Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: boderline off topic -- George Krasle

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

George Krasle <GSKrasle [at] hotmail.com>
is the author of the message below. 
It was posted by Fred the Cohousing-L list manager <fholson [at] cohousing.org> 
because the message included HTML ;      PLEASE do not post HTML, see
   http://csf.colorado.edu/cohousing/2001/msg01672.html

Note from Fred, the list manager:
As is my practice the message below is unmodified (except to remove HTML).

George again refers to his experience at Songai which he characterizes
below as "terribly unpleasant".  There are other perceptions of that
experience but no one cares to discuss it in this forum.  
Please be careful about drawing conclusions.  Fred 

--------------------  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS --------------------

Robin,

[snip]My experiences in an actual cohousing community have been much more
compassionate and supportive than many of the responses I have seen on this
list.[snip]  

[snip]Relative to my actual face to face experience of living in
community, it is not nearly as welcoming and affirming.[snip]

I have to add a caveat; it depends on the persons, places and postings. I
have posted some material, including questions, that have been,...
errr,... CONTROVERSIAL, and I have received some rather unpleasant
responses, mostly privately, but nothing like I experience at Songaia;
nobody here has yet shouted "you have no community spirit, and I hope you
die a miserable death!" Indeed, even the critical responses I have
received here were courteous and thoughtful, and at least I have not yet
been excluded. I am no great expert, but I think there is a great deal to
be learned, even from negative, knee-jerk reactions (not that I have
experienced such here!), just as I feel the experiment that DOESN'T turn
lead into gold tells you something.

I think everybody has at least a few "buttons," and with the whole
cohousing community, it is more likely to push some if you bring up
certain kinds of questions, ones that might be interpreted as criticism.

My experience with cohousing has been terribly unpleasant, involving much
more than being yelled at, threatened, excluded, punished and coerced, so
I guess it varies a lot amongst groups too. I wish there were a way to
tell about the social and authority structure before becoming involved,
but, in my case, the courtship was over, the gloves were off, once money
changed hands. I was completely clueless, and now I devote a lot of
thought to how other people can avoid my mistakes. All the groups seem to
crib from the same list of wonderful descriptive visions, but, obviously,
some are more committed than others.

Back to your original post, re childrens' safety: I wanted to respond
immediately, but for reasons I can't fully explain, this is a very great
concern I have regarding my daughters at Songaia, and not just
molestation. I would never have chosen to live in that place had I known
about e.g. the arsenic, leaked fuel oil, the likelihood of lead in the
pipes, etc., but especially being overruled without being heard in my
parental desire to remediate the things I consider hazards. And my
ten-year-old catches the school bus alone at the end of the access road to
the compound, an isolated place away from any buildings. She reports
getting a fright when an unfamiliar truck pulled up just as she was
getting off and waited at the end of the road until she was out of sight.
Yet none of the adults still there will accompany her now that I am living
elsewhere.

George


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