Cohousing-L Mailing List: naming ourselves

[Denise Meier and/or Michael Jacob (dmmj]

On Tue, 25 Mar 1997, Joani Blank wrote:

> 
> I, for one, like your new name. Was it contentious? Deciding on a name, I
> mean. The Berkeley group is struggling with that one right now. 

It was ridiculously hard! We had three or four meetings plus numerous
email exchanges, and it just was not happening. Somehow I thought this
name would arise from a light moment when someone made a comment during a
completely unrelated discussion, and then we'd all say "Hey! That's it!!" 
Instead we had brainstorming after brainstorming, and wasted tons of time
with silly (and rarely very funny, in my grumpy opinion)  suggestions. 
Anything with a bit of life to it struck someone else wrong, and a lot of
things (e.g. Something Woods, or Something Oaks) were dismissed as
"sounding like a condo development" (I hate to break this to you, folks,
but we ARE a condo development!) 

Eliminating anthing that anyone objected to meant that all the choices we
were looking at finally were pretty boring. And then this one came out of
left field, from fairly shy new member who wouldn't even suggest it when
she first thought of it a couple of months ago! 

We'll see how it wears. I like it!

Denise Meier
Two Acre Wood 
(formerly Jewell Hill Cohousing)
Sebastopol, Ca