Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Why do you need Archives?

[Moose Thompson (markithompson]

Sharon, thanks for starting this thread.  History is a tricky thing. Here
we are in our 30's, but few care about setting a start date, yet alone
year.  Do we use the first house built date, 1986?  The first incorporation
date, 1989?,  The final incorporation date, 1992?  These are only
approximate dates as I didn't look them up.
We currently have two of the founding members left living here.  Shortly
before I moved here 7 years ago we quit celebrating Founder's Day.  Until
the pandemic we would have a slide show every year showing pictures from
the early days to the present.  These shows were well attended.  In the
past 2 or 3 years there has been talk of reinstating Founder's Day.
Recently our most ardent historian created montages of the folk who died in
the community which are posted in the Common House.
As an amateur archivist, starting with my high school, I've always wondered
how much is too much to keep?  What should be culled?  Here we have most
meeting minutes going back to 1991, many financial records, blue prints,
plat maps, notes on why particular appliances were purchased for the Common
House, etc.  This is too much in that what we have is not coherently
accessible, scattered across 4 filing cabinets and binders elsewhere, not
to mention what is kept in multiple households.  The aforementioned
historian and I (let me be clear, we aren't the only ones interested in our
history) have made efforts to keep electronic materials accessible.  Even
so we haven't coordinated our efforts and very few others know they exist,
let alone where to find them.
So while we have historical documents that could be useful for practical
reasons, they aren't used for lack of awareness or meaningful access.
Accept for the slideshow most of our story is kept in oral tradition.  For
several years now I've thought about recording conversations with people
providing that tradition, but have not taken action.
Has anyone had experience with making audio or video recordings of your
history?  What about current events?  How do you manage the files and
access to them?  Do you use a streaming service?

Moose Thompson, Sharingwood, Snohomish, WA https://www.sharingwood.net
--------
He/him/his pronouns <https://www.mypronouns.org/he-him>

On Sun, 15 May 2022 17:11:54 -0400 Ken Winter <ken [at] sunward.org>
via Cohousing-L List <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:

Thank you, Sharon ~

A timely contemplation for my community as we age and transition and head
toward our 25th anniversary next year.

For what it's worth, I re-titled it as I sent it out to my community:
"Community History: Who Cares? Why Care?"  Thought that might be better
click-bait ?.

~ Ken Winter, Sunward Cohousing


On Sun, May 15, 2022 at 2:03 PM Sharon Villines via Cohousing-L <
cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:

> I love doing research and reading history so just the entertainment value
> of being able to read newspapers and letters that have been saved from
> other lives is reason enough to ?keep everything?.
>
> A practical reason is to "prove what happened? or didn?t happen. What was
> really decided and why? What was the order of events? Yes, we agreed that
> all plantings along the green would be flowering plants but what did ?all?
> and ?flowering? mean in 1989? (Anyone who has been following the
> conservative interpretations of the US Constitution will recognize this
> argument.)
>
> But there is a much more important reason ? to remember and understand
> where you have come from and to include new members in the fullest
> experience of the community.
>
> My image of cohousing is of family compounds. Places where generations of
> families have built camps or summer homes and everyone gathers not just
> summers but on holidays as well. And some people may stay year around. Or
a
> farming family that builds additional houses on the land as the
generations
> grow. The households are together but peacefully private as well.
>
> So when we had a rash of new members, in one two year period about 7
> households turned over, I started thinking about how families integrate
new
> members. Our members had left for all the normal reasons family members
> change but the changes had clustered which increased the force. How had
> families traditionally integrated new members and remained one family?
For
> generations. (Obviously, not all do but we are talking utopian dreams
here.)
>
> As we tried to include new members, I was struck by how often new members
> would close off discussions by saying ?That?s history. This is now.? Or
?we
> aren?t talking about history, we are starting fresh from today.? ?There is
> no history; it?s just us.? ?We do things differently."
>
> When I offered to show a new resident who had just had a baby, pictures of
> other babies born in the community, she wasn?t interested unless they
> weren?t still in the community ? people who were here right now. That
> others of us had loved these babies, babies that had played with the same
> toys her baby was playing with, had no meaning for her.
>
> While there are good times to try to start fresh and put the past behind
> us, ignoring the past will pretty much leave you with a very thin present.
> New friends can be like fresh air, but even an old enemy can be more
> comfortable. I once lamented to a colleague that there were so many new
> faculty members and that meetings were unpredictable and even
unproductive.
> I just wanted some old friends in the room. He said, ?Even old enemies
> would a good thing.?
>
> The ways I know that families integrate new members is in the preparation
> of meals, the sharing of stories ?about when?, and dragging out photograph
> albums. Meals require interaction in tasks we are all familiar with (for
> the most part) so there is a task for everyone. If we are going to
continue
> to be a family, we need to learn everything related to food and meals.
> Sharing ourselves is sharing our stories. That is who we are. How we got
to
> be who we are. And photographs provide more opportunities to share stories
> and deepen the experience of those no longer present but still very much
> alive in everyone?s lives. If ?Aunt Mabel? was the defining force in most
> of the family member?s lives and they have no interest in forgetting her.
> And couldn?t if they wanted to.
>
> New people often felt excluded when we talked about ?the past? or
> mentioned by name people who were no longer there. ?See, we don?t know who
> that is so that story just excludes us.? As if we were telling those
> stories just to show new members that they weren?t really members.
>
> Understanding the present means understanding the past. The reason we have
> no hot water in the guest rooms or that it takes 15 minutes to get there
is
> not because we are dumb or don?t know how to run a pipe, it?s because the
> people who originally chose the hot water heater were trying to save money
> by installing a high-efficiency gas water heater instead of a much less
> efficient electric water heater. The fact that the gas water heater had to
> go on the other side of the building, 100 ft away because it needed an
> exhaust vent, instead of in the basement right under the guestrooms (and
> the laundry room) didn?t occur to them. They had new graduate degrees in
> energy efficiency.
>
> Those are the stories that are still alive and well in the community, that
> make it a community. They need to be shared if everyone is going to feel
> included. I still haven?t figured out ? other than meals ? how to share
> these stories, because it takes time. Not as much time as it took to
create
> the stories but a lot of time. One of the things we used to do on the
> anniversary of move-in was to tell stories about what it was like (chaos)
> but after a few years, only the founding members attend.
>
> One of the nice things about old members coming back to visit is that it
> puts a face on those old memories.
>
> Sharon
> ----
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
>