Cohousing-L Mailing List: Taming noise, and Common House Table Size

[Joani Blank (joani]

Glad this is coming up again and thank you Diane for posting my long
treatise on common house tables. I bought a couple of used pedestal legs
before moving to Old Oakland, and one of these days I may try to make the
perfect CH table, but got too much on my plate at the moment to think about
that.  

A couple more reasons not to use round tables.  (Learned both of these from
Chuck too.) One is that they take up too much room in your dining space.
Well the really little 4 person ones don't.  Another is that there tend to
be fewer conversations at a round table for 6 or 8 or more. Often only one,
or maybe two, and that leaves less space for the more quiet people to get
in on the interaction. That plus people talking loud to be heard by
everyone at the table isn't so cool.

Noise. Love Sherri's suggestions about noise taming. Here's one more.  Some
cooks think it's cool to accompany dinners with music.  Unfortunately no
one usually is listening to the music at dinner time, so all it does is
make people raise their voices.  It is perhaps okay to have music playing
for atmosphere as people collect for dinner, then maybe turn it on again
quietly during desert/after dinner coffee or tea, especially if the dinner
crowd has thinned.  But while the main consumption is taking place, I
strongly prefer no music.

Joani Blank
Old Oakland Cohousing