Cohousing-L Mailing List: A Response to Dave Nathan and Readers of the Cohousing L

[Ann Zabaldo (zabaldo]

Sherri Zann Rosenthal is the President-elect of The Cohousing Network and
author of this letter to readers of the listserv.  I am posting it for her
as she is, at this time, not subscribed to the listserv.  In addition, her
email is currently down so, unfortunately, you can not respond to her
directly.  I will collect your responses and fax them to her if her email is
not up and running very soon.

Ann Zabaldo
 Takoma Village Cohousing
Washington, DC. -- America's
Hometown!
zabaldo [at] earthlink.net

----------

Dear Dave and Coho-L readers,

On behalf of TCN, and for myself as President-elect, we apologize if we
mistakenly
used Dave's beautifully articulated poem about the importance of cohousing
in improving our world.

A member of TCN's Board of Directors crafted the end of year TCN letter. He
told me that he had Dave's permission to use the excerpt in the letter.
Obviously, there was some confusion in what uses the permission covered. TCN
will, in the future, get all reprint permissions in writing, and will keep a
copy on file. We don't want to misuse anyone's words as we attempt to grow
and strengthen cohousing in North America.

At the same time, let me address something in Dave's post, which is a
negativity about "fundraising."  TCN operated at a loss last year, and works
on a shoestring.

Four years ago, some of us joined together to create TCN, because we saw the
great possibilities that could be created by having a national touchstone
for cohousing. A place that could respond to national media requests. A
clearinghouse for the many innovations created by scattered grassroots
groups--and a way that the painfully repeated mistakes of scattered groups
might be avoided by shared learnings. We believed that the continent-wide
sharing of cohousers would be a powerful catalyst for the creation of
cohousing, and the sharing of cohousing learnings with the broader culture.
And TCN has, even with very little money, done many of these things, with a
web site (which is costly to maintain and innovate), with the Journal, with
our dynamic conferences and our professional seminars.

If like us--and like Dave--you believe that cohousing improves the world by
building community, realize that having a national organization, even a
grassroots and fledgling one like TCN, takes money. We probably can't
continue with the level of funding we had last year. Just as raising funds
is necessary to make cohousing happen, raising funds is necessary to have
TCN grow so that it can really support the possibilities of cohousing to
make the world a better place.

In community,

Sherri Zann Rosenthal
President-elect
The Cohousing Network





_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.communityforum.net/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l