really appreciate libraries; invent constellations, gather various things from the woods and fields, and hope to practice yoga regularly.

And now that I've been at DR awhile I can say a bit about what I do here: I make money for skyhouse, I oversee our restoration work; I help administer the internship program, I help out with construction, especially focusing on earthen plasters with my adored partner, Timothy, and am really into creating art, music and culture that is specific to our lives here at Dancing Rabbit. I do a bunch of other things too, but that's the big stuff. You can check out the public journal about my time here that I send to my friends, if you like.

Also, please come see my artwork.

Please feel free to write me: jacob@ic.org.

Jacob - 2/18/99