Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: RE: Don't be quiet out there.

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

Well as a whole bunch of you  know, I live at the Sharingwood community, and
tomorrow is my 12th anniversary of living here. We are kind of different,
being a lot development cohousing model, with a bunch of homes, all
surrounded by some choice  NW forest land. There is a passel of kids here, I
think 32 at last count, and they tend to dominate things here. Lots of
flashlight tag these days as it gets dark after dinner. (we live in the
country where its dark at night) We have a smallish commonhouse, kind of
more a giant living room feeling than some of the typical large common
house's. Right now I am sitting in the dark, in a parking lot of a local
farm down the road at a corn maze where I drove 9 neighborhood kids to the
haunted maze. We are surrounded by rural lands, lots of forests and farms.
Tomorrow is our community harvest festival with a big meal from our
community garden, decorations from flower gardens, pumpkins that the kids
plants, games, etc. Monday a few of us will sit around the large screen TV
theatre area of one of the homes and watch the local football team get
defeated on Monday Night Football. We have 4 new families that have moved
into the rental spaces in the last 5 weeks and so there is still lots of
introductions going on. I spent an house over a beer with a new neighbor who
is a airline pilot, neat guy, lots of great stories.  It's a challenge to
move into a community like ours which has lots of history and systems and
culture. As an old-timer, I get a kick out of fresh perspectives of the
things I tend to take for granted.

There have been several community dramas  over the summer, which is nothing
new, we are pretty much always in some kind of situation or other, and we
always seem to work through it somehow. A seriously ill family has brought
out lots of support, and some of the teenage girls have had relationship
issues over the only teenage boy  in the neighborhood. It's always
interesting to live here if you engage with an open heart.

Like other places we have a minority of folks who keep mostly to themselves
and miss most the fun, and also miss out on the support. And there are folks
who are into all that is. After a dozen years of it, I tend to pick my
engagements with an eye to what will be new or amusing and have to learned
to lend a hand where its needed most, which is not often the most obvious or
visible place.

Hope your community dreams come true

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, teacher, writer


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