Cohousing-L Mailing List: seeking anecdotes about new-member process for my book

[Communities Magazine (christian_d1]

Hello Cohousing-L readers,

	I'm in the final stages of writing a book about how to research,  
visit, evaluate, and join communities. (It's called Finding the  
Ecovillage or Sustainable Community of Your Dreams: A Field Guide.  
Out next spring from New Society Publishers.)

	If you have any brief anecdotes about funny or great or delightful  
or  disturbing things that happened in your cohousing community's new- 
member process that you'd be willing to share, I'd love to hear them.  
Or that happened to you when you were looking for a cohousing  
community to join.
        
	I want to let community seekers know what to expect when they visit  
and consider communities, and also what to do that is beneficial for  
them and the community, and what, egads, not to do. (Don't show up  
with all your dogs in the car. Don't show up without asking first.  
Don't show up and expect to have any and all questions answered by  
anyone handy, anytime you feel like asking them. etc. etc.)

	Here's an example of the kind of brief anecdote I'm looking for. In  
one small urban community, when the community members oriented a new  
person coming in, they forgot to tell the new person that they  
routinely walked through the house to their hot tub in either their  
underwear, or a towel, or sometimes nude. The new person was offended  
by all the naked skin, and told them so. Ooops--the community forgot  
to check this out with the new person at the outset. It was pretty  
uncomfortable for the community members to have to put on clothes  
just to walk through their own house. They didn't forget to talk  
about this with future incoming members. (I don't actually know what  
happened to the offended new member. Did she leave? Get more  
comfortable with nudity? Jump in the hot tub herself?)

	Here's another example,  Once at Earthaven at 10:30 on a Tuesday  
night, a vanload of community seekers pulled up to our Council Hall  
as two different committees who had been meeting there were wrapping  
up their meetings.  The 6 visitors, including their spiritual  
teacher, an Eastern European woman with a thick accent and a loud,  
stentorian voice, burst into the hall, all breathless with excitement  
to be there, and so glad to have finally arrived, cause it was dark  
and the'd gotten lost. So glad to finally be there and find us at  
last; they'd been driving all day and trying to find the place. But  
they didn't have much time, as they needed to head out that night.  
"Ve're here for da Tour!" announced the Guru-ess. And I, who like to  
think I'm funny sometimes, walked up to her and said, deadpan, "Oh,  
you mean the Tuesday night at 10:30 tour?"  My friends in the two  
committees cracked up, since obviously no community would offer a  
tour at near-bedtime on a weeknight. But my chance to make a funny  
and not-too-subtle point was lost on the visitors.
        "Yes, ve vould!" boomed their leader.

	Here's another one. Once a woman got ahold of our kitchen telephone  
number and called, and told the Earthaven member who answered that  
she was on a communities tour, she was coming over to see Earthaven,  
and she wanted directions. "We don't have tours on Wednesday  
afternoons," said the young Earthaven woman who answered the phone.  
"And we don't have camping facilities for visitors after October;  
it's too cold." (And how did the visitor get our kitchen phone number  
anyway?) Then ensued essentially heated words between our Earthaven  
member and the visitor, who insisted that if we were any kind of  
ecovillage at all, we'd offer hospitality. We'd be welcoming. We'd go  
out of our way to help someone--someone who might join the community  
and help us!--to get there, stay there, and take a tour. The young  
woman, who was busy trying to cook dinner, tried unsuccessfully  
various times to get the caller to get it that we weren't open,  
didn't have camping, didn't have a tour that day and wouldn't create  
one for her especially, and would she please come on a Saturday  
morning when we have regularly scheduled tours. Finally our young  
Earthaven member got fed up and said, "Look, I'm going to look up  
your address on the Internet and come over to your house tomorrow  
afternoon with five of my friends and open your back door and insist  
on a tour of your kitchen!"  The point was taken.

	Here's another one. Once a group of people had finished the Saturday  
tour and afterwards were wandering around the central Earthaven  
neighborhood, which we don't encourage them to do. They happened upon  
a young man who was tending his garden out in front of his tiny off- 
grid timber-framed earth-plastered cabin, not far from the  
community's constructed wetlands. It was so tempting--the visitors  
couldn't help but barrage him with questions--his solar panels, his  
earth plaster, the constructed wetlands--all so exciting. But he was  
just trying to weed his garden in peace. Finally, after he'd answered  
too many questions on what was supposed to be his day off, he burst  
out with, "Look, this isn't Eco-World!"

	If you have any short tales of things like this, oh please, do email  
them to me. And, if possible, in the next few days, if that would  
work for you. I'm bearing down on a deadline, made worse because it  
got put off a month already and I don't have "wiggle room," and I got  
real sick for a month and lost a lot of time from that.
	So I'm trying to catch up, and write fast. Which is why I'm asking  
for this help.

        Thanks so much for considering it.

        Diana Christian,
        Sometimes of Communities magazine, but today of just myself

Communities Magazine: www.ic.org; store.ic.org

Diana Leafe Christian: www.DianaLeafeChristian.org