Cohousing-L Mailing List: Introduction

[Bob M . LKG1-3/A11 226-7570 (morrison]

  I have been reading this newsgroup for three weeks in Digest mode and
have read the June archives. I have decided to introduce myself.
  I grew up in the seacoast region of New Hampshire and moved to MA 20
years ago. I had lived in a semi-rural area and though I initially had an
interesting experience living in the city ("the city" in my mind includes
Boston's outer suburbs too), but soon felt lonely and alienated. I had
decided early on to pursue a career in high tech and at that time living
in the city was virtually a requirement for this. After some false starts,
I did establish a career in high tech (I have been with Digital for 17 years)
and more or less adjusted to living in a metropolitan area, but I never really
found a solution to the alienation.
  I first heard of cohousing four years ago when I read an article in the 
Boston Globe about New View, and immediately got excited about it. This seemed
like just the solution I was looking for. In 1991, through a stroke of good
luck, I transferred to a workplace six miles from New View's proposed site.
In 1992, I began pursuing membership in New View. After I had attended meetings
and social events for nine months, they decided not to offer me me a member-
ship. Since then I have looked into several other cohousing groups, but these
attempts fell through for various reasons. Last year I began attending meet-
ings of The Cohousing Network (TCN) (Formerly Cohousing Clearinghouse of
Greater Boston). I also subscribe to CoHousing journal.
  I have not seen a lot of posts here from people who are not members or
"hangers-on" (my term for prospective or associate members) of cohousing
groups. Are there any other readers of this newsgroup who have been turned
down for membership in a cohousing group? If so, I would like to talk with
you. (In this context, "talk" includes electronic mail.)
  One of the major issues for me is that I am tied to this location, in that
I'm happy with my job and don't want to change jobs. I also dislike long com-
muting. Even though there is a lot of cohousing activity in Greater Boston
compared to most other metro areas in the same size range, I don't have a lot
of cohousing groups to choose from within what I consider a reasonable commute
(20 miles) of my work. So about all I can do at this point is to continue
keeping up with what is happening with cohousing both locally and nationally
and hope that another opportunity will present itself.
  I would like to put in a plug for "The Geography of Nowhere" by James
Kunstler, which was published last fall. I heard about this book on a radio
talk show and promptly bought it. He describes in great detail just what we
(the U.S.) did wrong in the last 50 years to end up with the alienated social
environment most of us live in today. Strangely enough, he doesn't mention
cohousing as part of the solution, but he presents almost all the reasons that
cohousers have presented for why we need cohousing. One of the things he says
is that millions of people feel that something is not quite right with their
social environment but they can't put it in words. 
  I actually thought of the idea of cohousing ten years ago. I even drew up
a plan in my head for how to convert the apartment house I was living in to
cohousing. Of course, it didn't quite match the real cohousing model. I suspect
that hundreds of people in the U.S. "invented" cohousing in their minds during
the 1970's and 80's but didn't have the money, energy, and leadership ability
to put it into practice. It's really unfortunate that it took so long for
someone to pick up the ball and run with it. People in some regions who want
and need cohousing badly are going to have to wait five years or more before
it's available. For example, the northeast regional insert in Cohousing jour-
nal shows that there is no cohousing activity in the Philadelphia metro area,
even though, as someone recently said here, there is a serious need for it.
Yes, I know it's not just a matter of "waiting" for cohousing to appear, but
not everyone who wants to live in cohousing is the kind of person who can 
start a group from scratch.

Bob Morrison

Home: Boxboro, MA               Work: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton, MA