Cohousing-L Mailing List: Cohousing Conference report #4

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

Well, NA Coho Con '97 is over, it was great up to the end a few hours ago.

Tours of communities took up a good part of today - I visited
Songaia in suburban Seattle which is beautiful and Beacon Hill Intntional
Community in South Seattle.  (I have previously visited Puget Ridge (one
of my favorites) and Sharingwood.  Many folks visited communities on 
Vashon Island and Bainbridge Island (in Puget Sound).

Katie McCamant gave a closing talk that was inspiring as usual
including some revisions to her definition of cohousing.

During the closing session the report from the "transition team" that has
been working to refine the plans to create the Cohousing Network.
Membership structure and forms were announced.  During that session
a number of group and individual memberships were collected as well as
a generous pledge from Brad Jarvis of Vancouver, BC of $1000 bringing
an initial collection of around $3600 .

A press release produced by Kay Abrahams (in Colorado 303-554-1799
kayruth [at] aol.com ) entitled: "FIRST UMBRFELLA COHOUSING ORGANIZATION FORMED
AT NORTH AMERICAN CONFERENCE IN SEATTLE"  and suggestions for distributing
it were passed out.  Remember folks to get these to your local media.  Kay
and Zev, will these be available via the Web? 

BTW Zev Paiss and Kay announced their plans to wed and move to the new
Nomad cohousing in Boulder.  Congratulations.

A recent media mentio of cohousing was on a PBS feature called 
"Affluenza" which featured moves people are making for more modest
consumption patterns.  On Going Concerns community - a retrofit cohousing
community in Portland OR was featured for about 1 minute very favorably.

A closing circle in the beautiful Sunshine in sight of THE mountain
on a plaza on campus officially concluded the event.

Thanks again to Marci Malinowycz and her partner Tom Whitmore and oll the
other folks who helped put this great event on.  Watch the web site for
more detailed info on the conference including notes and credits.

Fred

--
Fred H. Olson  fholson [at] tc.umn.edu    Zipcode: 55411  
(612)588-9532  Amateur radio: WB0YQM          List manager of:
Cohousing-L  See www.cohousing.org        and      nbhd-tc  the
Twin Cities Neighborhood issues list. See www.freenet.msp.mn.us