Cohousing-L Mailing List: coho tour in Northern Cal.

[Casey Morrigan (cjmorr]

I wanted to give list members some impressions of the cohousing tour that
Joani Blank organized on March 1 in the Bay Area of Northern California.

I was so glad I went.  I am so curious about other's intentional
communities!  I'm interested in all of it, from how you do your meals to
what are the hot topics in the community.  It was a treat for me to meet the
others on the tour, and also to meet the "tour guides" at each site who took
time to show us around.

Every site has its own flavor.  In Pleasant Hill, the ochre and turquoise
stucco really strikes your eye, and the flowers growing even in winter - the
mediterranean feel and the bright light in the units. Hey - they had a
swimming pool!  fantastic!   Doyle Street, in Emeryville, so compact and
small but so efficient and cleverly designed.  Swan's Market, a true urban
loft feel and adventurous interior decoration of some (most?) units right in
downtown Oakland.  And -- we thought we had problems during construction --
here at Two Acre Wood we discovered an underground spring when we started
digging for foundations.  However, at Swan's Market they had to deal with
lead particles as they renovated their historic building.  That tops finding
a spring and helps put stuff into perspective:  there is always an
"unexpected" in construction.

We saw Berkeley cohousing which manages, on its small site, to seem to be in
a forest, with its old craftsman house as the common house, and stucco and
shingled retrofits and new construction as residences. Dreams of moving back
to Berkeley and living in cohousing were brought to heel upon hearing of
their waiting list of hundreds.  Two of us rode Raines' bike on the walkway:
it was a side-by-side foldable tandem.  Well, if I can't live in Berkeley
again maybe I can get a bike like that.

We looked at the Cotati construction site; I was recalling with David Ergo
the long and difficult history of pulling together a group in Santa Rosa.
Now with Cotati being built and the Yulupa cohousing moving ahead, there's
going to be fulfillment of long-held dreams in Sonoma County.

We saw some more retrofit and an intentional Christian community in Temescal
Creek and Temescal Commons.  We toured my own home site, Two Acre Wood in
Sebastopol.  Interesting to try to see it through strangers' eyes.

On the bus:  chatting, answering questions about Two Acre Wood and other
cohousing, surprised by how much I'd learned over the last few years and the
eagerness of others to know it.  Even my own family when they visit isn't as
curious about this way of life.  Joani's killer tofu salad as the
centerpiece of a yummy meal.

I'd like to extend my thanks to Joani Blank of the Cohousing Network, and
David Ergo of Cotati cohousing who helped co-lead, for a great day.  It made
me feel like I was part of something really important, and I feel like I
made some new friends.

Casey Morrigan
Two Acre Wood
Sebastopol, CA








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