Who said it slows down here in the winter? Not I! (Of course this originally said “not me” but I asked super grammar man Ted to proofread this, and he was adamant!) ‘Tis Tereza here, with the latest from Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.
Let’s start with some great news! The Milkweed Mercantile won Green America’s quarterly “People & Planet Award”! We are thrilled for them! The award recognizes America’s best green small businesses, and each of three winners will receive $5,000. Winners were chosen by a month-long public voting process, and the Mercantile is so grateful to all those who voted for their business.
Dancing Rabbit is also extremely grateful to everyone who responded to our annual fundraising appeal last week. Those donations go to support our outreach and education efforts, helping us share our sustainability skills and knowledge with the world. Thank you all so much for your support! And if you haven’t given but would like to, here’s the link.
I realize I haven’t mentioned the still-feels-new Village Council recently, and so want to let you all know that the seven Council members, including new member Bear, have been meeting regularly, continuing our work of making village-wide decisions on behalf of the full group. One recent decision involved clarifying one of our Covenants, which are the basic agreements about our behavior that every Rabbit agrees to when they become a member, and include such things as limiting fossil fuel use, recycling, and using organic methods to grow food and reused or sustainably-harvested timber to make buildings.
One of the most important of our Covenants, and the one that makes us stand out even from most other ecovillages, is our commitment to not using personal vehicles at DR. It states: Dancing Rabbit members will not use personal motorized vehicles, or store them on Dancing Rabbit property. Now this doesn’t mean we never use privately owned vehicles; we’ve long agreed that when folks are traveling long distances away they are not required to abide by this covenant. But there have been a number of tricky issues around the specifics of how this is actually implemented. The Council tried to close potential loopholes and address some of the confusion around the topic, and I think we did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself, with lots of help from the EcoProgress Committee, and many other community members who attended a number of full group meetings on the topic over the years.
In other news, Scout got his tattoo equipment and the first few respondents to his email offer got free tattoos this week: SunGee designed a colorful version of the Dancing Rabbit logo for herself, Thomas got a pictorial ode to his bicycle, Clint has people-trees, and Ben got a duck leg. They are all way more amazing than I am making them sound, trust me. I’m super excited that Scout has found another medium in which to express his amazing artistry.
Now maybe some of you are tired of hearing about the weather here, but I hope you can try to have compassion for we-the-writers and remember that it plays a pretty big part in our lives! This week was cooooold, with an amazing storm that started out as freezing rain pellets (I got hit in the head by some as I was walking home and I think they should be renamed ice pelters. Ouch!). The freezing rain clung to the trees so that after it switched to big flaky snow overnight, by morning it was truly a winter wonderland, with every branch and object defined by the inches of white fluffy snow covering it. Everything looked magical and beautiful! Even I, never the biggest fan of cold weather, simply had to go out for a walk to witness the beauty. Luckily Jennifer agreed to accompany me, and the lively chatting as we went made the cold wind bite a little less.
Tony took a lot of snow-gorgeous pictures and posted them on the Dancing Rabbit Facebook page—very worth seeing!
In other happenings, Ted arrived home this week, and other than a scary adventure on a snowy road, had a good time visiting family back East. Dennis and Sharon are also home from their trip to Cuba and we look forward to seeing their presentation about the permaculture conference they attended. Rachel showed pictures of her trip to Morocco in the Casa on Monday night—I didn’t attend but am hoping to see them at some point, since the ones I saw on Facebook were really lovely.
Amanda hosted two events, an evening of dancing (to a playlist mostly put together by Mariana), as well as an afternoon workshop teaching TRE (Trauma Releasing and Tension Reducing Exercises). I attended both and they were amazing, though in very different ways. I think the TREs are poised to become another regularly occurring event in our lives.
SunGee held an incense making workshop on Saturday as part of her offering to the community while she is living in Tamar’s house this winter. In the warmer months Tamar’s house is used for health and healing by being available for anyone to use for those purposes. It’s used for meditation, mediation, journaling, bodywork and energy work sessions, co-counseling and other forms of peer counseling, and sometimes as just a nice private space to hang out in. This is especially useful for short term summer tenters, who usually don’t have access to common space other than the common house, which can get pretty loud and raucous at times. In the winter, Tamar’s house provides housing to someone who offers health and healing to the community in partial exchange for rent. SunGee has been doing massage and will be offering other workshops as well. I wasn’t able to make the incense workshop but I hear it was well-attended and enjoyable, with lots of amazing smells drifting through the Great Room.
Lots has been going on, but with travel and holiday visits elsewhere, it’s also a much smaller crowd here at the moment. Community dinner on Fridays is feeling almost intimate, like the old days when there weren’t so many of us and you could actually have just one or two conversations at the dinner table, as opposed to community dinner in the summer, when dozens might be happening at once. I like the seasonality of it, the ebb and flow of people in a vibrant community of so many individuals and groups. We have a recent addition to our Week in Preview meetings: “I Heart DR”, where folks say what they love about DR, and right now I’m feeling warm and fuzzy about the connections I feel with everyone who lives here. All in all I’ve been heart-ing us a lot lately, and I wish all of you a very heart-filled holiday season!
Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is an intentional community and educational nonprofit in northeast Missouri, focused on sustainable living. Regular tours will start again in April of 2014. in the meantime, check us out on our website or on Facebook.