Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: What creates community?

[Fred H Olson WB0YQM (fholson]

On Wed, 19 Apr 95 23:35 CDT, 
Joaniblank [at] aol.com  <Joaniblank [at] aol.com> wrote:
(actually her message had the subject line "What is community?" )

>
>Quick. When I say "rugged individualist," don't most of you think "male?".

I would like to think "some males".  I don't think of myself as a rugged 
individualist tho , to further complicate things, I may have some 
characteristics that one might include in a description of "rugged 
individualist".

I meet lots of folks I'd like to get to know better but "there are
so many interesting people and so little time".  And so few of them have
email and I type so slowly...but I'm working on those. I'm only half 
serious with that last comment.  Email allows contact much more easily
tho certainly not as good en many ways.  Yesterday Andrew and I had a 
great bike ride of visiting.  But in 3 hours we visited only 6 people in 3 
places (interestingly 3 female, 1 male and 2 children).  

I find that doing things (whether fun things or things intended to change 
the world for the better) WITH people tends to "build community".
I have long thought that the community organization meetings incorporate
aspects of this and that these aspects which people enjoy should be 
consciously promoted as a means to enhance participation.  Care should be 
taken to ensure that newcomers and those who share less in common with
the regulars are not excluded from the business of the meeting
by social dynamics - when the meeting convenes the nature of interaction
needs to become somewhat more formal and rule/agend etc bound.

Fred

--
Fred H. Olson   fholson [at] uci.com   (612)588-9532  Amateur radio: WB0YQM
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