Cohousing-L Mailing List: Stuart's conference report

[Stuart Staniford-Chen (stanifor]

I don't have time to give a full report, but I can scrawl a few things 
about what I experienced.  

Firstly, this was the most fun weekend I've had in months (or maybe 
years).  I spent the whole conference walking about a foot off the 
ground.  I lived on very little sleep and not much more food but lots of 
endorphins.  The energy and the atmosphere there were incredible.  It 
seemed to me that all the folks there (about 180 I think?) formed an 
instant community just by virtue of their shared interest and their 
shared ability to build good interpersonal situations.  All the 
professional conferences I've attended have been quite different - 
there is the shared interest, but there is manifestly *not* the same 
talent for or agreement about communication.

I felt like I spent much of the conference with my hand extended in 
front of me saying "Hi, I'm Stuart."  And in almost every case I 
immediately fell into a fascinating discussion of my community or 
whatever group the person I was talking to was involved in.  I learnt 
*so* much from talking to other folks.  And I was so impressed with the 
quality of the people I talked to.

Another thing I felt was that this is probably the most exciting time 
to be in cohousing (the movement).  It's a thing that has now proven that 
it can work here, but it's still very new, and thus very full of 
optimism and energy.  Probably, in twenty years it will be much more 
established and there will be less excitement.  More people happily 
living in it, but less euphoria.

Other cohousing-l people - I met Rob Sandelin.  In case you're 
wondering, he's about 30 (guess), short beard, brown hair with a short 
ponytail.  Very friendly and energetic - except when totally wiped out 
by too much networking and not enough sleep.  I also met Pablo Halpern 
and Nancy Wight, who I had a good conversation with.  I met Stephanie 
Fassnacht (sp?) and Debbie Behrens, but didn't have a chance to talk to 
them at as much length.  All the cohousing-l people I met were nicer in 
person than I had expected.  I'm not sure what that means.  A number of 
us had our photo taken together.  I'm hoping to get a copy of that and 
scan it in for the web pages.

I (and I think other emailers) spent a lot of time talking to 
non-emailers about cohousing-l, and the meaning of the internet 
generally for cohousing.  I had a long discussion with Chuck Durrett 
about this.

Now for the actual speakers and panels (at least the ones I saw).  On 
the Friday night, we had a series of about a dozen slide shows about 
different communities.  Folks were supposed to have ten slides and take 
ten minutes.  (A couple of people cheated).  I gave one of these about 
N St.  (I had all the scruffiest slides :-).   The ones that made the 
most powerful impression on me where a presentation by Dorritt Fromm 
about Cohousing for Seniors (in Europe).  The basic idea is to do 
cohousing the regular way, but with the intent being to house all seniors 
(over 50 say).  There is a lot of support built in for people getting 
less mobile, coping with illness etc.  I have had several elderly 
relatives in residential care and it has always made me miserable to see 
the life they have to lead.  I think cohousing for seniors has a big 
future.  Another slide show that sticks out in my mind was Mark Deziel's 
about Monterey Cohousing.  He had a bunch of slides showing their site in 
all seasons.  They have a big old mansion which they are converting/have 
converted into common space and apartments.  They will ultimately have 
townhouses too.  I was very impressed by how beautiful the site and 
existing building were, and by how much work this group had put into 
their project (not that any cohousing process is easy, but these guys 
seem to have gone to particularly heroic lengths).

Saturday morning, Bill Paiss opened the conference.  He's a good 
speaker - very witty.  The thing that sticks in my mind was when he 
said (approximately).  "What cohousing is is a well kept secret.  We 
may think that we are making buildings, but what this is *really* is 
the longest and most expensive personal growth workshop ever."  He got 
a big laugh.

Then Caroline Estes (who is President? of the Fellowship for 
Intentional Communities and a resident of an Oregon commune - Alpha 
Farm) gave an address about "The lessons of community" or something 
like that (again, I apologize but I'm doing this from memory).  I 
wasn't that impressed with her address - it seemed rather unfocussed 
(though I really liked her consensus talk later in the conference).  
The biggest message she was trying to get across was that now we have 
learnt how to make community amongst ourselves, we have a moral 
responsibility to try and spread community amongst the best of the 
world - because the world is a sad place and needs help.  Amen.

Then we got split up into different tracks depending on interest.  I 
won't go into much detail about most of them because I'm 35 minutes 
into the hour I allowed myself to write this.  I went to one about 
Conflict Resolution run by Ellen Hertzman of the Cohousing Company.  It 
was fun - we all got to run back and forth depending on whether we 
agreed or not with various.  The thing that sticks in my mind was a 
suggestion by an audience member for a community building technique 
called Most Unlikely Friend.  Basically, everybody in the community has 
to pick the person they like least, and within a week or so, make some 
contact like calling them to talk, or taking them out to lunch, etc.  

I also went to Caroline Estes' presentation on consensus.  I found it 
very interesting, and her personally very compelling.  One thing she 
said is that consensus process originated with the Quakers, and she 
feels that the version of that cohousers have got is different from the 
original in ways that cause problems.  Specifically, in "traditional" 
consensus, one only got to block if one was convinced that the decision 
*was a bad decision for the group.*  By contrast, in cohousing blocking 
is typically allowed for purely personal reasons.  (Of course the 
distinction may sometimes be blurry in practice, but it's clearly a big 
distinction nonetheless).  She also felt that a Quaker institution 
missing in cohousing is "The Committee on Ministry".  This committee 
serves to look after the membership - help and support them through 
personal crises, and help to facilitate interpersonal disputes between 
individuals in the group.  She feels that having no equivalent of this 
is dangerous because personal issues (marital crises etc) can interfere 
with group decision making when they appear in very disguised forms 
because there is no mechanism for taking care of them.  She also talked 
about "third meeting", what Alpha Farm calls their meeting for talking 
though interpersonal problems ("Including the really hard things such 
as `I don't like you'").  They apparently take many hours every single 
week in this meeting!  She feels that they would not still be together 
after 22 years if they had not done this.

All this made me think a lot.  I can easily think of several things N 
St has tried and failed to do, where the problem was primarily an 
interpersonal one.  Yet, as a group, we have no process to deal with 
interpersonal issues.  In fact we have a strong taboo (unwritten) 
against any group discussion of an issue which requires us to name 
individuals.  I don't know what I think about all this yet - except 
that it's taking a lot of thought.

The party - was great fun.  We all danced,drank, and talked outside 
in the cold night air.  Bill Paiss spent most of the night dancing with 
no shirt on which was quite a sight.  Rob Sandelin danced with great 
energy (though he disappeared half way through - where did you get to 
Rob?).  I held up N St's honour by being the last one to be dragged 
from the dance floor.  I knew it was time to stop when they were 
sweeping the floor around me.  

Closing address - Chuck Durrett.  "The Future of Cohousing in North 
America."  Very funny pokes at conventional housing.  Very inspiring.  
He gave us these numbers:

Year    Number of Communities in existence by end of year in NA
1991    2
1992    4
1993    8
1994    16 (projected)

The pattern is clear.  There are 33 groups who are not finished but do 
own land.


Closing ceremony - an audio-visual presentation put together by Dawn 
Griffin.  I was very moved by this but I won't describe it as I cannot 
possibly convey how it felt.

I absolutely must stop as I'm five minutes over the time I allowed 
myself.  But just to say - very big thanks to Bill, Velma, Jim, and all 
the other people who worked so hard to organize the conference.  Your 
efforts were very worthwhile.  Thanks to all the wonderful people I met 
for talking to me and teaching me such a lot.  Thanks to Nyland for 
putting up with so many strange people staying in your community.  I 
also want to personally thank Ed Wolf for letting me crash on his sofa, 
and Susan Ross and her partner Phillip and son Alex who took me into 
their home, fed me dinner, and made me feel incredibly welcome when I 
was on my own on Sunday evening after the conference was over.

Finally - to all the rest of you.  Where were you?  We missed you!  
Don't repeat the offence next year!

Stuart.
N-Street Cohousing
stanifor [at] cs.ucdavis.edu